Butter Stick to Grams Converter

One stick, four numbers

A US stick of butter is a quarter of a pound, and every conversion on this page comes from that one fact. One stick is 4 oz, which is 113 grams, which is 1/2 cup, which is 8 tablespoons. Four numbers, one object, and any of them can be converted into the others.

The wrapper is the reason the numbers are so tidy. Butter sold in sticks is printed with tablespoon marks down the paper, so you can cut 2, 4 or 6 tablespoons without a measuring spoon. A full stick is 8 tablespoons, and the paper usually marks the halfway point and the quarter points.

The metric figure is where people trip. A stick is 4 oz, and 4 oz is 113.4 g, so the wrapper says 113 g and most charts say 113 g. A recipe written in metric might call for 110 g or 115 g for the same stick. All three are the same amount of butter within a teaspoon.

If a recipe gives butter in grams and you have sticks, divide by 113. If it gives sticks and you have a scale, multiply by 113. That single factor handles every conversion in this tool, including the odd ones like 2/3 of a stick, which is 75.3 g.

The full conversion table

These are the measures you will meet in US recipes, with grams worked out from 226 g per cup and 14.1 g per tablespoon. Both come from the same stick, so they stay consistent with each other.

The arithmetic is worth checking once so you can rebuild the table from memory. A cup is 16 tablespoons, so a tablespoon is 226 / 16 = 14.1 g. A stick is half a cup, so 8 tablespoons and 113 g. A teaspoon is a third of a tablespoon, so 4.7 g.

Notice that 1/4 cup is not exactly 56.5 g by the tablespoon route: 4 x 14.1 is 56.4. That tenth of a gram is rounding, not a real difference, and it is why two charts can disagree by a gram without either being wrong.

Fractions of a stick without a scale

Most recipes ask for a fraction of a stick rather than a whole one, and the wrapper marks make those easy. Cut on the line for 2, 4 or 6 tablespoons, and use a knife rather than tearing, because torn butter loses the mark you were aiming at.

Thirds are the awkward ones, because the wrapper has no third mark. For 1/3 of a stick, cut 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons, which is 37.7 g. For 2/3, cut 5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon, which is 75.3 g. Both are close enough that no cookie will notice.

If a recipe calls for 1/3 cup of butter, that is 5.33 tablespoons or 75.3 g, the same as 2/3 of a stick. This coincidence is not an accident: 1/3 cup is 2/3 of a half cup, and a half cup is a stick.

Salted and unsalted weigh the same

The two boxes sit side by side and cost about the same, and the difference is salt, not butter. Salted butter contains roughly 1.5% salt by weight, which is about 1/4 teaspoon per stick, so a stick still weighs 113 g either way.

The sodium numbers look bigger than the weight difference suggests. A tablespoon of salted butter carries about 90 mg of sodium, while the same tablespoon of unsalted carries about 2 mg. Over a stick that is roughly 720 mg against 16 mg, which matters if you are watching sodium for blood pressure.

Baking is where the choice is usually made for you. Most baking recipes specify unsalted butter so the baker controls the salt, and substituting salted butter means cutting the added salt by about 1/4 teaspoon per stick. In a bread or a cookie the difference is small. In a buttercream it is noticeable, because the salt has nowhere to hide.

For cooking, salted butter is fine and is what most American kitchens keep on hand. For finishing a sauce or spreading on bread, unsalted lets you taste the butter rather than the salt. Either way, the gram conversion is identical, so this converter works for both without adjustment.

Blocks, tubs and imported butter

Not every butter comes in a stick. American butter is also sold in 1 pound blocks of 4 sticks, and imported or specialty butter often comes as a single metric block with no marks at all. That is where a scale earns its place.

A 250 g block is the awkward size for US recipes. It is 2.21 sticks, so a recipe calling for 2 sticks leaves 0.21 of a stick, about 24 g, in the fridge. A 500 g block is 4.42 sticks, which is close enough to 4 that most people just cut it into quarters and accept the extra 13 g per piece.

Tubs are a different problem, because whipped butter has air in it. A cup of whipped butter weighs about 151 g rather than 226 g, so measuring by volume gives you two thirds of the fat the recipe expects. If a recipe is written in grams, tubs are fine. If it is written in cups, use a scale or use stick butter.

The USDA FoodData Central database lists butter at 227 g per cup and 14.2 g per tablespoon, which is where the standard figures come from, and the USDA dairy data pages track how the retail packages are sold.

Why 113 grams and not 115

The number on the wrapper is 113 g because a stick is 4 oz and 4 oz is 113.4 g. Rounding 113.4 to the nearest gram gives 113, and that is the figure that has been printed on US butter wrappers for decades.

Metric recipes written outside the US often call for 110 g or 115 g for what is effectively a stick. Those are round numbers chosen for convenience, not a different amount of butter. A 115 g measure is 1.8 g more than a stick, which is about an eighth of a tablespoon, and no recipe is that sensitive.

The one place the rounding matters is when you scale a recipe up. Ten sticks is 1,130 g by the wrapper figure and 1,134 g by the exact conversion. A 4 g difference in 1.1 kg is 0.35%, which is smaller than the variation between two brands of butter.

Use 113 g per stick and 226 g per cup and the numbers stay internally consistent. That is what this converter does, and it is why 3/4 of a stick comes out at 84.8 g rather than 85.

Measuring butter without a scale

If the butter is in sticks, the wrapper is the measuring tool and you need nothing else. If it is a block, a tub or a metric import, three methods work without a scale.

• Water displacement. Put 1/2 cup of cold water in a 2 cup glass measure, add butter until the water line reads 1 cup, and you have 1/2 cup or 113 g. For 1/4 cup, start with 3/4 cup of water and add butter until it reads 1 cup.
• Tablespoon counting. One level tablespoon is 14.1 g, so 8 level tablespoons is a stick. This works for soft butter but is slow and easy to miscount.
• Grating frozen butter. Grate a frozen block on a box grater and pack it into a cup. The shreds fill the cup evenly, which makes volume measuring more accurate than slicing a cold block.

The water method is the most reliable of the three, because it measures volume with the same accuracy as the cup itself. It only works with cold butter, since warm butter melts and clouds the water line.

One caution: do not pack butter into a dry cup the way you would brown sugar. Butter has almost no air space when soft, so packing adds 5% to 10% and a cup can end up at 240 g instead of 226.

Substituting butter in a recipe

Butter is about 80% fat, 16% water and 2% milk solids, and every substitution question comes back to those three numbers. Oil has no water, margarine is close to butter, and browned butter has lost its water.

Oil for butter. Use 3/4 the volume, so 1 cup of butter (226 g) becomes 3/4 cup of oil, about 170 g. The missing water makes a denser crumb and a crust that browns faster, so drop the oven temperature by 25 F for cookies.

Margarine for butter. One for one by weight, 113 g for a stick. Stick margarine behaves like butter in baking, while tub spreads have more water and 20% less fat, which makes cakes gummy.

Browned butter. Browning evaporates the water and toasts the milk solids, so 113 g of butter yields about 96 g of browned butter, a 15% loss. If a recipe wants 113 g of browned butter, start with 133 g.

Weights are the only reliable way through these swaps, which is why most professional recipes list grams. The FDA's food labeling pages explain what the fat percentage on the package means, and it is worth knowing that 82% fat butter behaves differently from 80% in laminated dough.

Conversions here use 113 g per stick and 226 g per cup. Brand and temperature change the weight of a cup by a few percent, so weigh when a recipe is sensitive.