Convert Liters to Cups

About converting Liters to Cups

Liters (L) and Cups (cup) are both units of volume, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Liters figure by 4.2268. Ten Liters comes to 42.2675 Cups, and a hundred works out at 422.6753 Cups.

Rule of thumb: going from Liters to Cups multiplies, so the figure always grows — one Liter is already 4.2268 Cups. If your answer came out smaller, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Liter?

The liter is not, strictly speaking, an SI unit — it is merely accepted for use alongside SI, and is defined as exactly one cubic decimetre: the volume of a cube ten centimetres on a side. That pedantic status has done nothing to slow it down, since it is how most of the world buys fuel, milk, paint and soft drinks. Both L and l are accepted symbols, but the capital L is preferred in the United States and increasingly elsewhere, because a lowercase l in most typefaces is almost indistinguishable from the digit 1 — a genuine hazard on a dosage label.

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.

To put both in perspective: a large bottle of soda holds two liters, while a cup is the measure American recipes count flour in.

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