How to Convert Fluid Ounces to mL
A 12 fl oz can of evaporated milk, a recipe written in milliliters, and a jug marked off in 50 mL steps. Now you’re doing arithmetic with wet hands.
The conversion is one multiplication. mL = fl oz × 29.5735. For the can: 12 × 29.5735 = 354.9, so it holds 355 mL, which the side of the can states in small print two lines below the fl oz figure.
Going the other way, fl oz = mL ÷ 29.5735. A 500 mL bottle works out to 16.91 fl oz, and that is exactly why the 500 mL water bottles sold in the US say 16.9 FL OZ on the label.
Two anchors handle most kitchen calls without a calculator:
- 8 fl oz = 236.6 mL. One US cup. Half a cup is 118 mL.
- 1 fl oz = 2 tbsp. Each tablespoon is 14.79 mL, and each teaspoon is 4.93 mL.
When the numbers get awkward, our Kitchen Measurement Converter takes the fl oz figure and returns mL, cups, tablespoons, or grams for a named ingredient in one pass.
The fl oz to mL Table, ½ to 64
Exact values are multiplied by 29.5735 and rounded to one decimal. The third column is the same conversion at the rounded factor of 30, which is what most US recipes assume.
| fl oz | Exact mL | Rounded (×30) | Usually means |
|---|---|---|---|
| ½ | 14.8 | 15 | 1 tablespoon |
| 1 | 29.6 | 30 | 2 tablespoons |
| 1½ | 44.4 | 45 | one US jigger |
| 2 | 59.1 | 60 | ¼ cup, a 2 oz extract bottle |
| 2½ | 73.9 | 75 | 5 tablespoons |
| 3 | 88.7 | 90 | 6 tablespoons |
| 4 | 118.3 | 120 | ½ cup |
| 5 | 147.9 | 150 | 10 tablespoons |
| 6 | 177.4 | 180 | ¾ cup |
| 8 | 236.6 | 240 | 1 cup |
| 10 | 295.7 | 300 | 1¼ cups |
| 10.75 | 317.9 | 322.5 | can of condensed soup |
| 12 | 354.9 | 360 | soda or beer can |
| 15 | 443.6 | 450 | 1⅞ cups |
| 16 | 473.2 | 480 | 1 pint |
| 20 | 591.5 | 600 | just under 2½ cups |
| 25.4 | 751.2 | 762 | 750 mL wine bottle |
| 32 | 946.4 | 960 | 1 quart |
| 64 | 1892.7 | 1920 | half gallon |
The 12 fl oz row is worth memorizing, because cans are the most common place a US cook meets a fluid ounce. The 2 fl oz row matters for a different reason: a small bottle of vanilla extract is 2 fl oz, which is 59 mL, which is 12 teaspoons. That is how many batches you get out of it.
Three Fluid Ounces, Not One
The fluid ounce is not one fixed quantity, and the difference is bigger than a rounding error.
- US customary, 29.5735 mL. A gallon is 231 cubic inches, split into 128 parts. This is the ounce in American cookbooks and on American cans.
- Imperial, 28.4131 mL. The UK version, about 3.9 percent smaller. A British pint is 20 imperial fl oz, 568 mL, which is 19.2 US fl oz. If a 1970s British cookbook asks for a pint of stock, you need 568 mL, not 473.
- Kitchen rounding, 30 mL. Not a real unit at all. It comes from treating a cup as 240 mL and dividing by 8. Convenient, slightly generous.
Telling them apart takes one glance. A recipe using cups, tablespoons, and °F is American, so its fl oz is 29.5735. A recipe using grams, milliliters, and °C is metric, and a fl oz appearing in it is usually imperial, inherited from an older edition. A package with an estimated-sign mark and no fl oz at all is European and needs no conversion.
At 16 fl oz the US and imperial amounts land 18.6 mL apart, which is more than a tablespoon. In a cake that gap disappears. In a cocktail built to a fixed dilution it does not, and a bartender working from a British drinks book is 4 percent off on every pour.
Where the 30 mL Shortcut Starts to Drift
Dividing by 29.5735 instead of 30 makes every result 1.4 percent smaller. That is the size of the whole argument.
| Volume | Error from using ×30 |
|---|---|
| 1 fl oz | 0.4 mL |
| 8 fl oz | 3.4 mL |
| 12 fl oz | 5.1 mL |
| 64 fl oz | 27.3 mL |
At a single glass, 0.4 mL is invisible. At 64 fl oz of stock, 27 mL is nearly two tablespoons of extra liquid, which is still nothing in soup and is 1.4 percent of the water in a brine. Use 29.5735 when the total volume is the formula, as it is for a brine or a cure, and when you are matching a can exactly. Use 30 when you are cooking.
The mistake that actually costs you is converting twice: fl oz to 30 to a 50 mL jug mark, then converting that rounded number again for a doubled batch. Round once, at the end, and write the result down.
When the Ounce Refers to a Dry Ingredient
An old American recipe that says “4 fl oz flour” is asking for volume, not weight. Four fluid ounces is 118 mL, which is half a cup, which is 60 g of all-purpose flour.
Convert it the wrong way and you pour 118 g, roughly double. That happens because flour is not water. A milliliter of water weighs a gram, so volume and weight happen to match for liquids. All-purpose flour runs 0.5 g per mL, so an ounce of it, by volume, weighs 15 g instead of 29.6 g. Honey is the opposite case at 1.42 g per mL, so a fluid ounce of honey weighs 42 g.
The rule: fl oz to mL is always a volume conversion. Choose a density before you go from mL to grams, and if a recipe is written in fluid ounces for something scoopable, treat it as a volume measure and use a cup.
Converting a Whole Recipe Written in fl oz
Take a 1950s hot milk cake: 8 fl oz milk, 4 fl oz melted butter, 8 oz flour by weight, 6 oz sugar. Two unit systems in four lines.
- Mark the liquid lines. Milk and butter get converted. Flour and sugar are already in weight and stay put.
- Multiply each liquid once. 8 × 29.5735 = 237 mL of milk. 4 × 29.5735 = 118 mL of butter.
- Round to something your jug can do. 237 becomes 235 or 240. Either is inside the tolerance of a cake batter.
- Check the total. 12 fl oz of liquid is 355 mL, so a 500 mL jug has room for both.
Large liquid volumes are easier on a scale than in a jug, and the densities are simple: 1 mL of water is 1 g, milk is 1.03 g, oil is 0.92 g. That 237 mL of milk weighs 244 g. Tare the bowl, pour to the number, and skip the meniscus.
If the recipe is also changing size, convert the units first and scale second. Our Recipe Servings Calculator rewrites the ingredient list from the original yield to the new one, which keeps a 1.4 percent rounding difference from repeating across a triple batch.
And if the batch outgrows the pan rather than the jug, check the Baking Pan Converter before you commit. Two 8-inch rounds and one 9x13 hold close to the same volume, but a 12 fl oz pour of batter behaves nothing alike at the same oven temperature.
Try Our Free Tools
The Kitchen Measurement Converter handles fluid ounces, milliliters, cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, and grams in both directions, with per-ingredient density for flour, sugar, butter, and honey. The Conversion Chart prints the fl oz and mL ladder for a cabinet door, and the Recipe Servings Calculator rescales the whole list when the headcount changes. Free, instant, no signup.
Multiply by 29.5735 when the number has to be right, and use 30 when you are standing at the stove. The one case that breaks both is a dry ingredient measured in fluid ounces, where the answer depends on the density, not the ounce.