In plain English
Cup, pint, quart and gallon: how do they fit together?
The Simple Answer
In the United States, 2 cups make a pint, 2 pints make a quart and 4 quarts make a gallon. That means a gallon holds 16 cups.
Each measure is double the one before it, until you reach the gallon, which is four quarts. Once you see it as a ladder it is hard to forget.
| Measure | Cups | Fluid ounces | Milliliters (about) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 cup | 1 | 8 | 237 |
| 1 pint | 2 | 16 | 473 |
| 1 quart | 4 | 32 | 946 |
| 1 gallon | 16 | 128 | 3,785 |
A way to remember it
Picture a big letter G for gallon. Inside it sit four Qs for quarts. Inside each Q sit two Ps for pints, and inside each P two Cs for cups. Four times two times two is sixteen cups.
A British pint is bigger
The same words mean different amounts outside the United States. The imperial pint used in the United Kingdom holds about 568 milliliters, against 473 milliliters for the American pint. The imperial gallon is about 4.55 liters against 3.79 liters, and it is divided into 160 fluid ounces where the American gallon has 128. If a recipe or a bottle comes from another country, check which pint it means.
The interesting part: what water weighs
There is an old saying that a pint is a pound the world around. With water and American pints it comes close. A US pint of water weighs about 1.04 pounds, and a gallon of water weighs about 8.3 pounds. Pour a gallon of milk into your cart and you are carrying a little over eight pounds of it, plus the jug.
Cooking Measurement Converter: Convert cups, pints, quarts, gallons, spoons and fluid ounces from one to another.
Metric & Imperial Converter: Convert between metric and US or imperial units, such as liters to gallons.