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Grams to Tablespoons: the Conversion Chart by Ingredient
« How many grams in a tablespoon? » has no single answer — a spoon of fine salt outweighs a spoon of flour more than two to one. Here is the chart per ingredient, computed from the same densities our converters use.
Why one spoon never weighs the same
A tablespoon measures volume: 14.79 ml for the US spoon, exactly 15 ml for the metric one — a 1.4 % gap you can ignore in practice. Weight depends on what fills that volume: flour traps air (0.529 g/ml), fine salt packs to 1.22 g/ml, honey reaches 1.42. Grams = 14.79 × density for a US spoon, 15 × density for a metric one.
The chart: grams per US tablespoon (14.79 ml)
Level spoon, rounded to the tenth of a gram — the convention behind our tablespoon converters.
- All-purpose flour — 7.8 g
- Bread flour — 7.9 g
- Cake flour — 7.1 g
- Whole wheat flour — 7.5 g
- Almond flour — 6.0 g
- Granulated sugar — 12.5 g
- Caster sugar — 12.6 g
- Brown sugar (packed) — 13.8 g
- Powdered sugar — 7.8 g
- Coconut sugar — 11.2 g
- Cocoa powder — 7.7 g
- Cornstarch — 8.0 g
- Butter — 14.2 g
- Olive oil — 13.5 g
- Neutral oil — 13.6 g
- Coconut oil (melted) — 13.7 g
- Water — 14.8 g
- Whole milk — 15.2 g
- Heavy cream — 14.6 g
- Honey — 21.0 g
- Maple syrup — 19.7 g
- Molasses — 20.6 g
- Table salt — 18.0 g
- Baking powder — 13.3 g
- Baking soda — 13.8 g
- Dried yeast — 8.9 g
- Greek yogurt — 17.4 g
- Chia seeds — 10.1 g
Metric tablespoons (15 ml) barely differ
Scale every figure up by ~1.4 % and nothing moves materially: granulated sugar 12.7 g, butter 14.4 g, flour 7.9 g, honey 21.3 g per metric spoon. Cookbooks treat the two spoons as interchangeable and, for cooking purposes, they are — the error stays under half a gram for everything lighter than honey.
Level, heaped, packed: the same spoon triples
Every figure assumes a level spoon. A heaped spoon of flour or cocoa can carry close to twice the chart value; brown sugar is quoted packed, so a spoon filled without pressing falls clearly short. Powders carry ±8–12 % handling variance even leveled — salt and sugars ±5–7 %. For any quantity under 20 g that matters — yeast, baking powder, salt — the scale beats the spoon.
The reverse direction: grams into spoons
Divide by the chart value: 100 g of all-purpose flour ÷ 7.8 ≈ 13 tablespoons; 25 g of sugar ÷ 12.5 = 2 spoons; 50 g of butter ÷ 14.2 ≈ 3½. For teaspoons take a third of the tablespoon figure — the US teaspoon is exactly one third of the spoon (4.93 ml): salt runs 6.0 g per teaspoon, baking soda 4.6 g, dried yeast 3.0 g.
Spoons are for small quantities — weigh the rest
Past two or three tablespoons the errors compound: a 10 % over-fill on sixteen spoons is a cup and a half of extra flour. Use the chart for teaspoons and single spoons; for cups and their fractions, each ingredient page converts cups, tablespoons, ounces and grams in both directions from the same densities.