How much juice is in an orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit
Conservative juice-yield ranges per fruit, where the numbers come from, and how many fruits to buy for the glasses you need. With the method stated openly.
Why the number matters at the shop
The question that decides your shopping basket is not how good the juicer is. It is how many oranges make a glass. Get that wrong and you either carry home twice the fruit you needed or run out halfway through a pitcher.
The honest answer is a range, not a figure. A thin-skinned juice orange gives up far more than a thick-skinned eating one. A lime at the end of the season gives less than one at the start. A warm fruit rolled on the counter gives more than a cold one straight from the fridge.
Where our numbers come from
We did not invent these figures and we do not claim them as our own measurements. Each row below is taken from a published document that we read ourselves: the portion weights the USDA publishes in FoodData Central, and the yield notes the University of California Master Food Preserver programme prints in its citrus handouts. The section headed Method lists each source with the sentence it actually contains.
The result is deliberately conservative: plan with the low end and you will not be short. And where no source gives us a per-fruit figure, the row is missing rather than guessed. Today that means limes and grapefruit are absent from the table, which is annoying for margarita season and still better than a made-up number.
How to get the high end of the range
Three habits move you from the bottom of the range to the top. Roll the fruit firmly under your palm before cutting: it breaks the juice sacs loose. Cut level through the middle, not at an angle, so the whole face meets the cone. And press once with intent rather than three times gently, whether that press comes from a motor or from a lever.
Room-temperature fruit yields better than fridge-cold fruit. If your citrus lives in the fridge, take out what you need twenty minutes before you juice.
What the shell should look like
A finished half should be pale, flat and light, with the membranes visible and dry. If the shell still feels heavy or the segments still look plump, the press did not get everything: check that the fruit was centered and that you pressed straight down rather than rolling the fruit around the cone.
Buying for a crowd
Multiply the low end of the range, then add one fruit for the glass you will drink while juicing. The calculator on the home page does that arithmetic, including the warehouse-club lime bag that most cocktail nights start with.
Method, and what is missing
Every figure below comes from a document we read ourselves, and each one is named with what it actually says. We publish a range, not a single number, and we do not present any of it as our own laboratory measurement.
- USDA FoodData Central, Orange juice, raw (SR Legacy 169098), portion “1 fruit yields”. Read 24 August 2026. It says:
1 fruit yields = 86 g
- UC Master Food Preserver Program (UC ANR), Preserving Citrus, Spiced Orange Jelly recipe. Read 24 August 2026. It says:
2 cups orange juice (about 5 medium oranges)
- UC Master Food Preserver Program (UC ANR), Citrus: Preserve It, Serve It. Read 24 August 2026. It says:
In general, lemons yield: 1 medium lemon: almost 1/4 cup of juice; 3 medium lemons: about 1/2 cup; 6 medium lemons: just over 1 cup
- UC Master Food Preserver Program (UC ANR), Preserving Citrus, Meyer Lemon Thyme Jelly recipe. Read 24 August 2026. It says:
2 pounds Meyer lemons (about 12-14 small) to equal 2 cups juice
What is not in the table: lime (we have no published per-fruit figure from a source we have read ourselves), grapefruit (same: no per-fruit figure we can point at). We would rather leave a row out than print a number nobody measured. When we find a figure we can point at, the row appears here.
| Fruit | Typical juice per fruit | Fruits per 8 oz glass |
|---|---|---|
| Orange | 2.9–3.2 fl oz | 3–3 |
| Lemon | 1.2–2 fl oz | 4–7 |
Where to go next
About the author
Casey Whitmore writes the guides on this site. Casey squeezes citrus most days of the week, on every juicer we make, and keeps notes on what works, what breaks and what is worth the counter space. No certificates, no titles: just a lot of juiced limes.