Quarts to Liters Converter

Quarts turn up on engine oil capacities, cookware and US recipes. Here is what common sizes come to, using the US liquid quart of exactly 0.946352946 L:

Oil is a good example of why you convert before you buy. A 5-quart capacity is 4.7318 L. A 4 L jug plus a 1 L bottle covers it with 0.26823 L to spare, and you should not pour that extra in just because you bought it. Fill to the level the manual and dipstick call for.

The two are close, which is exactly why people swap them. A liter is 1.0567 quarts, so if you read quarts as liters you end up with 5.67% too much. On a 5-quart job that is 5 L instead of 4.7318 L.

A better shortcut is to multiply by 0.95, or take the quarts and subtract 5%. It is only 0.39% high: 6 qt × 0.95 = 5.7 L against the exact 5.6781.

The converter uses the US liquid quart. In its own unit list that is a quarter of a US gallon, 2 pints, 4 cups or 32 fluid ounces, all exact. A UK (imperial) quart is larger, about 1.1365 L, so for a UK quart the tool's answer is 16.73% low. The US also has a dry quart for things like berries, which is another size again and not covered here.

That makes it easy to scale a US recipe without leaving the page. Switch the To menu to cups and 1 quart shows as 4, the same count a US cookbook uses.

Results under 1 L show 5 significant figures (1 qt reads 0.94635), and results from 1 to 100 L show 4 decimals. For cooking, round to the nearest 50 ml. A 6-quart slow cooker filled two-thirds full holds 4 quarts, which is 3.7854 L, so call it 3.8 L. For oil and coolant, one decimal is plenty, since you will be reading a scale on the container or a dipstick, not a lab cylinder.