Butter Measurements: Sticks, Cups, Tablespoons and Grams
Butter conversions all hang on one number: a US stick weighs 113 g, which is half a cup or 8 tablespoons. So one cup of butter is two sticks, 227 g, and one tablespoon is about 14 g. Every wrapper marking and recipe callout is some multiple of these.
Butter is actually the friendliest ingredient on this site to measure, because American butter arrives pre-portioned. The complications only start with tubs, European blocks and melted versus softened, and this guide covers each.
Reading the stick and its wrapper
A standard US butter stick is a quarter pound: 113 g. The wrapper carries tablespoon markings, eight per stick, so cutting through the paper at a printed line gives you 14 g per tablespoon without a scale or a knife-cleaning session.
Recipes mix their units freely, but they all reduce to stick math. Three quarters of a cup is a stick and a half. A quarter cup is half a stick, 57 g. Twelve tablespoons is a stick and a half again. When a recipe uses cups of butter, translate to sticks first and the measuring disappears.
| Recipe says | Sticks | Grams | Tablespoons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 tablespoon | 1/8 stick | 14 g | 1 |
| 1/4 cup | 1/2 stick | 57 g | 4 |
| 1/3 cup | 2/3 stick | 76 g | 5 + 1 tsp |
| 1/2 cup | 1 stick | 113 g | 8 |
| 3/4 cup | 1 1/2 sticks | 170 g | 12 |
| 1 cup | 2 sticks | 227 g | 16 |
European blocks and tub butter
Outside North America butter usually comes in 250 g blocks with no tablespoon markings. The cleanest approach is a scale, but geometry works too: a 250 g block cut into ten equal slices gives 25 g slices, and 4.5 of them approximate a US stick. Some blocks print 50 g graduations on the wrapper, which makes half sticks easy.
Spreadable tub butter is a different product. It is whipped with air or blended with oil, so a cup of it weighs less than 227 g and its water content differs. It behaves fine on toast and adequately in frostings, but for baking, stick or block butter is the safe choice.
Softened, melted and browned
Weight does not change when butter melts, so measure in any state and the grams hold. What changes is the recipe chemistry: creamed softened butter traps air that leavens the bake, melted butter does not, and the two produce different cookies from identical ingredient lists.
Browned butter is the exception on weight. Browning boils off most of the butter's 16 to 18 percent water, so 227 g of butter browns down to roughly 190 g. Recipes built for browned butter already account for this; if you are adapting one that is not, add a spoonful of water back or accept a slightly drier dough.
Measuring butter without any markings
The old water displacement trick still works for odd amounts: fill a liquid measuring cup to one cup with cold water, drop in butter chunks until the water reaches the target (one and a half cups of level means half a cup of butter), then pour off the water. Cold water keeps the butter firm.
In practice, the converter on this site is faster: enter the grams your recipe wants, read the cups, and translate to sticks. For a full sticks-and-grams table at other amounts, the butter ingredient page below has every common value.