How Many Grams in a Stick of Butter? The Short Answer
One US stick of butter weighs 113 grams — that is 4 ounces, 8 tablespoons, or ½ cup by volume. Everything else scales straight from that number: a half stick is 57 g, two sticks are 227 g, and the full one-pound box of four sticks is 454 g.
The number is tidy because it is a legal definition rather than a culinary accident. An American “stick” is a quarter pound. Since 1 lb = 453.592 g, a quarter of that is 113.4 g, and every US butter brand — Land O’Lakes, Challenge, Kerrygold’s American line, and the store labels — wraps 113 g per stick and prints “4 oz” on the paper.
That single fact answers most questions. The rest of this page handles the cases where a recipe does not mean what you think it means.
The Stick-to-Gram Chart
Keep this table within reach; it covers every fraction a recipe is likely to ask for.
| Sticks | Tablespoons | Cups | Grams | Ounces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ¼ stick | 2 tbsp | ⅛ cup | 28 g | 1 oz |
| ½ stick | 4 tbsp | ¼ cup | 57 g | 2 oz |
| ⅔ stick | 5⅓ tbsp | ⅓ cup | 75 g | 2.7 oz |
| 1 stick | 8 tbsp | ½ cup | 113 g | 4 oz |
| 1½ sticks | 12 tbsp | ¾ cup | 170 g | 6 oz |
| 2 sticks | 16 tbsp | 1 cup | 227 g | 8 oz |
| 3 sticks | 24 tbsp | 1½ cups | 340 g | 12 oz |
| 4 sticks (1 lb) | 32 tbsp | 2 cups | 454 g | 16 oz |
Two rounding habits keep this chart honest. First, 113 g is a rounded 113.4 g — over four sticks that is a 1.6 g shortfall, which no home recipe can detect. Second, ½ stick is 56.7 g, so round to 57 g, not 56 g. Errors below 1% never matter in baking; errors above 3% occasionally do, and rounding the wrong direction twice in a row is how you get there.
Why the Wrapper Sometimes Lies (or Rather, Why You Read It Wrong)
Not every “stick” is a quarter pound, and this is where conversions go sideways.
Half-stick pats. Some brands sell “half sticks” in a box of eight — each one is 2 oz / 57 g and is scored down the middle. If a recipe calls for “1 stick” and your refrigerator holds half sticks, you need two of them. Look for the number printed near the tear strip.
European blocks. Butter imported from Europe is sold as a block: 250 g (8.8 oz), 227 g (8 oz), or 200 g. A 250 g block measures slightly more than two US sticks, so a recipe asking for 227 g leaves you 23 g short of the whole block. The reverse case is just as common — a European recipe says “250 g butter” and you are holding two sticks totalling 227 g. That 23 g gap is 9%, enough to change a shortbread’s texture.
Canadian and Australian butter. Sold in 454 g bricks with gram markings printed directly on the paper. There is no stick at all, so “1 stick” appearing in a Canadian reprint of a US recipe usually means 113 g and occasionally means ½ cup — which is the same thing.
Whipped or spreadable butter. These are aerated. A “stick” of whipped butter fills the same mould but weighs roughly 80 g, because a third of the volume is air. Never substitute it 1:1 for a solid stick by weight.
How Many Grams in a Stick of Butter Without a Scale
You do not need a scale to get to 113 g, because US butter wrappers are already a measuring tool: each stick is printed with tablespoon marks, and 1 tablespoon of butter = 14.2 g. Count eight marks and you have a stick.
Three other reliable methods:
- Water displacement. Fill a liquid measuring cup with 1 cup of cold water and drop the butter in. The rise in the water line tells you the volume: a rise of ½ cup means 113 g. This works for any solid fat and is how pastry chefs check a block quickly.
- Use the tablespoon markings as a ruler. Eight even segments down a stick — perfect for cutting 57 g without any maths.
- Use the box arithmetic. Most boxes carry four sticks and a net weight of 1 lb / 454 g. Cut the box in half and you have 227 g, whatever shape the butter is in.
For a full list of the gram equivalents of tablespoons, cups, and ounces across butter, flour, sugar, and dairy, the Kitchen Measurement Converter handles butter density automatically — type any unit in and read the others out.
Why the Gram Count Matters More Than the Stick Count
Cooking tolerates a stick of slop. Baking frequently does not, and butter is one of the ingredients that punishes guessing hardest.
Laminated dough. Croissants, danishes, and puff pastry rely on a butter block that stays intact through dozens of folds. A butter block 10% too thick tears through the dough, and the layers leak. Recipes express the block in grams for exactly this reason — 227 g or 250 g, never “two sticks, roughly.”
Bread formulas. Enriched doughs such as brioche and challah specify butter as a percentage of flour. If your flour is 500 g and the formula calls for 20% butter, that is 100 g — just under one stick. Rounding up to a full 113 g pushes you to 22.6%, which is a noticeably richer, heavier crumb. The Dough Hydration Calculator shows how a butter change interacts with the hydration percentage, since fat coats flour proteins and effectively reduces how much water the dough can absorb.
Cookies and shortbread. Butter is the structural fat. Swap 113 g for 125 g and the cookies spread more and bake thinner; swap down to 100 g and they stay domed and dry. There is no safety margin at the cheap end.
Pan conversion and scaling. When you move a batter into a differently sized tin or change the batch, butter is one of the lines that must move with it. The Baking Pan Converter and the Recipe Servings Calculator both take the original amounts — sticks or grams — and return the new quantities, so you never do the multiplication by hand.
Converting the Rest of the Recipe Along With It
Butter is rarely the only imperial measurement in a recipe. If you are working from a US source with grams on your scale, or the reverse, translate the whole ingredient list in one pass rather than converting on the fly with sticky fingers. The Conversion Chart on this site lists the common equivalences for butter, flour, sugar, oats, and liquids side by side, which is faster than four separate lookups — and because the numbers stop moving, it is also less error-prone.
One last habit worth adopting: write the gram weight next to the stick count on any recipe card you keep. It takes ten seconds the first time and permanently removes the “how many grams in a stick of butter” question from your kitchen.
Try Our Free Tools
Skip the lookup entirely. The Kitchen Measurement Converter converts sticks, cups, tablespoons, ounces, and grams for butter and fifteen other ingredients in both directions. The Recipe Servings Calculator rescales a full ingredient list — butter included — when the serving count changes, and the Baking Pan Converter adjusts a batter when you switch tin sizes. Free, no signup, instant.