Sugar Converter

This converter swaps between volume and weight for sugar, the eternal headache of baking. Most American recipes measure in cups; most of the rest of the world, and every serious baker, measures in grams. The figures here are based on granulated white sugar.

One cup of granulated sugar:

• 200 grams (7.05 ounces)
• 16 tablespoons, or 48 teaspoons

Smaller amounts:

• 1 tablespoon = 12.5 g (3 teaspoons)
• 1 teaspoon = 4.17 g

Other sugars, per cup:

• Brown sugar, packed: 220 g
• Brown sugar, lightly packed: 200 g
• Powdered (icing) sugar: 120 g
• Raw / turbinado / demerara: 225 g
• Caster / superfine: 225 g

Pick the sugar from the dropdown above and the whole converter switches to that figure, rather than quietly using granulated for everything.

The catch with any cup measurement is that it measures volume, not the sugar itself, and how you fill the cup changes the result. Scooped, tapped, or leveled can swing a “cup” by a noticeable amount. In sweet baking, where the sugar-to-flour ratio drives texture, that variability genuinely matters, and weighing is simply more reliable.

Notice how much the type of sugar shifts the weight. A cup of powdered sugar is only 120 g because it’s mostly air, while packed brown sugar reaches 220 g since the molasses makes it dense and you press it down. Swapping one sugar for another cup-for-cup quietly changes how much sugar you’re really adding. When a recipe gives grams, trust the grams.

“Packed” is an instruction, not a description

Brown sugar is the one where the method genuinely changes the number. Packed means pressed into the cup firmly enough that it holds the shape of the cup when you tip it out, and that is what a recipe means unless it says otherwise. Spooned in loosely and levelled, the same cup holds about 200 g instead of 220. Ten percent of the sugar in a batch of cookies is the difference between chewy and cakey, and it is invisible if you never weigh anything.

Powdered sugar is not pure sugar

Icing sugar carries 2 to 3% cornstarch to stop it caking in the bag. That is why it thickens a glaze, and it is also why you cannot use it as a straight replacement in anything where the sugar is doing structural work. In a meringue it will not dissolve the way caster does; in a caramel the starch scorches.

Is brown sugar less sugar?

No. All of these are essentially sucrose, and all of them come to about 3.87 calories a gram. Molasses contributes trace minerals in quantities too small to matter nutritionally. Brown sugar is a flavour choice and a moisture choice, not a health one.