Recipe Scaler — Adjust Servings

Scale any recipe up or down

Cooking for a crowd or just for yourself often means converting a recipe designed for a different number of servings. The maths is a single multiplication, but doing it by hand with amounts like 1 1/2 cups or 3/4 teaspoon is slow and error-prone. Paste the ingredient list, enter the original and desired number of servings, and the recipe scaler multiplies every amount by the right factor and gives you a tidy list you can copy into your notes or shopping list.

Fractions, decimals and ranges

The scaler understands the way recipes are actually written: whole numbers, decimals, simple fractions, mixed numbers such as 1 1/2 and Unicode fractions like ½ and 1½. Ranges such as “2-3 tbsp” are scaled at both ends. Results are rounded to the nearest practical kitchen fraction (eighths, thirds and quarters), or you can switch to decimals if you cook by weight. A line without a leading number, such as “salt to taste”, is kept exactly as it is so nothing important is lost.

Tips for scaling successfully

Most ingredients scale in direct proportion, but a few do not. Strong spices, salt and chillies should be increased more gradually and adjusted by taste. Baking powder and yeast follow the recipe more closely in baking, but very large batches may need slightly less. Cooking time depends on the depth of the food rather than the quantity, so a doubled cake in a bigger tin may bake for a similar time, while a doubled roast takes noticeably longer. Check pan sizes too: doubling a recipe needs roughly twice the pan volume, not simply a bigger tin.

For converting between cups, millilitres and grams, use the cooking converter. Your ingredient list is processed entirely in your browser, and an optional local draft lets you return to it later.