How Many Grams in an Ounce? Exact 28.35 g Answer

One ounce equals exactly 28.3495 grams. The troy ounce used for gold and jewelry is heavier, at 31.1035 grams per ounce.

It is one of the most searched kitchen questions in the world, and for good reason: ounces and grams live side by side in modern cooking. American recipes list butter in ounces while European recipes list it in grams, baking blogs switch between the two mid-ingredient-list, and nutrition labels seem to pick whichever unit suits them. The result is a constant low-level confusion that this guide clears up once and for all.

There is one twist you need to know before we go further. Not every ounce is the same ounce. The everyday ounce you cook with is the avoirdupois ounce, defined as exactly 28.3495 grams. But gold, silver, and jewelry use the troy ounce, which weighs 31.1035 grams. Mixing the two up can ruin a recipe or misprice a gold necklace, so we will keep them clearly separated throughout. For a broader look at how everyday measurements connect across the kitchen and beyond, our measurement guides have you covered.

Ounces to Grams: Quick-Reference Kitchen Chart

Bookmark this table. These are the conversions home cooks reach for most often, calculated from the exact definition of 28.3495 grams per avoirdupois ounce.

Ounces	Grams	Common use
1/4 oz	7.0874 g	Spices, yeast, small flavorings
1/2 oz	14.1748 g	Chocolate, butter pats, portions
1 oz	28.3495 g	The base conversion
4 oz	113.398 g	A stick of butter, half a cup of solids
8 oz	226.796 g	Half a pound, common package size
16 oz (1 lb)	453.592 g	One full pound

1. The Exact Answer: 28.3495 Grams per Ounce

Let us be precise, because precision is the whole point of weighing ingredients. One avoirdupois ounce is defined as exactly 28.3495 grams. The avoirdupois system is the everyday system of weights used in the United States and familiar across the English-speaking world: it is the system behind the ounces on your bag of flour and the pounds on your bathroom scale.

The definition works in both directions. Because one pound equals 453.592 grams and one pound contains 16 ounces, dividing 453.592 by 16 gives you exactly 28.3495 grams per ounce. The numbers lock together neatly, which is why you can trust conversions built on any of the three figures: 28.3495 grams per ounce, 453.592 grams per pound, or 16 ounces per pound.

In practice, most kitchen work never needs four decimal places. Professional bakers and recipe developers typically work with 28.35 grams per ounce, and many home cooks round further to 28 grams. Those rounded figures are fine for everyday cooking, where a fraction of a gram disappears into the noise of measuring. But when you are scaling recipes up for a crowd, formulating precisely, or converting between systems in published work, the full 28.3495 keeps your math exact.

2. Why Recipes Round It to 28.35 Grams

If you have ever wondered why one recipe says an ounce is 28 grams and another says 30, the answer is rounding, not disagreement. Recipe authors choose the level of precision their audience needs. A weeknight dinner recipe might call 2 ounces “about 60 grams” because the difference between 56.7 and 60 grams of onion will not change the dish. A macaron recipe, on the other hand, will give you 28.35 grams per ounce or list gram weights directly, because meringue-based baking punishes imprecision.

The safest habit is to let your scale do the thinking. If a recipe lists ounces and you prefer grams, multiply the ounces by 28.3495 and round to whatever precision the recipe deserves: whole grams for stews and roasts, tenths of a gram for delicate baking. Digital kitchen scales make this painless, since most can toggle between ounces and grams with one button.

One more source of the “28 versus 30” confusion: some older or informal sources round an ounce to 30 grams for mental math. That shortcut introduces an error of nearly 6 percent, which is fine for estimating produce at the market but risky in baking. When accuracy matters, use 28.3495, not 30.

3. Troy vs Avoirdupois: The Two Different Ounces

Here is the distinction that trips up even experienced cooks the first time they encounter it. The ounce you cook with and the ounce a jeweler uses are different units with different histories. The avoirdupois ounce belongs to the everyday system of trade. The troy ounce belongs to the ancient system used for precious metals, and it is about 2.75 grams heavier.

