Tablespoons to cups converter
This free cooking converter changes tablespoons (tbsp) into cups and back again, using US customary measures. It is handy when a recipe lists an ingredient in tablespoons but you would rather measure by the cup, or vice versa.
The formula
In US customary measures, 1 cup = 16 tablespoons. The conversion is a single fixed factor:
cups = tbsp ÷ 16
tbsp = cups × 16Type a value in either field and the other updates in real time.
Reference table
| Tablespoons | Cups | Kitchen shorthand |
|---|---|---|
| 1 tbsp | 0.0625 cup | — |
| 2 tbsp | 0.125 cup | ⅛ cup |
| 4 tbsp | 0.25 cup | ¼ cup |
| 5 tbsp + 1 tsp | 0.333 cup | ⅓ cup |
| 8 tbsp | 0.5 cup | ½ cup |
| 10 tbsp + 2 tsp | 0.667 cup | ⅔ cup |
| 12 tbsp | 0.75 cup | ¾ cup |
| 16 tbsp | 1 cup | 1 cup |
| 32 tbsp | 2 cups | 1 pint |
The ⅓-cup row is the one most people trip over: it is not a whole number of tablespoons but 5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon (since 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon, and 16 ÷ 3 is not a whole number).
When this converter is most useful
Scaling recipes up or down: If a recipe serves 4 and you want to serve 2, halving 6 tablespoons of butter gives you 3 tablespoons — easy. But halving 12 tablespoons gives 6 tablespoons, which is most cleanly measured as ⅜ cup. The converter shows you both so you can pick whichever is easier to measure.
Reading older American recipes: Pre-1950s American cookbooks sometimes list liquids like milk or broth in tablespoons for small quantities rather than fractions of cups. The converter makes quick work of those.
Baking precision: Dry ingredients measured in tablespoons are often small quantities — a tablespoon of baking powder, a tablespoon of yeast — where the volume is too small to justify getting out the measuring cups. But when a recipe calls for 16 tablespoons of flour (probably a recipe scaled down from cups), it is faster to use a 1-cup measure directly.
US vs other tablespoons
This converter uses US tablespoons, where:
- 1 US tablespoon = 14.8 mL
- 1 US cup = 240 mL
UK tablespoons are slightly larger (15 mL), and Australian tablespoons are larger still (20 mL). If you are following a UK or Australian recipe and measuring in US tools, the difference for most cooking is small, but for baking precision it can matter. Convert mL to tablespoons if you need exact metric-to-US matching.
All calculations run entirely in your browser with no data sent anywhere.