Convert Tablespoons to Cups

About converting Tablespoons to Cups

Tablespoons (tbsp) and Cups (cup) are both units of volume, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Tablespoons figure by 0.0625. Ten Tablespoons comes to 0.625 Cups, and a hundred works out at 6.25 Cups.

Rule of thumb: going from Tablespoons to Cups divides, so the figure always shrinks — it takes about 16 Tablespoons to make a single Cup. If your answer came out bigger, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Tablespoon?

A tablespoon in US cooking is three teaspoons, or half a US fluid ounce — a definition tidy enough that the whole kitchen spoon system hangs off it. The trap is international: the Australian tablespoon is 20 mL, four teaspoons rather than three, so an Australian recipe followed with an American spoon falls short on every tablespoon it calls for. It is also worth knowing that a tablespoon as a measure has nothing to do with whatever spoon is in your cutlery drawer. The sets sold for cooking are calibrated; the ones you eat with are not.

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 tablespoon is roughly a generous spoonful of olive oil, 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 Tablespoons converter, or browse all Volume converters.