How Many Grams of Honey in a Teaspoon?

A level teaspoon of runny honey weighs approximately 7 grams. Because honey clings to a spoon and rarely sits flat, real servings usually land higher:

How it’s served	Weight	What it looks like
Level teaspoon	7 g	Scraped flat against the jar rim
Rounded teaspoon	9–10 g	A slight dome, no scraping
Heaped teaspoon	10–12 g	As much as the spoon will hold
Free drizzle (2 seconds)	8–15 g	Straight from a squeezy bottle

A heaped teaspoon can hold over 70% more honey than a level one — the single biggest source of error when measuring by spoon.

Why honey weighs more than you would expect

Spoons measure volume. Scales measure mass. The two only line up for water, where 1 ml weighs 1 g. Honey is nothing like water.

Honey sold in England must contain no more than 20% water, under Schedule 1 of the Honey (England) Regulations 2015 — and most runny honey on a supermarket shelf sits nearer 17%. The rest is dissolved sugar. That makes honey a supersaturated syrup carrying far more mass in the same space than water does: around 1.4 grams per millilitre.

So a 5 ml teaspoon holds 5 ml of honey, but that 5 ml weighs about 7 g. The spoon has not changed. What is in it is simply heavier.

This is also why a jar labelled 340 g does not fill a 340 ml container. A 340 g jar of honey occupies roughly 240 ml of space.

Honey spoon conversions at a glance

UK spoon measures are metric: a teaspoon is 5 ml, a dessert spoon 10 ml, a tablespoon 15 ml. Everything below assumes level spoons of runny honey.

Measure	Volume	Weight	Calories	Sugars
1 level teaspoon	5 ml	7 g	~21 kcal	~5.8 g
1 heaped teaspoon	—	10–12 g	~30–36 kcal	~8–10 g
1 level dessert spoon	10 ml	14 g	~42 kcal	~11.5 g
1 level tablespoon	15 ml	21 g	~63 kcal	~17 g
1 heaped tablespoon	—	28–32 g	~85–96 kcal	~23–26 g
100 g honey	~71 ml	100 g	~300 kcal	~82 g

Energy and sugar figures are typical values for blended runny honey; individual honeys vary by a few per cent either way.

Working the other way: 20 g of honey is just under three level teaspoons, and 50 g is a little over seven.

Level, heaped or drizzled: the difference that catches people out

Every conversion chart online quotes 7 g. Almost none of them mention that the figure only holds for a level spoon — and a level spoon of honey takes deliberate effort to produce.

Weigh it yourself and the pattern is consistent. Dip a teaspoon into a jar, lift it out without scraping, and you will typically land between 10 g and 12 g. Squeeze from a bottle for what feels like a modest drizzle over porridge and you are often past 12 g before you stop.

In practice that means a food diary entry of “one teaspoon of honey” is frequently wrong by half again. Over a day with three or four servings, the error compounds into something worth knowing about.

The fix is not complicated: either scrape the spoon flat against the rim of the jar, or stop using spoons and weigh.

How to measure a teaspoon of honey accurately

Five steps, no special equipment beyond scales:

Put the bowl or mug on the scales first and zero them. Weighing honey directly into what you are eating from saves washing a sticky spoon.
Warm the spoon under a hot tap and dry it. Honey slides off warm metal instead of clinging to it, so what you measured is what actually arrives.
Add honey until the display reads 7 g for one teaspoon, 14 g for two, 21 g for three.
If you have no scales, fill the spoon and scrape it level against the jar rim in one pass. Do not tap it — tapping settles honey and adds weight.
For set or creamed honey, press it into the spoon to remove air pockets before levelling, or you will be short.

A note on medicine spoons: the 5 ml plastic spoons supplied with liquid medicines are accurate 5 ml measures, and far more reliable than the teaspoons in a cutlery drawer, which vary from about 3 ml to 7 ml depending on the set.

How many calories and how much sugar are in a teaspoon of honey?

A level teaspoon of honey contains roughly 21 calories and about 5.8 grams of sugar. That is slightly more than a teaspoon of granulated sugar, which weighs about 4 g and provides around 16 calories, because honey is denser and a spoon holds more of it.

