US Cups to Liters (cup to L)
1 US cup equals 0.2365882365 liters exactly.
How to convert US cups to liters
To convert US cups to liters, multiply the number of US cups by 0.2365882365. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply liters by 4.226752838 (rounded).
liters = US cups × 0.2365882365
Example: 10 US cups = 2.365882365 liters.
Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.
About these units
US Cup (cup)
One sixteenth of a US gallon, 236.588 mL (8 US fluid ounces). The standard US recipe cup.
Cups began as household drinking vessels, not scientific units, which is why they remain the messiest measures in the kitchen. The US customary cup was defined by slicing up the gallon: half a pint, or eight US fluid ounces, about 236.6 milliliters. Unlike the larger units, nobody ever fixed it to a physical vessel, so it exists only as a fraction of the gallon.
The customary cup is not the only American cup. For nutrition labels, US regulation defines a cup as exactly 240 milliliters, a rounder figure that sits slightly above the customary size. Packaged foods therefore list a serving in the legal cup while a measuring cup from the hardware store follows the customary definition. The gap is 3.4 milliliters, which hardly matters for soup but can matter in baking. Cup measures also hide the weight of dry ingredients, since a cup of sifted flour and a cup of packed flour differ substantially, which is why much of the world prefers grams.
1 US cup = 0.2365882365 liters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Cup (unit); NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume; 21 CFR 101.9: nutrition labeling household measures
Liter (L)
One cubic decimeter (1,000 cm³). The everyday metric unit of volume for drinks, fuel and cooking.
The liter was born in revolutionary France. In 1795 it was introduced as a republican unit and defined as one cubic decimeter, while the gram was tied to a cubic centimeter of water. The name comes from the older French litron, itself descended from a Byzantine Greek unit of weight, not volume. A small revision of the decimeter in 1798 left the first liter about 1.000974 of today's cubic decimeter, and in 1879 the international metric authorities adopted the liter with the symbol l.
The liter then took a strange detour. In 1901 it was redefined as the space taken up by one kilogram of pure water at its densest, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, and that muddled definition lasted until 1964, when it was restored to exactly one cubic decimeter. A capital L was added as an alternative symbol in 1979 because a lowercase l is easy to mistake for the digit 1, and NIST says L is the symbol to use in the United States. A liter of water is close to a kilogram, which is why a one-liter bottle feels like a kilo in the hand.
The liter is the reference unit for volume on this site.
Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST Guide to the SI, Chapter 5: units outside the SI
Related conversions
- Liters to US cups (reverse)
- US cups to milliliters
- US cups to US gallons
- US cups to US fluid ounces
- US cups to cubic meters
- US cups to cubic centimeters
- US cups to US quarts
- US cups to US pints
- US cups to US tablespoons
- US cups to US teaspoons
- US cups to metric cups
- US cups to metric tablespoons
- US cups to metric teaspoons
- Milliliters to liters
- US gallons to liters
- US fluid ounces to liters
- Cubic meters to liters
- Cubic centimeters to liters
- US quarts to liters
- US pints to liters
- US tablespoons to liters
- US teaspoons to liters
- Metric cups to liters
- Metric tablespoons to liters
- Metric teaspoons to liters
See all volume units.