US Cups to Milliliters (cup to mL)
1 US cup equals 236.5882365 milliliters exactly.
How to convert US cups to milliliters
To convert US cups to milliliters, multiply the number of US cups by 236.5882365. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply milliliters by 0.004226752838 (rounded).
milliliters = US cups × 236.5882365
Example: 10 US cups = 2,365.882365 milliliters.
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
Milliliter (mL)
One thousandth of a liter, or exactly 1 cubic centimeter. Used for medicine, cooking and small containers.
Milliliters inherit everything from the liter, since the prefix simply means one thousandth. Because the liter is a cubic decimeter, a milliliter works out to exactly one cubic centimeter, a coincidence the metric system built in on purpose so that volume, length and mass interlock. One milliliter of water has a mass of about one gram, so a dosing syringe, a kitchen scale and a measuring jug can all be checked against one another.
Today milliliters dominate wherever small amounts must be measured precisely: medicine, flavorings, perfume, shampoo and the fine print on drink labels. Spelling is a mild regional split, with uppercase mL preferred in the United States, Canada and Australia and lowercase ml common in the UK and Europe. For scale, a US teaspoon is just under 5 mL, a US tablespoon is about 14.8 mL, and the US nutrition-label cup is exactly 240 mL, so one such cup is 240 of these tiny units.
1 milliliter = 0.001 liters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume; 21 CFR 101.9: nutrition labeling household measures
Related conversions
- Milliliters to US cups (reverse)
- US cups to liters
- 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
- Liters to milliliters
- US gallons to milliliters
- US fluid ounces to milliliters
- Cubic meters to milliliters
- Cubic centimeters to milliliters
- US quarts to milliliters
- US pints to milliliters
- US tablespoons to milliliters
- US teaspoons to milliliters
- Metric cups to milliliters
- Metric tablespoons to milliliters
- Metric teaspoons to milliliters
See all volume units.