Tool
Butter Converter
Convert butter between sticks, cups, grams, and tablespoons — US and EU measurements, for wrapper markings that never quite line up correctly.
Butter Converter
1.00
Sticks
0.500
Cups
113.5
Grams
8.00
Tbsp
US butter comes wrapped in sticks with tablespoon markings printed right on the wrapper, which makes butter one of the few ingredients where home cooks rarely need a scale — until a recipe is written in grams, or in cups, or calls for a fraction of a stick that isn't marked cleanly.
This tool converts butter between sticks, cups, tablespoons, and grams in any direction, using the standard US butter-stick convention: one stick = 1/2 cup = 8 tablespoons = 113.5g (four sticks to a pound, 227g per cup).
It exists specifically because butter is the single most common ingredient where a US recipe and a European recipe talk past each other — US recipes count in sticks and cups, European recipes count in grams, and there's no shared unit between a "stick" and a block of European butter (which is typically sold in 250g blocks, not stick-marked at all).
How the Butter Converter works
The tool starts from the fixed, standard US butter conversion: 1 stick = 113.5g = 1/2 cup = 8 tablespoons = 4 ounces. From that single anchor figure, it derives every other unit — 1 cup of butter is 2 sticks (227g), 1 tablespoon is 1/8 of a stick (about 14.2g), and so on.
Unlike most ingredients on this site, butter's cup-to-gram figure isn't a measured bulk density the way flour or sugar is — it's a manufacturing standard. US butter is packaged specifically to that 113.5g-per-stick weight, so the conversion is exact by convention rather than approximated from a measured sample.
Enter an amount in whichever unit you have (sticks marked on the wrapper, a recipe's cup measurement, or a scale reading in grams) and the tool returns the equivalent in every other unit.
Worked example: a European recipe calling for 250g butter
250g doesn't divide evenly into US sticks — 250 ÷ 113.5 ≈ 2.2 sticks, or in cup terms, 250 ÷ 227 ≈ 1.1 cups. In practice, most cooks round this to "a bit over 2 sticks" (about 2 sticks plus roughly 1.5 tablespoons) rather than trying to measure the fractional remainder precisely, since a small overage in butter rarely breaks a recipe the way a flour or leavening error would.
Going the other direction, a US recipe calling for "1 stick, softened" converts to 113.5g — useful if you're working from a kitchen scale rather than counting stick markings, or if your butter isn't pre-marked (common with European-style butter sold in blocks rather than sticks).
Edge cases this tool handles correctly
- European block butter isn't stick-marked
- If your butter comes in an unmarked block rather than a US-style stick with printed tablespoon lines, converting to grams and weighing on a scale is the most accurate approach — cutting an unmarked block "by eye" into stick-equivalent portions introduces more error than a scale would.
- Salted vs. unsalted butter weight
- Salted and unsalted butter weigh essentially the same per stick — the small amount of salt added doesn't meaningfully change the weight-to-volume relationship, so this conversion applies to both equally; the difference between them is a recipe question, not a conversion one.
- Whipped or spreadable butter
- Whipped butter has air incorporated into it and does NOT follow the same weight-per-cup figure as regular stick butter — a cup of whipped butter weighs meaningfully less than 227g because of the added air, so this converter's figures apply specifically to standard (non-whipped) butter.
Frequently asked questions
Is 1 stick always exactly 1/2 cup?
Yes, by US packaging convention — this is one of the few ingredient conversions on the site that's an exact manufacturing standard rather than a measured average, since US butter is specifically packaged to that weight.
How many tablespoons are in a stick?
8 tablespoons per stick — the printed markings on a US butter wrapper divide the stick into exactly that many tablespoon segments, so you can usually just cut at the printed line rather than needing this tool at all for whole or half sticks.
Does butter temperature (melted, softened, cold) change the conversion?
No — grams and sticks refer to the same mass of butter regardless of its temperature or texture; what changes with temperature is how easy it is to measure by volume accurately, not the underlying weight.
My recipe says "1/3 cup butter" — how many tablespoons is that?
1/3 cup is 5 1/3 tablespoons (since 1 cup = 16 tablespoons) — an awkward fraction that's much easier to hit with a kitchen scale (about 75.7g) than by trying to measure a third of a tablespoon by eye.