How Many Servings Is Your Cake?
Cake serving counts come down to one thing: how big a slice you cut. The baking industry works from two standards — party servings, cut about 1½ × 2 inches, and wedding servings, cut slimmer at 1 × 2 inches. Because the slices are smaller, a cake's wedding count runs higher than its party count on every size except the very smallest. This cake serving calculator uses the published Wilton chart for 4-inch-tall cakes, the same reference professional bakeries plan with.
Pick a single cake to feed a party, or stack up to four tiers to plan a wedding or celebration cake — the calculator adds the tiers together and draws them to scale so you can see the shape you're building. A classic three-tier of 10-inch, 8-inch and 6-inch rounds serves about 74 wedding portions; swap the bottom tier for a 12-inch and you clear 100.
Cake servings by size — the full Wilton chart
| Cake size | Party servings (1½×2") | Wedding servings (1×2") |
|---|---|---|
| 6" round | 12 | 12 |
| 8" round | 20 | 24 |
| 9" round | 24 | 32 |
| 10" round | 28 | 38 |
| 12" round | 40 | 56 |
| 14" round | 63 | 78 |
| 16" round | 77 | 100 |
| 6" square | 12 | 18 |
| 8" square | 20 | 32 |
| 10" square | 30 | 50 |
| 12" square | 48 | 72 |
| 14" square | 63 | 98 |
| 16" square | 80 | 128 |
| 7×11" sheet | 24 | 32 |
| 9×13" sheet | 36 | 50 |
| 11×15" sheet | 54 | 74 |
| 12×18" sheet | 72 | 98 |
Every size above links to its own page — the full comparison, both slice sizes, and the calculator preset to that cake. Planning from a head count instead? Jump straight to the guest-count pages:
10 guests · 15 guests · 20 guests · 25 guests · 30 guests · 40 guests · 50 guests · 60 guests · 75 guests · 100 guests · 150 guests
Round vs. square vs. sheet
Square and sheet cakes serve more than rounds of the same width because they have no wasted corners — an 8-inch square yields about 32 wedding servings versus 24 for an 8-inch round. Sheet cakes are the most efficient of all for feeding a crowd from a single layer, which is why they're the go-to for office parties and large events. If you're deciding how much batter each tier needs, the pan volume calculator gives every pan's capacity at the standard two-thirds fill.
Plan with a little margin
These counts are a reliable planning guide, but real life is messier than a chart: end pieces, uneven cuts, and guests who come back for seconds all eat into the total. Round up rather than down — it's far better to have a few extra slices than to run short. If you're matching a cake to a recipe written for a different pan, our cake pan converter handles that side of the math.
Sheet cake sizes: full, half and quarter
Bakery sheet sizes confuse everyone because home "sheet cakes" are usually a 9x13. The commercial sizes: a quarter sheet is 9x13 (about 36 party servings on the chart's 1½x2-inch slice), a half sheet is 12x18, sometimes 13x18 (about 72), and a full sheet is 18x26 — not on the Wilton chart, but the same slice math puts it around 150, and bakeries cutting bigger 2x2 or 2x3-inch pieces quote far less. For a crowd, two half sheets are usually easier to transport, cut and serve than one full sheet.
Taller cakes serve more
The Wilton counts assume the classic 4-inch-tall, two-layer cake. Modern three- and four-layer cakes running 6 inches tall serve about 50% more — each slice gets cut in half horizontally or simply feeds more per slice. If you bake tall, size down a tier rather than over-ordering.