The comparison below lays out the differences:

Feature	Avoirdupois ounce	Troy ounce
Grams per ounce	28.3495 g	31.1035 g
Common abbreviation	oz	oz t
Used for	Food, everyday goods, postage	Gold, silver, platinum, jewelry
Where you will see it	Recipes, kitchen scales, packaged foods	Jewelers, gold dealers, bullion markets
Relation to pounds	16 ounces make one everyday pound (453.592 g)	Troy weight uses its own separate pound system
Which is heavier	The standard, lighter ounce	Heavier by about 2.75 g
Recipe relevance	The ounce in virtually every recipe	Almost never used in recipes
Everyday contexts	Groceries, cooking, body weight, mail	Gold bars, coins, gemstones, hallmarks
Rule of thumb	Cooking: use 28.35 g	Gold and gems: use 31.10 g

The practical takeaway is simple. Unless you are buying gold or reading a jewelry appraisal, the ounce in front of you is the avoirdupois ounce at 28.3495 grams. Recipes, nutrition labels, and packaged foods always mean avoirdupois. The troy ounce only enters the picture with precious metals and fine jewelry, where its use is a centuries-old convention of the trade.

4. Gold and Jewelry: Where the Troy Ounce Rules

Walk into a jewelry store or check the price of gold, and you have left the kitchen’s ounce behind. Gold is priced by the troy ounce worldwide, and that price is quoted in financial markets every trading day. When gold is said to cost a certain amount “per ounce,” that ounce is always the troy ounce at 31.1035 grams, never the 28.3495-gram kitchen ounce.

This matters more than it might seem. The difference of about 2.75 grams per ounce adds up fast at precious-metal prices: a gold bar weighed in kitchen ounces would be undervalued by nearly 10 percent. Jewelers, pawnbrokers, and bullion dealers all work in troy ounces and grams derived from them, so if you ever inherit jewelry or sell scrap gold, knowing that the troy ounce is 31.1035 grams keeps the math honest.

Smaller jewelry is usually weighed directly in grams rather than ounces, which sidesteps the confusion entirely. A ring might be listed as 4.2 grams of gold, and that figure needs no conversion at all. The troy ounce mainly appears for larger pieces, ingots, coins, and market pricing. If a jewelry context ever just says “ounces” without specifying, ask: in the trade, it means troy, and the 31.1035-gram figure is the one that counts.

5. Baking Conversions: Ounces, Grams, and Cups

Baking is where ounce-to-gram conversions earn their keep, and it is also where a second confusion lurks: weight ounces versus volume cups. Ounces measure weight. Cups measure volume. Converting between them depends on the density of the ingredient, which is why a cup of flour and a cup of honey weigh very different amounts. Whenever a recipe gives you a choice, weighing in grams is the more reliable path, because 100 grams of flour is 100 grams of flour no matter how you scoop it.

That said, American baking cups are deeply entrenched, and converting is a daily reality. If you are working through common conversions, our guide to 5 oz to cups walks through the volume side in detail, and if you are wondering how much is 6 oz in practical terms, that guide puts the amount in perspective. Use gram weights from a scale as your source of truth, and treat cup conversions as the convenient approximation they are.

For the most common baking conversions, memorize a few anchors: 4 ounces is 113.398 grams (a standard stick of butter), 8 ounces is 226.796 grams (half a pound), and 16 ounces is 453.592 grams (a full pound). With those three landmarks and the 28.3495 base figure, you can convert any baking quantity in your head to within a rounding error.

6. Scaling Up: Pounds to Grams

Once you are comfortable with ounces, pounds follow naturally. One pound equals 453.592 grams, which is simply 16 ounces multiplied by 28.3495 grams. This is the conversion that matters for bulk buying, meal prep, and scaling recipes: a 5-pound bag of flour is 2,267.96 grams, and a 2-pound roast is 907.184 grams.

Half-pound and quarter-pound increments come up constantly in American recipes. Half a pound is 8 ounces, or 226.796 grams. A quarter pound is 4 ounces, or 113.398 grams. These are worth memorizing because they appear on packaging as well as in recipes: butter is sold in 4-ounce sticks and 8-ounce blocks, cream cheese in 8-ounce packages, and chocolate in 4-ounce bars. Knowing the gram equivalents lets you substitute and scale without reaching for a calculator.

