Tablespoon & Teaspoon to Grams

The recipe says "1 tablespoon" but all you have is a digital scale. This converter turns Japanese spoon and cup measures into grams, and back again.

How to use this tool

Pick an ingredient, enter an amount and choose a unit (tablespoon, teaspoon, cup, mL or g). The weight and the volume appear immediately. Choosing "g" as the unit works the other way round and tells you how many spoonfuls a given weight is. A full reference chart sits further down the page.

Spoons and cups measure volume, not weight

This is where most mistakes start. One tablespoon is 15 mL, one teaspoon 5 mL and one cup 200 mL in Japan, and those are volumes. One tablespoon therefore weighs 15 g of water, 18 g of soy sauce, 21 g of honey, 9 g of cake flour and only 3 g of panko. The lighter the powder, the larger the error when you swap spoons for grams.

Why one cup is not 13.3 tablespoons by weight

A cup (200 mL) is 13.33 times a tablespoon (15 mL), so 18 g of soy sauce per tablespoon should mean 240 g per cup. The measured value in the reference table is 230 g. Each unit is weighed separately and rounded to a whole number, so multiplying does not reproduce it. This tool uses the measured values when you enter spoons or cups, and density when you enter mL or g. Both are approximations; use a scale when the difference matters.

A heaped spoon holds up to 1.5 times as much

Every value assumes a levelled spoon. Scooping a powder heaped adds roughly 30 to 50 percent, which matters most for ingredients that act in small quantities, such as baking powder and baking soda. Overfill the spoon, then scrape the top flat against the rim. Liquids are the opposite: fill them right to the brim.

A tablespoon is not 15 mL everywhere

Japan and the UK use 15 mL, the United States about 14.8 mL and Australia 20 mL. An Australian recipe made with a Japanese tablespoon delivers only three quarters of the intended amount, which shows up as under-seasoning. When you work from a foreign recipe, line the volumes up first with the unit converter, then convert to grams here.

Salt and sugar change weight by type

For the same teaspoon, refined salt is 6 g and coarse salt 5 g: coarser grains leave more air. Sugar behaves the same way, with 9 g per tablespoon for johakuto and 12 g for granulated sugar, a 30 percent gap. Substituting one for the other changes how salty or sweet the dish turns out, so re-select the type rather than reusing the number.