Convert Liters to US Gallons

About converting Liters to US Gallons

Liters (L) and US Gallons (gal (US)) are both units of volume, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Liters figure by 0.2642. Ten Liters comes to 2.6417 US Gallons, and a hundred works out at 26.4172 US Gallons.

Rule of thumb: going from Liters to US Gallons divides, so the figure always shrinks — it takes about 3.7854 Liters to make a single US Gallon. If your answer came out bigger, 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 an US Gallon?

The US gallon is defined as exactly 231 cubic inches, a figure inherited unchanged from the old English wine gallon. When Britain overhauled its measures in 1824 and adopted a new imperial gallon, the United States simply kept the wine gallon it already had — and that single decision is the root of the entire US-versus-imperial mess that still catches people out today. The US gallon is roughly a fifth smaller than the imperial one, which means American and British fuel-economy figures are not comparable even though both are quoted in miles per gallon.

To put both in perspective: a large bottle of soda holds two liters, while a typical American milk jug holds one US gallon.

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