Going the other direction is just as easy. To convert grams to ounces, divide by 28.3495. A 500-gram package of pasta is about 17.64 ounces, just over a pound. A 250-gram block of butter is about 8.82 ounces. Most digital scales let you switch units with a button press, but the division is simple enough to do once and remember for your most-used ingredients.

7. How to Weigh Grams Accurately

The conversion is only half the battle; the other half is measuring well. A digital kitchen scale is the single most useful tool for gram-level accuracy, and it removes the conversion question entirely if you weigh directly in grams. Place your bowl on the scale, press tare to zero it out, and add your ingredient until the display reads the gram weight you want.

Taring is the technique that makes scales so powerful. Because the scale zeroes with the bowl on it, you can add multiple ingredients to the same bowl, taring between each, and build a whole recipe with one dish to wash. For very small quantities like yeast or spices, use a scale with 0.1-gram or 1-gram resolution and measure onto a small piece of parchment or into a ramekin for easy transfer.

A few habits keep your measurements honest. Weigh on a level, stable surface away from drafts, since air currents can nudge sensitive scales. Check that your scale is set to grams and not ounces before you start, a surprisingly common source of ruined bakes. And remember that volume measures like tablespoons are approximations: when a recipe gives both, trust the grams.

8. Common Ounce Amounts You’ll Meet Every Day

Once you know the base conversion, everyday amounts start to feel intuitive. A restaurant serving of meat is often 6 ounces, which is 170.097 grams. A standard can of tuna holds 5 ounces, or 141.7475 grams. Coffee is commonly sold in 12-ounce bags, equal to 340.194 grams, while a typical bag of sugar weighs 2 pounds, or 907.184 grams. None of these require memorizing: multiply the ounces by 28.3495 and the grams appear.

Packaged foods in the United States list both ounces and grams on the nutrition label, which makes them a handy real-world reference. A box of pasta labeled 16 ounces will also say 454 grams, rounded from the exact 453.592. A 12-ounce box of cereal shows 340 grams. Reading those dual labels for a week trains your intuition faster than any chart, because you start associating familiar packages with their gram weights.

Postal and shipping weights use ounces too, and the same 28.3495 figure applies. A letter weighing 1 ounce falls in the one-ounce postage bracket, and small parcels are priced in ounce and pound increments. The avoirdupois ounce truly is the everyday ounce: from the kitchen to the mailbox, 28.3495 grams is the number that keeps everything consistent, and the troy ounce stays where it belongs, at the jeweler’s counter.

Grams and Ounces: Frequently Asked Questions

How many grams are in an ounce?
One avoirdupois (everyday) ounce equals exactly 28.3495 grams. For cooking, 28.35 grams is the standard working figure.

How many grams are in a troy ounce?
A troy ounce, used for gold and jewelry, equals 31.1035 grams. It is about 2.75 grams heavier than the everyday ounce.

How many ounces are in a pound?
There are 16 ounces in one pound, and one pound equals 453.592 grams. Dividing 453.592 by 16 gives the exact 28.3495 grams per ounce.

Is an ounce of gold the same as a regular ounce?
No. Gold is weighed in troy ounces of 31.1035 grams, while everyday items use avoirdupois ounces of 28.3495 grams. Using the kitchen ounce for gold would undervalue it by nearly 10 percent.

Final Thoughts

The next time a recipe calls for ounces and your scale reads grams, the math is beautifully simple: one ounce is 28.3495 grams, one pound is 453.592 grams, and the troy ounce of 31.1035 grams belongs to the jeweler’s counter, not the kitchen. Memorizing 28.35 as your everyday figure covers nearly all cooking and baking, while knowing about the troy ounce keeps you from confusing gold weights with grocery weights. Keep the quick-reference chart above bookmarked, weigh with a digital scale in grams whenever precision matters, and you will never second-guess an ounce again. For bakers, that precision is the difference between a reliable crumb and a guessing game, and for anyone buying or selling gold, the troy distinction protects real money. Two ounces, two numbers, zero confusion once you know which one you are holding.