Convert Cups to Teaspoons

About converting Cups to Teaspoons

Cups (cup) and Teaspoons (tsp) are both units of volume, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Cups figure by 48. Ten Cups comes to 480 Teaspoons, and a hundred works out at 4,800 Teaspoons.

Rule of thumb: going from Cups to Teaspoons multiplies, so the figure always grows — one Cup is already 48 Teaspoons. If your answer came out smaller, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Cup?

The cup is a cooking unit and nothing else — no scientific or trade use — and it is dangerously ambiguous. The US customary cup in recipes is about 237 mL, the metric cup used in Australia and much of Europe is exactly 250 mL, and the US legal cup that nutrition labels are calculated against is 240 mL, different again from the one in the cookbook. Recipes almost never say which they mean. The problem compounds for dry goods, since a cup measures volume while baking actually depends on mass: how hard you pack the flour changes the answer.

What is a Teaspoon?

The teaspoon is the smallest unit most kitchens ever measure, and it is the base the spoon system is built on — a tablespoon is defined as three of them. It is precise enough for baking powder, salt and vanilla, where the gap between a level spoon and a heaped one decides whether a cake rises. What it should not be used for is medicine: health authorities discourage dosing by teaspoon precisely because the spoons people actually reach for vary widely in size, and recommend a marked oral syringe or dosing cup in milliliters instead.

To put both in perspective: a cup is the measure American recipes count flour in, while a teaspoon is the standard measure for baking powder in a recipe.

The converter above updates as you type, and the table lists common values for quick reference. Need the opposite direction? Use the Teaspoons to Cups converter, or browse all Volume converters.