One US cup of butter weighs about 227 g, which is two American sticks of about 113 g each. A single US tablespoon is about 14.2 g. In the other regional cups the same butter works out to about 240 g in a metric cup, 192 g in a Japan cup and 173 g in a Taiwan rice cup, though almost nobody measures butter with a rice cup.
Why the weight depends on how you measure
Butter is unusual because in the US it is rarely measured in a cup at all. A standard American stick is wrapped in paper printed with tablespoon lines, so a recipe asking for 6 tablespoons expects you to cut at the sixth line. The figures on this page assume that method: solid butter portioned by the wrapper, not pressed into a measuring cup. USDA and King Arthur Baking agree to within a gram here, because a stick is sold by weight in the first place.
Trouble starts when butter is packed into a cup. Cold butter leaves air pockets around the pieces, and softened butter can be pushed in more tightly, so two people filling the same cup can end up with different amounts. Melted butter has no air gaps at all, and whipped butter, sold in tubs, has air beaten into it on purpose, so a cup of it weighs noticeably less than a cup of stick butter. The safe rule is simple: measure butter while it is solid, by weight or by the wrapper, and only then soften or melt it.
Which cup does your recipe use?
US recipes almost always give butter in sticks, tablespoons or fractions of a cup, and every one of those can be read straight from the table above: ½ cup equals one stick, ¼ cup equals 4 tablespoons. Australian recipes often list butter in grams, and where a metric cup does appear, it means 250 mL, about 240 g.
Japanese and Taiwan recipes usually give butter in grams, and the blocks sold there are labelled by weight rather than marked in tablespoons. If you are converting an American recipe for such a block, multiply the sticks by 113 g or the tablespoons by 14.2 g and cut the block on a scale.
Tips for measuring by volume
- Use the wrapper lines on a US stick and cut straight through the paper with a sharp knife.
- For a cup without markings, use water displacement: fill a liquid measure with cold water, add butter until the level rises by the amount you need, then drain.
- A 5 g pat, as served in restaurants, is roughly a third of a tablespoon.
- Weigh butter before softening or melting it, never after.