How many cups in a litre?
If you're in Australia, New Zealand or most of the world, it's a clean 4 — the metric cup is 250 mL. If you're using a US recipe, it's about 4.227, because a US cup is the slightly smaller 236.6 mL. The honest answer is "it depends which cup", so the converter below opens on the cup for your region.
Which cup?
Australia, NZ, Canada, modern UK
Litres
Cups
Quick reference (Metric · 250 mL)
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The cup that was never standardised
"Cup" is the loosest common unit in the kitchen. There are at least four in regular use: the US customary cup (236.588 mL, half a US pint), the US legal cup (240 mL, used on nutrition labels), the metric cup (250 mL, standard across Australia, New Zealand, Canada and modern UK recipes), and the old imperial cup (284 mL, half an imperial pint). Japan adds a 200 mL cup. Same word, five different volumes.
Why Australia gets a clean 4
The metric cup is the only one designed to fit the litre. When Australia metricated in the 1970s, the cup was set at exactly 250 mL precisely so that four of them make a litre and 200 mL is a neat "small cup". The US customary cup, by contrast, descends from the pint and gallon, so it lands on the awkward 236.588 mL — and a litre comes to 4.227 of them, never a round number.
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Cups of water in a litre
Water makes this easy, because by definition 1 mL of water is 1 gram and 1 litre is 1 kilogram. So a litre of water is the same 4 metric (or 4.227 US) cups as any other liquid. It's also where the hydration maths comes from: the old "eight glasses a day" rule is roughly eight 8-ounce US cups, which works out to about 1.9 litres — close to two litres, but not a rule backed by hard science.
Measuring a litre without a jug
Two standard 500 mL bottles make a litre. A common US water bottle is 16.9 fl oz (500 mL), so two of those is one litre exactly. Four metric cups, or four average mugs filled to a typical 250 mL line, gets you there as well. For dry ingredients, remember a cup measures volume, not weight — a cup of flour and a cup of sugar weigh very different amounts.
Common questions
- NIST — US customary cup defined as 236.588 mL (half a US liquid pint).
- US FDA — the "legal" cup of 240 mL used for nutrition labelling.
- Australian / NZ / Canadian standards — the metric cup of 250 mL.
- UK imperial measure — the historical imperial cup of 284.131 mL (half an imperial pint).
Four, if your cup was built for the litre — and 4.227 if it wasn't. Pick your cup above and the number sorts itself out.