Liters to Milliliters Converter

Convert liters to milliliters — and learn why the liter is not an SI unit, and why 1 mL of honey is not 1 gram.

Conversion table

Volume	In Milliliters
0.5	500 mL
1	1,000 mL
1.5	1,500 mL
2	2,000 mL
2.5	2,500 mL
3	3,000 mL
4	4,000 mL
5	5,000 mL
6	6,000 mL
7	7,000 mL
8	8,000 mL
9	9,000 mL
10	10,000 mL
12	12,000 mL
15	15,000 mL

📊 Volumes You Already Know

1 L1000 mL
Soft drink can330 mL
Wine bottle750 mL
Teaspoon (metric)5 mL
IV bag500 mL or 1000 mL
1 m³1000 L = 1 000 000 mL

Things That Trip People Up

1 mL = 1 cm³ = 1 cc. They are three names for the same volume, which is why syringes say cc and prescriptions say mL.
mL and grams are only equal for water. 1 mL of cooking oil weighs 0.92 g; 1 mL of honey weighs about 1.42 g.
Write the symbol as capital L. Lowercase l is legal but looks like the digit 1 on most screens; the ℓ character is not standard.
A dropper delivers roughly 0.05 mL per drop, so 20 drops make about 1 mL — but that varies with the liquid and the dropper.

The Liter Is Not an SI Unit

This surprises people who assume the metric system is one clean hierarchy. The SI unit of volume is the cubic meter; the liter is merely accepted for use with the SI, a status the BIPM grants to a short list of practical units. One liter equals one cubic decimeter, which is one thousandth of a cubic meter. That relationship is exact and always has been in modern usage, so the conversion this page performs — multiply by 1000 — carries no rounding error whatsoever. It is one of the few conversions where the answer is exactly right rather than merely accurate.

The Sixty-Three Years When a Liter Was Not a Cubic Decimeter

Between 1901 and 1964 the liter was defined as the volume occupied by one kilogram of pure water at maximum density and standard pressure. That sounds elegant, but the water turned out not to cooperate: the resulting liter measured 1.000028 cubic decimeters, off by 28 parts per million. The 12th General Conference on Weights and Measures repealed that definition in 1964 and restored the liter as exactly one cubic decimeter. For everyday use nobody ever noticed, but precision measurements published in that window are stated in a slightly different liter than the one we use today, which matters when reading older scientific literature.

Milliliters in Medicine and Dosing

1 mL = 1 cm³ = 1 cc exactly. Syringes are often marked cc while prescriptions are written in mL; they are the same amount.
Standard syringe sizes are 1, 3, 5 and 10 mL. A 'teaspoon' of medicine is defined as exactly 5 mL, not whatever spoon is in the drawer.
Household teaspoons vary from 2.5 to 7 mL, which is why dosing with cutlery is a documented source of medication error.
An IV bag is typically 500 mL or 1000 mL, and infusion rates are written in mL per hour.
A dropper gives roughly 0.05 mL per drop — 20 drops to the milliliter — but viscosity and dropper design change that figure.
Blood donation collects 450-500 mL, roughly a tenth of an adult's total blood volume.

Why 1 mL Is Not Always 1 Gram

The 1 mL = 1 g rule only holds for pure water near 4 °C, where density is at its maximum of 1.000 g/mL.
Cooking oil: 0.92 g per mL. A 250 mL cup of oil weighs 230 g, not 250 g.
Honey: about 1.42 g per mL. 250 mL of honey weighs 355 g — over 40% more than the same volume of water.
Whole milk: 1.03 g per mL, close enough to water that recipes treat them interchangeably.
Ethanol: 0.789 g per mL, which is why spirits feel lighter than they look on a scale.
This is why baking recipes that give both mL and grams for the same ingredient are usually rounding one of the two.

Worked Examples

Where the conversion actually gets used

Splitting a 1.5 L bottle into servings

1.5 L × 1000 = 1500 mL
A standard glass is 250 mL
1500 ÷ 250 = 6 servings

1.5 L = 1500 mL = six 250 mL glasses

Reading a recipe in deciliters

Scandinavian recipes often use dL: 1 dL = 100 mL
So 2.5 dL = 250 mL = 0.25 L
And 1 L = 10 dL, which is why the dL never appears alone on a bottle

2.5 dL = 250 mL

Frequently Asked Questions

How many mL are in a liter?

Exactly 1000. The prefix milli- means one thousandth, so a milliliter is one thousandth of a liter by definition. There is no rounding involved in this conversion.

Is 1 mL the same as 1 cc?

Yes, exactly. One milliliter equals one cubic centimeter equals one cc. Medical equipment often uses cc while pharmacy labels use mL, but a 10 cc syringe and a 10 mL syringe are the same syringe.

Is 1 mL of liquid always 1 gram?

No — only for water near 4 °C. Oil is 0.92 g per mL, honey about 1.42 g per mL, and ethanol 0.789 g per mL. Treating volume as weight is one of the most common cooking errors.

Why is the liter not an SI unit?

Because the SI unit of volume is the cubic meter. The liter is 'accepted for use with the SI' — a practical exception the BIPM makes for a handful of units, alongside the hour, the tonne and the degree.

Should I write L or l for liter?

Both are officially valid, but capital L is preferred because lowercase l is easily mistaken for the digit 1 in most typefaces. The script character ℓ is not part of the standard and should not be used.

How many mL in a wine bottle?

750 mL, which is 0.75 L. The half bottle is 375 mL and the magnum is 1500 mL. The 750 mL standard dates from the practicalities of glassblowing and of shipping in imperial gallons.

What is 1 liter in cubic meters?

0.001 m³, because a liter is exactly one cubic decimeter. Going the other way, 1 m³ is 1000 liters — the figure used on water bills, where a 'unit' is often a cubic meter.