How many kilograms are in 1 liter?

"Liters to Kilograms" Calculator
How many kilograms in
L

How many kilograms are in 1 liter?

Answer

It depends on the density of the substance:
from 0.51 kg (LPG) to 2 kg (sand)

The question does not name a substance, and there is no single number for it: a liter fixes the volume, the weight comes from the density. For instance, 1 liter of water is 1 kg, while 1 liter of gasoline is 0.74 kg. The table below covers every substance.

Why a liter has no single weight

A liter measures volume, a kilogram measures mass, and density is what ties them together: how many kilograms one liter of this particular substance comes to. The coincidence that makes people treat them as one thing is historical — in 1795 the gram was defined as the mass of one cubic centimeter of water, so a liter of water weighed a kilogram by construction. For anything else the equality breaks.

The extremes of this page make it obvious: one liter of LPG weighs 0.51 kg, while one liter of densely packed sand weighs 2 kg — four times more at the very same volume.

The other way round: how much room a kilogram takes

This page starts from a volume and answers in kilograms. The opposite question — how many liters a given mass comes to — is what the kilograms to liters calculator is for. Both read the same density table, so the two pages agree wherever the answer is volume times density.

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About "Liters to Kilograms" Calculator

This calculator converts liters to kilograms through the density of the substance: mass equals volume times density. A liter on its own has no weight — a liter of water weighs almost exactly a kilogram, a liter of honey close to one and a half, and a liter of gasoline about three quarters. For example, it can help you find out how many kilograms are in 1 liter? For bulk materials — cement, sand, soil, coal, vegetables — density depends on how the material is packed, so the page prints a range and names the state it was measured in, instead of passing one number off as a physical constant.
"Liters to Kilograms" Calculator
How many kilograms in
L

How much 1 liter of each substance weighs

SubstanceMassDensity, kg/L
Beer1.01 kg1.01
Cement1.25–1.4 kg1.25–1.4
Coal0.65–1.27 kg0.654–1.266
Cucumbers0.62–0.64 kg0.62–0.64
Diesel0.83 kg0.834
Gasoline0.74 kg0.74
Honey1.42 kg1.42
Juice1.06 kg1.06
LPG0.51 kg0.51
Milk1.03 kg1.03
Mineral spirits0.78 kg0.78
Motor oil0.85 kg0.85
Sand1.65–2 kg1.65–2
Soil1.3–1.5 kg1.3–1.5
Sugar0.72–0.9 kg0.72–0.9
Tomatoes0.55–0.6 kg0.55–0.6
Vegetable oil0.92 kg0.92
Wall primer1 kg1
Water1 kg0.998

FAQ

How many kilograms are in 1 liter?

It depends on the density of the substance: from 0.51 kg (LPG) to 2 kg (sand)

Why does 1 liter not have one weight?

Because a liter measures volume and a kilogram measures mass, and what connects them is the density of the substance. The volume stays the same while the weight does not: across the table below it runs from 0.51 to 2 kg. That is why this page answers with a table, and gives a single number only once the substance is named.

How much does 1 liter of water weigh?

Water is the closest thing to the everyday rule that a liter equals a kilogram: 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg. The density of water at 20 °C is 0.998 kg/L, two thousandths short of one kilogram per liter. It is an example, not the answer to the question in the title — every other substance gives a different number, and those are in the table.

What is the heaviest and the lightest at this volume?

The lightest is LPG at 0.51 kg, the heaviest is sand at 2 kg. For bulk materials the upper figure assumes dense packing: sand gains about a fifth, soil about a seventh and cement about an eighth depending on whether it was settled or poured loose.

See Also