Litres to pints converter

The conversion

The UK pint is defined as exactly 568.261 millilitres, which is just over half a litre. That single number gives you everything you need in both directions:

To go from litres to pints, divide the litres by 0.568261. To go from pints back to litres, multiply the pints by 0.568261. A useful rough rule for mental arithmetic: a litre is about a pint and three quarters, and a pint is a touch under 570 ml.

The pint sits inside the wider imperial system too. There are 20 imperial fluid ounces in a UK pint and 8 pints in an imperial gallon, which is how the gallon gets its exact definition of 4.54609 litres (8 × 0.568261). If an old British recipe asks for half a pint, that is 284 ml, and a quarter pint (a gill, in even older language) is 142 ml.

Worked examples

Quick reference

These are the sizes you actually meet in a UK supermarket or pub, rounded to two decimal places:

• 1 pint ≈ 0.57 L (a pint of beer or the small milk bottle)
• 2 pints ≈ 1.14 L
• 3 pints ≈ 1.70 L
• 4 pints ≈ 2.27 L (the standard big milk bottle)
• 6 pints ≈ 3.41 L
• 1 litre ≈ 1.76 pints
• 1.5 litres ≈ 2.64 pints
• 2 litres ≈ 3.52 pints
• 3 litres ≈ 5.28 pints

UK pints and US pints are not the same

Be careful with anything written for an American audience. The US liquid pint is about 473 ml, because the US gallon is smaller than the imperial gallon, so a US pint is only about 83 percent of a UK one. A US "pint" of beer is noticeably smaller than what you get in a British pub, and an American recipe calling for a pint of stock wants roughly 95 ml less than a UK cook would pour. The converter shows the US figure alongside the UK one so you can see the gap at a glance.

The fluid ounce is a trap of its own: the imperial fluid ounce is 28.4 ml while the US one is 29.6 ml, and a US pint contains 16 of them against the UK's 20. So the units share names and agree on almost nothing, which is why converting through millilitres, as this tool does, is the only reliable route.

In everyday British life the pint survives in exactly two legal places: draught beer and cider, and returnable milk bottles. Everything else on the shelf is labelled in litres, which is why the same fridge can hold a 2.272 litre bottle of milk (4 pints) next to a 2 litre bottle of lemonade (3.52 pints) that looks almost identical. If you are scaling a recipe as well, our cups to grams converter handles the American dry measures, and the oven temperature converter sorts out gas marks and fan ovens.

Frequently asked questions

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