Tool
How Much Does an Egg Weigh?
Look up the real weight of a large, medium, jumbo, or extra-large egg — whole, white only, or yolk only — for recipes that measure eggs by weight.
How Much Does an Egg Weigh?
57g
In shell
50g
Out of shell
~30g
White only
~20g
Yolk only
Based on USDA egg-size grading (minimum weight per dozen). Individual eggs vary — use a kitchen scale for recipes where exact egg weight matters (e.g. macarons, soufflés).
Recipes that measure eggs by weight (common in precise baking, especially recipes translated from grams-forward regions) run into a real ambiguity: "one egg" isn't one fixed weight — a Jumbo egg and a Small egg differ by nearly a third in mass, and a recipe calling for "2 large eggs" is assuming a specific USDA size class most people don't think about while shopping.
This tool looks up the real, USDA-classified weight for each standard US egg size — Jumbo, Extra Large, Large, Medium, Small, and Peewee — both as a whole egg and broken down into white-only and yolk-only weights, since some recipes (meringues, custards) call for just one component.
It's built for the specific gap between "a recipe says 3 large eggs" and "I have a carton labeled Extra Large" — a mismatch that matters more than it seems for recipes sensitive to liquid ratio, like a custard or a delicate cake batter.
How the How Much Does an Egg Weigh? works
USDA classifies eggs by minimum weight per dozen, not per individual egg: Jumbo (30 oz/dozen → 2.5 oz / ~71g each), Extra Large (27 oz/dozen → 2.25 oz / ~64g), Large (24 oz/dozen → 2 oz / ~57g), Medium (21 oz/dozen → 1.75 oz / ~50g), Small (18 oz/dozen → 1.5 oz / ~43g), and Peewee (15 oz/dozen → 1.25 oz / ~36g). These are in-shell weights — the classification a carton is actually labeled with.
Once an egg is cracked, the shell (roughly 10–12% of total weight) is gone, so the usable out-of-shell weight is smaller than the in-shell classification weight — a Large egg's ~57g in-shell figure becomes roughly 50g of usable white-plus-yolk.
Within that out-of-shell weight, the split between white and yolk is roughly consistent regardless of size: the white makes up about 60% of the total (around 30g for a Large egg) and the yolk about 33-36% (around 18g for a Large egg), with the shell accounting for the remainder.
Worked example: a recipe written for Large eggs, but you only have Extra Large
A recipe calling for 3 Large eggs is assuming roughly 3 × 50g = 150g of egg (out of shell). If you only have Extra Large eggs (~64g in-shell, roughly 57g out of shell each), 3 of them give you roughly 171g — about 21g more than the recipe expects, or nearly half an egg's worth of extra liquid.
For most recipes that's a small enough difference to ignore, but for a precise custard, delicate soufflé, or a recipe already near its liquid-ratio limit, weighing out 150g of beaten egg from your Extra Large eggs (rather than using all three whole) gets you closer to what the recipe actually intended than trusting the egg count alone.
Edge cases this tool handles correctly
- Egg size varies within a carton
- USDA's weight classification is a MINIMUM per dozen, not a guarantee every individual egg in the carton is identical — there's real variation egg-to-egg even within one size class, so these figures are a reliable average, not an exact promise for any one egg you crack.
- Recipes that don't specify a size
- When a US recipe just says "eggs" with no size specified, Large is the near-universal default assumption in American recipe writing — if your eggs are a different size and the recipe is precision-sensitive, it's worth converting by weight rather than assuming the count alone is equivalent.
- Freezing separated eggs changes handling, not weight
- Egg whites and yolks can be frozen separately (whites for up to 12 months, yolks with a pinch of salt or sugar whisked in to prevent gelling) — freezing doesn't change their weight, but the yolk's texture changes enough that unwhisked frozen yolks can become unusable even though they still weigh the same.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Large egg always exactly 50g?
50g out-of-shell is a practical, commonly used average, not an exact universal figure — the USDA classification (24 oz per dozen, or 2 oz / ~57g per egg) is an in-shell minimum, and out-of-shell weight varies somewhat egg to egg.
Why does the egg white weigh more than the yolk if the yolk looks bigger?
The white is more voluminous but the yolk is denser — by weight, a typical Large egg's white (~30g) outweighs its yolk (~18g), even though the yolk can look like it takes up more of the egg when you crack one open.
My recipe calls for eggs by weight in grams, not by count — why?
It's a precision convention, especially common in recipes translated from countries that measure baking by weight by default — it removes the ambiguity of egg size entirely by specifying the exact mass of egg needed.
Does egg size affect baking chemistry, or just quantity?
Mostly quantity — egg size mainly changes how much liquid, fat, and protein you're adding, which affects moisture and structure in a recipe sensitive to those ratios, rather than changing the fundamental chemistry of how eggs behave when heated or whipped.