Ounces to Grams: The Short Answer
1 ounce = 28.3495 grams. Round it to 28.35 g for anything you are measuring in a kitchen, or to 28.4 g if you like clean numbers. Sixteen ounces make one pound, so 1 pound = 453.6 g.
That is the easy part. The part that ruins recipes is that “ounce” means two completely different things in a kitchen:
- Weight ounce (oz) — a measure of mass. 1 oz = 28.35 g. This is what a scale reads.
- Fluid ounce (fl oz) — a measure of volume. 1 US fl oz = 29.57 mL. This is what a measuring cup reads.
They share a name, they are close in number, and they are not the same quantity. A cup of water is 8 fluid ounces and about 8.3 weight ounces — which is why water gets away with the confusion while flour, at 4.2 weight ounces per cup, absolutely does not.
The Ounces to Grams Chart
| Ounces | Grams | Ounces | Grams |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⅛ oz | 3.5 g | 6 oz | 170 g |
| ¼ oz | 7.1 g | 8 oz | 226.8 g |
| ½ oz | 14.2 g | 10 oz | 283.5 g |
| ¾ oz | 21.3 g | 12 oz | 340.2 g |
| 1 oz | 28.3 g | 16 oz (1 lb) | 453.6 g |
| 2 oz | 56.7 g | 32 oz (2 lb) | 907.2 g |
| 3 oz | 85.0 g | 35.27 oz | 1,000 g (1 kg) |
| 4 oz | 113.4 g | 5 oz | 141.7 g |
Going the other way: 1 gram = 0.0353 oz, and 1 kilogram = 35.27 oz. Ingredient labels in the US are written in ounces, ingredients in most professional formulas are written in grams, and if you work between the two systems often, convert once and commit to grams for the rest of the recipe.
To do it in one step for any ingredient, whether you are converting by weight or by volume, our Kitchen Measurement Converter handles grams, ounces, pounds, cups, fluid ounces, and millilitres together.
Weight Ounces vs Fluid Ounces: How to Tell Which One You Have
This single distinction causes more baking failures than any other unit confusion. Use these rules:
- “fl oz,” “fluid oz,” or “fl. oz.” → volume. Milk, stock, oil, juice, vanilla extract.
- “oz” next to a solid, or on a package → weight. “8 oz cream cheese,” “12 oz chocolate chips,” “16 oz pasta.”
- A recipe that says “oz” for a liquid and gives no other unit → almost always fluid ounces in US recipes, weight ounces in British ones. Check the rest of the recipe for cups or millilitres to confirm.
- Package labels → net weight, so weight ounces. A 16 oz bag of flour weighs 453.6 g no matter how much space it takes up.
- “Drained weight” → the weight of the solids only, never a volume.
Fast sanity check: for water-like liquids, 1 fl oz ≈ 1.04 weight oz, close enough that most recipes will not notice. For powders and fats, the two numbers diverge sharply — a “6 oz” measure of flour is 170 g by weight but only about 1.4 cups by volume.
What Common Kitchen Packages Weigh in Grams
US packaging is written in ounces, and the gram figure is rarely printed. That mismatch is why European recipes and American groceries argue with each other so often. This table settles the common cases.
| Package or portion | Weight | In grams |
|---|---|---|
| 1 stick of butter | 4 oz | 113 g |
| ½ stick of butter | 2 oz | 57 g |
| 1 block cream cheese | 8 oz | 227 g |
| 1 bag chocolate chips | 12 oz | 340 g |
| 1 bar baking chocolate | 4 oz | 113 g |
| 1 can evaporated milk | 12 fl oz | 354 mL (not 340 g) |
| 1 tin sweetened condensed milk | 14 oz | 397 g |
| 1 box powdered sugar | 16 oz | 454 g |
| 1 package active dry yeast | ¼ oz | 7 g |
| 1 cup all-purpose flour | 4.4 oz | 125 g |
Notice the evaporated milk line: cans are labelled in fluid ounces, so 12 fl oz is 354 mL of volume, not 340 g of mass. Condensed milk, by contrast, is labelled in weight ounces. Same shelf, opposite systems.
Why 28.35 g and Not 28 g?
The ounce is defined as exactly 28.349523125 grams, derived from the international avoirdupois pound of 453.59237 g. So 28.35 is the honest rounded figure, and 28 is a lossy shorthand that costs you 1.2% per ounce.
That sounds trivial until you scale. Twelve ounces of chocolate chips converted at 28 g each is 336 g instead of 340 g — a 4 g shortfall in a 340 g recipe. At 3% deviation in a chocolate tempering or a ganache ratio, that is the difference between glossy and grainy.
Practical rounding rules:
- Under 5 oz: keep two decimals. 3.5 oz = 99.2 g, not 100 g.
- 5–16 oz: round to the nearest gram.
- Over 1 lb: work in kilograms. 2.2 lb = 998 g ≈ 1 kg.
Converting Ounces to Grams for Scaling and Baker’s Percentages
Once you scale a recipe in ounces, the arithmetic gets ugly fast: ⅓ cup of butter in ounces is 2.67 oz, which doubles to 5.34 oz, which is a number no home scale displays usefully. Grams fix this.
| Original | ×2 in oz | ×2 in grams |
|---|---|---|
| 4 oz butter | 8 oz | 227 g |
| 6 oz chocolate | 12 oz | 340 g |
| 3.5 oz sugar | 7 oz | 198 g |
| 1.5 oz flour | 3 oz | 85 g |
Baker’s percentages make the case even better. A formula written as “100% flour, 70% water, 2% salt, 1% yeast” only works if all four quantities are in the same unit — and grams are the only unit where a 0.1% adjustment is measurable. Convert the flour weight once, then compute everything else as a percentage of it.
When your batch grows, use the Recipe Servings Calculator to rescale the whole list at once, and the Baking Pan Converter if the tin is changing size along with the recipe. Doubling a batter without changing the pan gives you a raw centre; changing both keeps the bake time honest.
Two Habits That Make Ounce-to-Gram Work Painless
- Weigh in grams, always. Switch your scale to grams and leave it there. The number is finer-grained (1 g steps versus 0.1 oz), the math is decimal, and no recipe in the world is written in grams-by-accident.
- Write the gram equivalents on your recipes. A pencil note on the card — “4 oz = 113 g” — saves the conversion on every future bake, and it survives the day your phone is covered in dough.
For the full set of equivalences across spoons, cups, fluid ounces, millilitres, and grams, print the Conversion Chart and stick it inside a cupboard door.
Try Our Free Tools
Skip the arithmetic. The Kitchen Measurement Converter converts ounces to grams and back for any ingredient, handling both weight and fluid ounces so you never have to guess which one a recipe meant. The Recipe Servings Calculator rescales a full ingredient list when you change serving count, and the Conversion Chart is a printable one-pager for the kitchen. Free, no signup, and instant.