The sugar figure is the one that catches people out, because honey counts in full towards the UK free sugars limit. The NHS is explicit on this: sugars in honey, syrups and nectars “occur naturally but still count as free sugars”, and adults should have no more than 30 g of free sugars a day.

Do the arithmetic and it is tighter than it sounds:

Around five level teaspoons of honey — about 35 g — uses an adult’s entire daily free sugars allowance.
Around three heaped teaspoons does the same thing, because each one carries 8–10 g of sugar.
That is before any biscuit, fruit juice, sauce or breakfast cereal enters the day.

The limits are lower for children. The NHS sets 24 g of free sugars a day for ages 7 to 10, 19 g for ages 4 to 6, and 14 g for ages 2 to 3 — so two heaped teaspoons of honey would take a five-year-old past their whole daily allowance.

None of which makes honey a problem food. It means that if you are drizzling honey over a high-protein breakfast every morning and also watching your sugar intake, the two need to be counted against each other rather than treated separately.

Honey vs granulated sugar, spoon for spoon

This is where the “honey is healthier than sugar” claim gets mangled, because the comparison gives opposite answers depending on how you measure.

	Per level teaspoon	Per 100 g
Honey	7 g · ~21 kcal · ~5.8 g sugars	~300 kcal · ~82 g sugars
Granulated sugar	4 g · ~16 kcal · ~4 g sugars	~400 kcal · ~100 g sugars

Gram for gram honey is lighter work than sugar. Spoon for spoon it is not — and spoons are how people actually serve it.

Gram for gram, honey comes out ahead: about a quarter fewer calories and less sugar, because roughly a sixth of it is water. Spoon for spoon, honey loses, because a teaspoon holds nearly twice the weight.

Honey is also sweeter than sugar by weight, largely down to its fructose content, so many people do use less of it. Whether that offsets the density depends entirely on how heavy-handed you are. If you swap a level teaspoon of sugar for a heaped teaspoon of honey, you have roughly doubled the sugar.

Does the type of honey change the weight?

Yes, though less than people assume. The variation comes from air and water, not from the honey being special.

Runny honey — the 7 g per level teaspoon baseline.
Set and creamed honey — spooned loosely, it traps air and can weigh 6–6.5 g per level teaspoon. Pressed firmly into the spoon, it matches runny honey.
Cold honey — straight from a cold cupboard, it is thicker, clings harder and overshoots a level spoon more easily.
Heather honey — legally permitted up to 23% moisture rather than 20%, so marginally lighter per spoon.
Manuka honey — weighs essentially the same as any other honey. The premium is about its claimed properties, not its density.
Raw honey — no consistent weight difference. If it has crystallised, treat it as set honey.

For everyday purposes, 7 g per level teaspoon is close enough for all of them.

Swapping sugar for honey in baking

This is where a bad conversion actually ruins something. Swapping spoon for spoon overshoots the sugar, and honey brings water and acidity into a recipe that sugar does not.

Work by weight, and use roughly 80 g of honey for every 100 g of sugar:

Sugar in the recipe	Honey to use	Reduce other liquid by
100 g	80 g (about 4 level tbsp)	20 ml
200 g	160 g	40 ml
250 g	200 g	50 ml

Drop the oven by 10–15°C as well: honey browns faster than sugar and the outside will colour before the middle is done.

Two further adjustments. Honey is mildly acidic, so a pinch of bicarbonate of soda helps cakes rise as expected. And honey holds moisture, which is why honey-sweetened bakes stay soft for longer — an advantage in a loaf cake, a nuisance in anything meant to be crisp. It works particularly well in warm-spiced baking, which is why so many cinnamon recipes use honey as the sweetener.

What most people get wrong about measuring honey

Four mistakes account for almost all of it.

Assuming 5 ml means 5 g. The instinct that a spoonful of anything weighs about what a spoonful of water weighs is wrong by 40% for honey. It is wrong in the same direction for golden syrup, treacle and maple syrup too.

