Convert teaspoons to tablespoons

Three teaspoons make one tablespoon. Eight teaspoons make two tablespoons and two teaspoons.

The teaspoon is the smallest spoon in a kitchen measuring set and holds 5 millilitres[1]. The tablespoon holds 15 millilitres, three times that portion, and that is where the divisor of three comes from.

US food labelling law puts both figures in writing: a teaspoon means 5 millilitres and a tablespoon means 15[2].

Australia divides the tablespoon by four. The teaspoon there holds the same 5 millilitres while the tablespoon holds 20[3], so the same number of teaspoons makes fewer tablespoons.

The Tablespoon type switch sits under the converter fields. It starts on the metric spoon, the one a British, Irish or European recipe means.

Divide the number of teaspoons by three.

The formula: tablespoons = teaspoons ÷ 3 for the metric and the US customary spoon. The Australian spoon divides by 4.

The answer often lands on a third or two thirds of a tablespoon, so the table gives the fraction next to the decimal.

One teaspoon is 0.3333 tablespoons, which is a third. Two teaspoons come to 0.6667 tablespoons, which is two thirds. Three teaspoons make exactly one tablespoon.

The converter field takes fractions straight from the recipe. Type 1/2 and you get 0.1667 tablespoons, which is a sixth. Type 1 1/2 with a space between the whole number and the fraction and you get exactly half a tablespoon. The dot and the comma are interchangeable: 2.5 and 2,5 give the same result.

The US teaspoon holds 4.92892159375 millilitres and is defined as one third of the US tablespoon[1], so the divisor stays the same as with the metric spoon.

The other direction is handled by the tablespoons to teaspoons converter. For the same portion in millilitres use the tablespoons to millilitres converter. A portion counted in teaspoons goes through the teaspoons to millilitres converter, and a dose printed in millilitres through the millilitres to teaspoons converter.

A lower-case t stands for the teaspoon and a capital T for the tablespoon[3].

English recipes shorten the teaspoon to tsp, t, ts or tspn[1] and the tablespoon to tbsp, Tbsp, Tb or T[3]. The two portions differ by a factor of three, so where a recipe uses a single letter the case of that letter carries the whole difference.

Recipes translated from other languages bring their own pairs of abbreviations, and a Spanish cda sits next to a cdta the same way a T sits next to a t.

The table collects the names and abbreviations from the eight languages this site is published in.

With the device that came in the box. The US medicines agency says so outright for paracetamol: a liquid dose is measured with the dosing device supplied with the product[5].

Cutlery varies in capacity. A 2023 paper in Frontiers in Public Health cites measurements of household teaspoons ranging from 2.5 to 7.3 millilitres. The same authors showed a calibrated medicine spoon to their participants, and acceptance of cutlery as a dosing aid then fell from 74 to 5 percent[6].

A pharmacy teaspoon is 5 millilitres and a tablespoon is 15, three times as much[2]. That is why leaflets give the dose in millilitres: one number then describes the same portion whatever measuring set a household owns.