Honey: Cups to Grams
Honey is the heavyweight of the cupboard: a cup of it outweighs a cup of water by nearly a hundred grams, and it fights to stay in the measuring cup.
Honey conversion table
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The heaviest common cup in the kitchen
At 336 g, a cup of honey weighs about 42% more than a cup of water (237 g) and more than any other everyday liquid on the chart — ahead of molasses at 340 g by a whisker, and well ahead of maple syrup and corn syrup at 312 g. The reason is dissolved sugar: honey is mostly sugar with a little water, and sugar syrup is simply denser than water. This is why swapping sweeteners cup-for-cup is such a reliable way to break a recipe. A cup of honey and a cup of granulated sugar (198 g) differ by 138 g of sweetener — the converter above exists so you never have to guess at differences like that.
The chart's building block is the tablespoon: King Arthur lists honey at 21 g per tablespoon, and the cup figure is that number times sixteen. That makes honey one of the easiest ingredients to convert at small scale — 2 tablespoons is 42 g, 3 tablespoons is 63 g — and most honey in baking is used by the spoonful, not the cup.
How to measure honey without losing it to the cup
Honey's second problem is that it clings. Measure it in a cup and a visible layer stays behind when you tip it into the bowl — enough to matter in a recipe built on two tablespoons. The standard fix: if the recipe also uses oil or melted butter, measure that first and the honey will slide out of the same cup almost cleanly. No oil in the recipe? A quick coat of flavourless oil spray does the same job. For a spoon, run it under hot water and the honey falls off instead of stretching into strings.
Better still, weigh it. Set the mixing bowl on the scale and drizzle honey in until the display climbs by the grams you need — nothing sticks to anything, and the 21 g tablespoon below the cup size is built into the converter's numbers. Crystallised honey, the grainy solid kind that forms in a cold cupboard, measures differently again: it packs with air gaps and scoops like a soft solid. Warm the jar gently in a bowl of warm water until it pours, then measure; the weight per cup on this page describes liquid honey.
Frequently asked questions
How many grams is 1 cup of honey?
336 grams, per the King Arthur Baking chart — built from its listed 21 g per tablespoon multiplied by 16 tablespoons to the cup.
How many grams is a tablespoon of honey?
21 grams — that is the figure the King Arthur chart lists directly, and it is the most useful honey conversion in baking, since honey is usually measured by the spoonful.
Can I substitute honey for sugar cup-for-cup?
Not safely. A cup of honey weighs 336 g against granulated sugar's 198 g, and honey also brings liquid and acidity that sugar doesn't. If you swap, convert each ingredient by weight with the chart and expect to adjust the recipe's other liquids — or use a recipe written for honey.
Why is honey heavier than water?
Honey is mostly dissolved sugars with relatively little water, and sugar syrup is denser than plain water. A US cup of water weighs 237 g (USDA); the same volume of honey weighs 336 g (King Arthur).
My honey has crystallised. Can I still use the cup weight?
Warm the jar gently until the honey liquefies, then measure. The 336 g figure is for liquid honey; crystallised honey packs with air gaps and won't fill a cup the same way.
Related pages
- Maple syrup: cups to grams — 312 g per cup — the syrup honey is most often swapped with
- Sugar: cups to grams — why a cup-for-cup honey swap breaks recipes, in numbers
- Water: cups to grams — the 237 g baseline honey outweighs by nearly 100 g
Data sources: King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart and USDA FoodData Central. Weights are per US customary cup (236.588 mL); other cup sizes are scaled by volume ratio. See the data sources & method page for how values were chosen.