US Cups to US Quarts (cup to qt)

1 US cup equals 0.25 US quarts exactly.

1 US cup = 0.25 US quarts

How to convert US cups to US quarts

To convert US cups to US quarts, multiply the number of US cups by 0.25. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply US quarts by 4.

US quarts = US cups × 0.25

Example: 10 US cups = 2.5 US quarts.

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)

US customaryCurrent unit

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

US Quart (qt)

US customaryCurrent unit

One quarter of a US gallon, 0.946353 L (32 US fluid ounces).

Quart is a word about fractions. It comes from Latin quartus, meaning one fourth, by way of French, and it was always meant to be a quarter of a gallon. Since gallons differed over the centuries, quarts did too. The US liquid quart is 57.75 cubic inches, about 0.9464 liters, while the imperial quart is a quarter of the 4.54609-liter imperial gallon, about 1.1365 liters. Canadian French even uses pinte for the imperial quart.

Older English trade also produced odd cousins. The Winchester quart was a big bottle holding two imperial quarts, later metricated to 2.5 liters, and the reputed quart of about 0.758 liters was once a standard British wine bottle size. In the United States a quart still means a carton of milk or cream or a tub of ice cream. Americans also use a separate dry quart, about 1.101 liters, for berries, so a quart of strawberries is larger than a quart of milk.

1 US quart = 0.946352946 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Quart; Wikipedia: Gallon; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume

Related conversions

See all volume units.