Logging honey as if it were sugar. Food diaries often default to a 4 g “teaspoon” entry borrowed from granulated sugar. A teaspoon of honey is 7 g. Anyone tracking closely is under-counting by nearly half on every serving.

Treating honey as though it sits outside the sugar count. It does not. The NHS classes it as a free sugar alongside table sugar and syrups, for the straightforward reason that the body processes it much the same way.

Using cutlery teaspoons as measures. A teaspoon from a cutlery set is not a calibrated 5 ml measure — capacities vary considerably between sets. Use a proper measuring spoon or a medicine spoon if the number matters.

A typical day’s honey, added up

The following is an illustrative example, not a real person’s diet.

Someone swaps sugar for honey across a normal weekday, believing they have made a meaningfully lighter choice:

Two heaped teaspoons over porridge — 22 g honey, ~18 g sugars
One teaspoon in mid-morning tea — 10 g honey, ~8 g sugars
A drizzle over yoghurt after lunch — 12 g honey, ~10 g sugars
One in a spoonful stirred into herbal tea in the evening — 10 g honey, ~8 g sugars

Total: about 54 g of honey and 44 g of free sugars — roughly 145% of the adult daily limit, from honey alone, before anything else is counted. Four servings that each felt small.

Levelling every spoon instead would bring the same four servings to 28 g of honey and about 23 g of sugars. Same routine, same number of servings, a little under the limit rather than half again over it.

Things to watch out for

Never give honey to a baby under 12 months. The NHS advises waiting until after a child’s first birthday, because honey can occasionally contain bacteria that produce toxins in a baby’s intestines, leading to infant botulism. This applies to all honey, including raw, organic and Manuka, and to honey cooked into food.
US recipes use a slightly different teaspoon (4.93 ml against the UK’s 5 ml). The difference is under 2% and rarely matters, but US recipes often work in cups, where it does.
“A spoonful of honey” in a remedy is not a dose. Herbal and folk remedies rarely specify level or heaped, so the actual amount can vary by 70%.
Squeezy bottles encourage overpouring. If you are measuring, decant into a spoon rather than pouring straight onto food.
Honey does not need refrigerating. Cold speeds up crystallisation and makes it harder to measure. A cupboard is fine.

Frequently asked questions

Is a teaspoon of honey 5 g or 7 g?

It is about 7 g. The confusion comes from a UK teaspoon holding 5 millilitres, which is a measure of volume, not weight. Honey is roughly 1.4 times denser than water, so those 5 ml weigh around 7 grams on the scales.

How many grams of honey are in a tablespoon?

A level UK tablespoon holds 15 ml and weighs about 21 g of honey — exactly three teaspoons. A heaped tablespoon typically carries 28 to 32 g. A level dessert spoon, at 10 ml, sits between the two at roughly 14 g.

How many calories are in a teaspoon of honey?

Roughly 21 calories in a level teaspoon, and 30 to 36 in a heaped one. That comes from about 5.8 g of sugars per level teaspoon. For comparison, a level teaspoon of granulated sugar is around 16 calories, because it weighs less per spoon.

Is honey healthier than sugar?

Gram for gram, honey has fewer calories and less sugar, because around a sixth of it is water. Spoon for spoon it has more of both, since a teaspoon holds nearly twice the weight. The NHS counts honey as a free sugar either way.

How much honey can I have in a day?

The NHS advises adults to have no more than 30 g of free sugars daily. Honey counts in full, so about five level teaspoons — roughly 35 g — would use the whole allowance. Around three heaped teaspoons does the same. Children’s limits are lower.

Can babies have honey?

No. The NHS advises against giving honey to any child under 12 months, because it can contain bacteria that produce toxins in a baby’s gut and cause infant botulism. This applies to every type of honey, raw or pasteurised, and to honey used in cooking.

Written by the Epiclectic Editorial Team
Epiclectic is a UK lifestyle, home and personal finance publication. Nutritional guidance in this article is drawn from NHS and UK Government sources and is general information, not individual dietary advice.

Last updated: September 2026

How Many Grams of Honey in a Teaspoon?