Tablespoon and Teaspoon to ml Converter

This tablespoon and teaspoon to ml converter moves between US teaspoons, US tablespoons, millilitres and fluid ounces, in any direction. It also handles the rounded 5 mL teaspoon and 15 mL tablespoon printed on Nutrition Facts labels, because those are what many people mean when they say "a teaspoon is 5 mL".

The US spoons are fixed fractions of the US gallon. NIST Handbook 44 makes the tablespoon one 256th of a gallon and the teaspoon one 768th, so three teaspoons are exactly one tablespoon and two tablespoons are exactly one fluid ounce. Since the gallon is exactly 3,785.411784 mL, a US tablespoon is exactly 14.78676478125 mL and a teaspoon exactly 4.92892159375 mL. The converter keeps those full values and only rounds what it shows.

The label spoons are a separate, rounded convention. The US nutrition labelling rule, 21 CFR 101.9, says that for labelling purposes a teaspoon means 5 mL and a tablespoon means 15 mL. Those are slightly larger than the customary spoons. For cooking the difference rarely matters; for scaling up a recipe or reading a label carefully, it is worth knowing which spoon you have.

1. Type the amount. Fractions go in as decimals: a quarter teaspoon is 0.25, half a tablespoon is 0.5.
2. Pick the unit you have under From and the unit you want under To. The default is tablespoons to millilitres.
3. Read the headline. Millilitre answers are given to two decimal places; spoon and fluid ounce answers to four. The cards show the same volume in all six units at once, millilitres to four places.

The presets load a teaspoon to millilitres, 15 mL to tablespoons and 10 mL to teaspoons. Two tables below the converter list common spoon measures in millilitres and common millilitre amounts in spoons, with CSV downloads.

1. Read the units. From and To select two of the six units. A negative amount is read as zero.

1. Convert through the cubic metre. Each unit is stored as its exact size in cubic metres. The US teaspoon is the US gallon (231 cubic inches) divided by 768 and the tablespoon is the gallon divided by 256. The label spoons are exactly 5 mL and 15 mL. The converter multiplies your amount by the size of the From unit and divides by the size of the To unit.

1. Fill in every unit. The same conversion gives millilitres, US teaspoons, US tablespoons, US fluid ounces, label teaspoons and label tablespoons for the cards.

1. Round for display only. The arithmetic runs at 34 significant digits. Millilitres in the headline are rounded half up to two places; everything else to four, with trailing zeros dropped.

The default, 1 tablespoon to millilitres:

1. Millilitres: 14.79 mL in the headline, 14.7868 mL on the card.
2. Teaspoons: 3. Fluid ounces: 0.5.
3. On the label scale: 2.9574 label teaspoons or 0.9858 label tablespoons, a little under one.

One teaspoon: 4.93 mL, or 4.9289 mL on the card.

15 mL to tablespoons: 15 ÷ 14.78676478125 = 1.0144 tablespoons. On the label scale 15 mL is exactly 1 label tablespoon, which is why so many charts say a tablespoon is 15 mL.

10 mL to teaspoons: 10 ÷ 4.92892159375 = 2.0288 teaspoons, or exactly 2 label teaspoons.

30 mL to tablespoons: 2.0288 tablespoons, which is also 1.0144 US fluid ounces.

These come from the converter's reference tables, which list more amounts.

A US tablespoon holds 14.7868 mL to four places, and most kitchen charts round it to 15. Both answers are defensible, they are just different spoons: 14.7868 mL is the customary tablespoon in NIST Handbook 44, and 15 mL is the label tablespoon in 21 CFR 101.9.

A teaspoon follows the same pattern: 4.9289 mL customary, 5 mL on a label.

The reverse question comes up when a recipe or a bottle gives millilitres. One millilitre is 0.2029 US teaspoons or 0.0676 US tablespoons, so it takes nearly 5 mL to fill a teaspoon and nearly 15 mL to fill a tablespoon.

A spoon measures volume, not weight. Searches like "how many tablespoons is 10 grams" have no single answer, because 10 grams of salt fills far less of a spoon than 10 grams of flour. The grams to teaspoons converter on this site handles that with water by default and with measured USDA weights for common ingredients.

• Heaped or levelled spoons. The conversions assume a level spoon of liquid. A heaped spoon of a dry ingredient holds more.
• Imperial and Australian spoons. British dessert spoons and older imperial tablespoons, and the Australian tablespoon, are different sizes and are not covered.
• Weight. Grams and milligrams are not volumes. Converting them to spoons needs a density.
• Medicine dosing. Use the dosing cup or syringe that comes with a medicine, measured in millilitres. A kitchen spoon is not a calibrated measure.

• Treating 15 mL as exact. It is the label convention, not the customary tablespoon. Over a big batch the gap adds up.
• Mixing up tsp and tbsp. The lower-case abbreviation tsp is the teaspoon; tbsp is the tablespoon, three times larger. Older recipes use a small "t" and a capital "T" for the same pair.
• Assuming metric spoons are universal. A recipe from another country may use a tablespoon of a different size.
• Measuring dry goods by millilitre and expecting grams. A millilitre of a powder does not weigh a gram.

• NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C, General Tables of Units of Measurement: the US gallon, fluid ounce, tablespoon and teaspoon. nist.gov/pml/owm/nist-handbook-44-current-edition
• eCFR, 21 CFR 101.9(b)(5)(viii), Nutrition labeling of food: the 5 mL teaspoon and 15 mL tablespoon. ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-101/subpart-A/section-101.9
• NIST Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (2008), Appendix B: conversion factors to SI. nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811