Why Salt Doesn't Have One Universal Number
Most dry ingredients vary a little between brands. Salt varies enormously, because different salts are literally different shapes and sizes of crystal, and volume measurement cares about shape far more than it cares about the substance itself. Fine table salt grains pack tightly together with almost no gaps. Kosher salt crystals are larger and more irregular, so a cup of them is mostly air pockets between crystals. The chemical substance is the same — sodium chloride — but the density by volume is completely different.
This is why "1 teaspoon of salt" means a very different amount of actual sodium depending on which box it came from, and it's a common source of recipes turning out too salty or too bland when a cook swaps salt types without adjusting.
The Short Answer (Table Salt Baseline)
Since fine table salt is the most common reference point, here's the standard conversion:
So 100 grams of table salt is a little over ⅓ cup, and 500 grams comes to roughly 1¾ cups.
Grams To Cups Converter
Convert grams to cups instantly for common cooking and baking ingredients.
Grams per Cup by Salt Type
| Salt Type | Grams per Cup | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fine table salt | ~290 g | Small, uniform crystals with minimal air gaps |
| Fine sea salt | ~280 g | Similar to table salt, slightly less refined |
| Kosher salt (Morton brand) | ~240 g | Flatter, denser flakes than Diamond Crystal |
| Kosher salt (Diamond Crystal brand) | ~145 g | Large, hollow pyramid-shaped flakes — almost half the density of Morton |
| Coarse sea salt | ~250 g | Irregular chunky crystals |
| Flaky finishing salt (e.g., Maldon) | ~120 g | Thin, delicate flakes with the most trapped air of any common type |
The gap between the two major kosher salt brands is the detail that catches even experienced cooks off guard. Diamond Crystal's pyramid-shaped, hollow flakes pack so much air into a cup that it weighs roughly 40% less than the same cup of Morton kosher salt, which has flatter, more compressed flakes. Recipe developers who don't specify a brand for kosher salt are leaving a genuinely significant variable unaddressed — using Morton where a recipe was tested with Diamond Crystal can mean adding close to twice the actual salt.
Grams to Cups Chart (Table Salt)
| Grams | Cups |
|---|---|
| 20 g | ~0.07 cup |
| 50 g | ~0.17 cup |
| 72.5 g | ¼ cup |
| 100 g | ~0.35 cup |
| 145 g | ½ cup |
| 200 g | ~0.69 cup |
| 217.5 g | ¾ cup |
| 290 g | 1 cup |
| 500 g | ~1.72 cups |
| 1,000 g | ~3.45 cups |
Why Recipe Writers Specify Salt Type (and Why You Should Care)
If a baking or cooking recipe was developed using kosher salt and you swap in table salt using the same volume measurement, you're not making an equivalent substitution — you're roughly doubling the actual amount of sodium chloride going into the dish, because table salt is so much denser per cup. The safer approach when a recipe doesn't specify:
- If a recipe just says "salt" with no type, it's most often referring to table salt in home baking contexts, and kosher or coarse salt in professional/restaurant-style recipes.
- When converting a recipe from kosher to table salt (or the reverse), use weight instead of volume if at all possible — grams stay honest regardless of crystal shape, while cups and teaspoons do not.
- If you must convert by volume, use roughly half the volume of table salt to replace a given volume of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or about ⅔ the volume to replace Morton kosher salt — these are rough starting points, not exact substitutes, so taste and adjust. See Morton Salt's conversion chart.
Measuring Salt Accurately
- Identify the exact type and brand, especially for kosher salt — this matters more than for almost any other pantry ingredient.
- Spoon into the measuring cup rather than scooping, to avoid compacting flaky or crystalline salts.
- Level off the top rather than mounding, particularly for finer salts that can pile up.
- Weigh whenever a recipe's saltiness needs to be exact — bread doughs, brines, and cured or fermented foods (where salt percentage affects preservation, not just flavor) are the cases where a scale genuinely matters, not just a nice-to-have.
Quick Reference
- 72.5 g table salt = ¼ cup
- 145 g table salt = ½ cup
- 290 g table salt = 1 cup
- 1 g salt ≈ 388 mg sodium
The Bottom Line
Salt is the one common kitchen ingredient where "grams per cup" genuinely depends on which product is in front of you — not just as a minor variation, but as a difference that can approach 2x between salt types. If a recipe specifies kosher salt by brand, respect that detail; if it just says "salt," table salt at roughly 290 g/cup is the safest general assumption. And whenever the amount of salt really matters to the outcome — bread, brining, curing — weight is the only measurement that stays consistent no matter which box the salt came from.
Other Ingredients
Grams-to-cups conversion isn't only useful for salt. Each of these has its own weight-per-cup because densities differ: