Eurolux

How much juice is in an orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit

Casey Whitmore · Published 24 August 2026 · Updated 24 August 2026

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.

A press from the ELCJ-1600 / Power-Pro range, the machine this guide is written around.
A press from the ELCJ-1600 / Power-Pro range, the machine this guide is written around.

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.

The shell after one committed pull: flat, pale and light.
The shell after one committed pull: flat, pale and light.

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. Each is a range rather than a single number, because fruit varies more than a table can.

All four fruits now have a published figure behind them, and the two added last (lime and grapefruit) rest on a single source each. That is why their rows show one number rather than a range: inventing a spread around a single measurement would dress an estimate up as a finding. If a second published figure turns up, the row becomes a range and this paragraph changes with it.

Ranges taken from the documents listed above, read 24 August 2026. Fruit size varies more than variety, so plan with the low end.
FruitTypical juice per fruitFruits per 8 oz glass
Orange2.9–3.2 fl oz3
Lemon1.2–2 fl oz4–7
Lime1.5 fl oz6
Grapefruit6.6 fl oz2

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.