Plastic Cup Sizes: PET, PP and PLA Cold Cups by ml and Rim

An inquiry that reads 16 oz plastic cups with lids, 50,000 pieces looks finished. It names a size, a product and a quantity. It has not yet named a cup.

In the cold range we publish, “16 oz” is nine separate products. Five are PET, sitting on five different rim diameters — 89, 90, 92, 95 and 98 mm — and holding 480, 530, 510, 530 and 540 ml. A lid pairs to the rim, so those five cups take five different lids. The other four are PP and PLA, on rims of their own.

Then the part that catches out buyers who already know the rim rule. PET is usually where a cold drinks program starts, because it is the clear one. It is also the material that costs you an extra lid line: a 12 / 16 / 20 / 24 oz menu fits on a single rim in PP and on a single rim in PLA, and in our published PET range it fits on no single rim at all.

Below is the PET dimension sheet in full and the arithmetic behind that last paragraph. If the fork in front of you is hot versus cold instead, a 16 oz latte and a 16 oz iced coffee are two cup lines and two lid lines, and our guide to ordering cups and lids together settles that one. Everything below assumes you are already on the cold side of it.

The milliliter is the specification, the ounce is the SKU name

Every milliliter figure on our size tables is brim-full capacity: the cup filled to the rim, measured off the production specification. It is not a serving recommendation, and it is the number worth putting on a purchase order.

The ounce label works differently. It names a SKU inside a family, and what the cup holds is decided by its body — base diameter, height, and therefore how hard it tapers. On one rim, two labels can run in the opposite direction to their capacity:

• 89 mm. The “14 oz” holds 390 ml, the “12 oz” holds 400 ml. The 14 oz is taller, 115 mm against 108 mm, but stands on a smaller base — 55 mm against 57 mm — so it narrows faster and finishes smaller.
• 90 mm. The “18 oz” holds 500 ml, the “16 oz” holds 530 ml. Simpler geometry here: the 18 oz is the shorter cup, 136 mm against 143 mm.

Eight of the nineteen published PET rows sit below their nominal US fluid ounce, too: a nominal 14 oz is 414 ml and ours is 390 or 400, a nominal 20 oz is 591 ml and ours is 550 on the 89 mm rim. None of that is an error. Ounce labels are the industry’s SKU convention and every supplier uses them, ours included. The consequence is narrow and easy to act on: quote a cold cup by milliliters and rim diameter, and treat the ounce label as the name of the row you are pointing at.

PET cold cup dimensions, grouped by rim diameter

Nineteen rows across six rim diameters, from the PET cold cup line. Volume is brim-full. Packing is 1,000 pieces per carton on every row.

Rim Ø	Size	Volume	Height	Base Ø
78 mm	7 oz	200 ml	81 mm	42 mm
78 mm	9 oz	260 ml	103 mm	42 mm
89 mm	12 oz	400 ml	108 mm	57 mm
89 mm	14 oz	390 ml	115 mm	55 mm
89 mm	16 oz	480 ml	137 mm	52 mm
89 mm	20 oz	550 ml	160 mm	51 mm
90 mm	9 oz	260 ml	77 mm	55 mm
90 mm	12 oz	430 ml	118 mm	58 mm
90 mm	14 oz	400 ml	109 mm	59 mm
90 mm	16 oz	530 ml	143 mm	58 mm
90 mm	18 oz	500 ml	136 mm	59 mm
92 mm	12 oz	400 ml	105 mm	60 mm
92 mm	16 oz	510 ml	130 mm	60 mm
95 mm	12 oz	420 ml	107 mm	57 mm
95 mm	16 oz	530 ml	123 mm	63 mm
95 mm	20 oz	620 ml	145 mm	63 mm
98 mm	16 oz	540 ml	121 mm	62 mm
98 mm	20 oz	620 ml	144 mm	60 mm
98 mm	24 oz	700 ml	154 mm	60 mm

Read the rim column before the ounce column: it is what your lids, sleeves and sealing film answer to. Two things fall out of that. First, “16 oz” appears in five of the six groups and covers 60 ml between the smallest and the largest. Second, the 90 mm and 95 mm 16 oz rows both read 530 ml — identical volume, different rim, different lid. Equal milliliters do not make two cups the same cup, which is why both numbers belong on the order.

One boundary: this is the range we publish and hold tooling for, described on the page itself as the popular sizes. Dimensions outside it are a conversation rather than a row you can order.

The four-size menu: one rim in PP and PLA, two in PET

Take the most ordinary cold menu there is — 12, 16, 20 and 24 oz — and ask how many rim diameters it needs.

In PP, one. The whole injection range holds to Φ90, all four sizes, which is also what keeps it compatible with standard sealing equipment. That table is already published in full, with weights and carton counts, in our chart of every standard cup size we make, so it is not repeated here.

In PLA, one. The 89 mm group carries 12, 16, 20 and 24 oz at 380, 480, 550 and 640 ml, plus several sizes in between.

In PET, two at minimum. Our 24 oz appears at 98 mm and nowhere else, and the 98 mm group publishes no 12 oz. The rims that do carry 12, 16 and 20 oz, 89 mm and 95 mm, carry no 24 oz. No single published PET rim takes the whole menu, so a four-size PET program opens a second rim family — and a second rim family is a second lid line at 10,000 pieces per size, on top of the cups.

