US tablespoons to US cups converter

Tablespoon amounts often describe dressings, oils or a scaled recipe. A US tablespoon and an Australian tablespoon are different measures. Choose the convention in the source recipe and use level measuring spoons; a heaped spoon has no fixed volume.

One US tablespoon is exactly 0.0625 US cups. The US tablespoon is half a fluid ounce, exactly 14.78676478125 mL.

Multiply the number of US tablespoons by 0.0625. For example, 4 tbsp × 0.0625 = 0.25 cup. To go the other way, divide by 0.0625.

Multiply by 0.062. That is 0.8% low of the exact factor 0.0625, so 4 tbsp comes out as 0.248 cup instead of 0.25.

Both are in use. The US customary cup in recipes is 236.588 mL. US nutrition labels use a rounded "legal cup" of 240 mL (21 CFR 101.9), and the metric cup used in Australia, New Zealand and Canada is 250 mL.

Accuracy depends on your inputs and the method's assumptions. Decimal arithmetic uses 50 significant digits, but estimates, numerical methods and source data can be less precise; the displayed rounding does not remove those limits. It is checked against 3 worked examples whose answers come from independent sources; for example, “4 tbsp to cup” is checked against Exact-fraction computation from the legal unit definitions (scripts/gen-pairs.py, Python fractions).

NIST SP 811 (2008), Guide for the Use of the International System of Units, Appendix B; NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C: General tables of units of measurement; BIPM, The International System of Units (SI Brochure), 9th edition.