US Gallons to Liters (gal to L)
1 US gallon equals 3.785411784 liters exactly.
How to convert US gallons to liters
To convert US gallons to liters, multiply the number of US gallons by 3.785411784. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply liters by 0.2641720524 (rounded).
liters = US gallons × 3.785411784
Example: 10 US gallons = 37.85411784 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 Gallon (gal)
Exactly 231 cubic inches or 3.785411784 liters (128 US fluid ounces). About 17% smaller than the imperial gallon.
The US gallon is a survivor of English wine trade. Around 1706, a statute in Queen Anne's reign fixed the wine gallon at exactly 231 cubic inches, settling confusion among the competing gallons for wine, ale and corn. British colonies in North America used that wine gallon, and in 1824 Britain replaced all its gallons with a new imperial one while the United States kept the old measure. It was adopted as the legal US standard in 1836 and is still defined as exactly 231 cubic inches, or 3.785411784 liters.
That makes the US gallon about 17 percent smaller than the imperial gallon, a difference that explains why American and British fuel-economy figures cannot be compared directly. Everyday uses are milk jugs, paint cans and gasoline pumps. One gallon divides evenly into four quarts, eight pints, sixteen cups and 128 fluid ounces. A gallon of water weighs a little over 8 pounds, an easy figure to remember when loading a car with water jugs.
1 US gallon = 3.785411784 liters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gallon; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume
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 gallons (reverse)
- US gallons to milliliters
- US gallons to US cups
- US gallons to US fluid ounces
- US gallons to cubic meters
- US gallons to cubic centimeters
- US gallons to US quarts
- US gallons to US pints
- US gallons to US tablespoons
- US gallons to US teaspoons
- US gallons to metric cups
- US gallons to metric tablespoons
- US gallons to metric teaspoons
- Milliliters to liters
- US cups 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.