It is not that PET is a fussy material. It is that PET is where we publish the most variety: six rim diameters against PP’s one, with the sizes spread across them. That variety helps when you are matching a cup to a drink, a machine or lids you already stock. It costs you when you want one lid to cover everything.

The compostable case is easy to get backwards. PLA’s four rims — 78, 89, 92 and 95 mm — are a subset of PET’s six, so nothing about a PLA program forces an unusual diameter. What forces a separate lid line there is the lid material: if the point of the program is that the cup composts, a conventional lid on top of it undoes the point.

All of that arithmetic describes the sizes on our own tables, not what any supplier anywhere can produce.

What to send instead of an ounce number

Four fields, and the quote comes back costed rather than qualified:

1. Volume in milliliters, brim-full — the number from the table, not a serving size.
2. Rim diameter in millimeters, because that is what the lid, the sleeve and the sealing film pair to.
3. Material (PET, PP or PLA), since the same label on the same rim can be two different volumes across materials.
4. Quantity per size, since minimums are counted per size and not per order.

This is where “16 oz plastic cups with lids” comes apart. The label is real, the intent is clear, and there is still no product in it: five PET rims answer to it, the lid pairs to whichever one you meant, and nobody on our side can guess which. Add the milliliters and the rim and the same sentence becomes an order line.

Point three earns its place on one comparison. A “12 oz” PET cup on the 90 mm rim holds 430 ml. A “12 oz” PP cup, also on a 90 mm rim, holds 360 ml. Same label, same diameter, 70 ml apart, because they are formed by different processes into different bodies. Switching material while keeping the label is the moment to check the milliliters rather than assume the recipe carries over.

What each material costs you: minimums, temperature, clarity

Minimums come in tiers, and which tier you land in usually depends on printing:

Material	Unprinted stock	Printed	Third tier
PET	From 1,000 pcs/size	10,000 pcs/size, offset or digital	rPET with 30–100% recycled content, 30,000 pcs/size
PP	From 1,000 pcs/size	10,000 pcs/size, offset	In-mold labeling, 50,000 pcs/size
PLA	30,000 pcs/size	30,000 pcs/size	—

The tier that catches franchise buyers is the PP one. In-mold labeling fuses the label into the wall during molding rather than applying it afterward, and it asks for 50,000 pieces per size — five times the offset tier. Worth knowing before you specify it across four sizes.

Temperature sorts the three materials faster than anything else:

• PET: −20 °C to 60 °C. Cold only. It softens above 60 °C, and no lid rating changes that — the ceiling belongs to the cup.
• PLA: −20 °C to 45 °C, heat deflection around 55 °C. Cold only, and the narrowest window of the three.
• PP: −10 °C to 120 °C. The only one of the three that is not cold-only, and the reason it is the heat-seal cup. Its limit sits at the other end: −10 °C is warmer than a freezer runs, so PP cups are not stock for frozen product.

On appearance, PET runs above 90% light transmission against 85–90% for PLA: a small gap on a plain cup, a visible one on a layered drink, and the usual reason a juice or bubble tea program stays with PET. Compostable cold cups are industrially compostable, meaning a commercial facility rather than a home pile or a landfill — worth stating that precisely in your own customer-facing copy. Food-contact test documentation is held to the US FDA standard and available on request; ask us to confirm what can be supplied for your destination market before you specify, not after.

If the menu is bubble tea, one decision comes before the size list: your sealing machine sets the rim, and the bubble tea sizing guide works that through with sealer compatibility attached.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many milliliters is a 16 oz plastic cup?

In our published range, 480 to 540 ml, depending on which cup you mean. PET: 480 ml at 89 mm, 530 at 90 mm, 510 at 92 mm, 530 at 95 mm, 540 at 98 mm. PP: 500 ml at Φ90. PLA: 480, 500 and 520 ml at 89, 92 and 95 mm. All brim-full figures.

Which lid goes on a 16 oz plastic cup?

Whichever one matches the rim diameter, which is why the ounce label cannot answer this on its own. Nine published products carry a 16 oz label across five rim diameters. Specify the rim in millimeters and the pairing becomes automatic — the cold cup lids are indexed by rim diameter, not by ounce label.

Do PET, PP and PLA cold cups share the same rim diameters?

They draw from the same six values, but not in the same numbers. PET publishes all six: 78, 89, 90, 92, 95 and 98 mm. PLA publishes four of them — 78, 89, 92 and 95 mm — and PP publishes one, Φ90. Switching material rarely means an exotic diameter, but it does change which sizes you can get on the rim you have standardized on.

What is the largest cold cup in your size tables?

24 oz: 700 ml on the 98 mm PET rim, 700 ml at Φ90 in PP, and 640 ml on the 89 mm PLA rim. Anything above that is a tooling and availability question rather than a row on the table, so ask before you specify it.

Can a plastic cold cup take a hot drink?

Not PET or PLA — rated to 60 °C and 45 °C respectively, both cold service only. PP reaches 120 °C, which is what makes it the heat-seal cup, but it runs here as a cold cup line for iced and sealed drinks.

Where to go from here

Write the size list the way the specification reads: material, rim diameter, milliliters, quantity per size. Four fields, and the questions that usually come back with the first reply are answered before anyone sends them. Send it with a quote request and what comes back is a costed order rather than another round of clarifications.