Recipe Scaler Calculator
Cooking for more or fewer people? Rescale any ingredient to the servings you actually need.
Scale up or down
Enter the amount and your original and desired servings — the calculator handles doubling, halving, and everything in between.
Use judgment for some items
Eggs, spices, and leavening agents do not always scale cleanly, and cooking times rarely change in proportion to the batch.
What is a recipe scaler?
Resize a recipe to the servings you need
A recipe scaler takes a recipe written for one number of servings and rescales each ingredient to a different number. Instead of guessing how much flour to use when you want six portions of a four-portion recipe, you multiply every amount by a single scaling factor. The factor is the ratio of the servings you want to the servings the recipe was written for, and it keeps the proportions of the dish identical no matter how far you scale.
Divide the servings you want by the servings the recipe makes to get the scaling factor, then multiply each ingredient amount by that factor.
Scaled amount = amount × (desired ÷ original)The scaling factor is the heart of the calculation. A factor above 1 means you are scaling up, a factor below 1 means you are scaling down, and a factor of exactly 1 leaves the recipe unchanged. Because every ingredient uses the same factor, the balance of the dish stays the same — you are simply making more or less of it.
Suppose a recipe for 4 servings calls for 200 g of flour and you want to make 6 servings.
Find the scaling factor
6 ÷ 4 = 1.5, so you are making one and a half times the recipe.Scale the ingredient
200 × 1.5 = 300 g of flour.Repeat for every ingredient
Multiply each remaining amount by the same factor of 1.5.
The scaled amount is what to use for the servings you entered, and the scaling factor tells you at a glance how much the recipe grew or shrank — ×1.5 is half again as much, ×0.5 is half. Apply the same factor to every ingredient so the proportions stay intact. What does not scale linearly is timing and equipment: cooking and baking times change only a little with batch size, and a larger volume may need a bigger pan or pot to cook evenly. Treat the factor as a guide for quantities, then adjust heat, pan size, and time by experience.
The arithmetic is exact, but cooking is not purely arithmetic.
Some ingredients and timings need judgment
Eggs come in whole units, so a factor of 1.5 on a 3-egg recipe lands on 4.5 eggs — round to a whole number and adjust the liquid if needed. Strong spices, salt, and leavening agents such as baking powder often scale better slightly under the factor, so taste and adjust. And bake or simmer times do not scale with the factor: a double batch is not cooked in double the time, so judge doneness rather than the clock.