Butter Converter
One US stick is 113 g, which is never a clean fraction of a UK pack.
The stick, and why it exists
American butter is sold in quarter-pound sticks — 113.4 g, 4 oz, 8 tablespoons, or half a cup. Four sticks make a pound.
The wrapper has tablespoon markings printed along it, so an American cook can cut butter to a measure without weighing or dirtying a cup. That is a genuinely good piece of packaging design, and it is why US recipes measure butter this way.
It does not translate to European packs
European butter comes in 250 g or 200 g blocks with no markings. A stick is 0.45 of a 250 g pack, which is not a useful fraction of anything.
The practical approach is to weigh it. Failing that, a 250 g pack cut into quarters gives 62.5 g pieces, and a stick is a little under two of those.
Numbers worth memorising
- 1 stick = 113 g = ½ cup = 8 tbsp
- ½ stick = 57 g = 4 tbsp
- 2 sticks = 227 g = 1 cup
- 1 tablespoon = 14 g
- 250 g pack = 2.2 sticks = 1.1 cups
Butter is the exception to the cup rule
Cups are unreliable for flour because it packs unpredictably. Butter is solid and pressed into the cup, so it fills consistently and a cup of butter really is about 227 g.
That said, pressing cold butter into a measuring cup and then getting it out again is a miserable job. Weighing is still easier.
Salted or unsalted
Recipes, especially baking ones, usually mean unsalted — so the baker controls the salt. Salted butter contains roughly 1.5–2 % salt, so a 113 g stick carries about 2 g, which is around a third of a teaspoon.
If you only have salted, reduce the added salt by about that much. For most savoury cooking it makes no difference at all.
Common uses
- Following an American recipe with European butter.
- Working out how much of a pack to cut.
- Converting a recipe to weights.
The working, step by step
Questions people ask
How many grams is a stick of butter?
113.4 g — a quarter of a pound, or 4 oz, or 8 tablespoons, or half a cup.
How many sticks in a cup?
Two. One stick is half a cup, or 113 g.
How much of a 250 g pack is a stick?
About 45 %, which is why it is awkward. Weighing is much easier than estimating.
How much does a tablespoon of butter weigh?
About 14 g. There are 8 tablespoons in a stick.
Does salted or unsalted matter?
For baking, usually yes. Salted butter is about 1.5–2 % salt, so a stick carries roughly a third of a teaspoon.
Worked out in the page
The arithmetic runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and the site works with no connection once the page has loaded — which is the point when you are in a kitchen with floury hands and a patchy signal.