Does Crochet Use More Yarn Than Knitting? The Measured Answer
Not a third more — between 27 and 60 percent, depending entirely on the stitch. The measured numbers, and the two-line formula that replaces them with your own.
Techniques · Purl Wise Editorial · Aug 2026 · 6 min read
Ask whether crochet uses more yarn than knitting and you will be told, confidently, that it uses about a third more. It is a figure repeated so often it stopped needing a source. The truth is messier and far more useful: the craft barely matters, and the stitch decides almost everything.
Interweave settled it with a scale — one chunky yarn, one 6 mm needle, one 6 mm hook, and every swatch worked to exactly the same stitch count, then measured and weighed. What falls out is coverage: how much fabric you get per gram of yarn.
| Square inches of finished fabric per gram of yarn. Higher means thriftier, so the list runs from most economical to least. | |
| Stockinette · knit | 3.03 — the benchmark |
|---|---|
| Double crochet | 2.39 — about 27% more yarn for the same area |
| Half double crochet | 2.23 — about 36% more |
| Garter · knit | 2.08 — about 46% more |
| Single crochet | 1.89 — about 60% more |
| Measured by Interweave, every swatch 20 stitches by 20 rows in the same yarn. | |
Two things jump out of that list. Single crochet really is the expensive one, and the famous one-third badly understates it. But garter stitch is knitting, and it sits down among the crochet — hungrier than everything except single crochet, which rather spoils the premise of the question.
A second experiment weighing four same-sized squares found the same pecking order, though it placed double crochet just under stockinette rather than above it. That disagreement is the honest part: change the yarn, the hands and the tension, and a single stitch moves by thirty points.
The craft is not what decides your yardage. Density is. Garter stitch knitting eats more yarn per square inch than double crochet — so ‘switch to knitting to save yarn’ is advice that can cost you a skein.
The reason is thickness. A crochet stitch is built by drawing the yarn through several times, so it stands proud of the fabric where a knit stitch lies flat. In the test above, single crochet covered a third more ground than the same stitch count in stockinette and weighed twice as much — that yarn went into depth, not area. Taller crochet stitches spend more of it on height that covers ground, which is exactly why double crochet is thriftier than single.
Which means no percentage from an article is ever going to be your answer. Yours is a property of your yarn, your hook and your hands, and it costs one swatch to find.
| 1 · Swatch | Four inches square, in the stitch, hook and yarn you will actually use. Wash and dry it first. |
|---|---|
| 2 · Coverage rate | Swatch area in square inches ÷ its weight in grams |
| 3 · Grams needed | Your project's area ÷ that coverage rate |
| 4 · Yards needed | Those grams × the skein's yards per gram |
| A 30 by 36 inch blanket is 1,080 square inches. A swatch covering 36 square inches and weighing 16 g gives a rate of 2.25 — so 1,080 ÷ 2.25 = 480 g, which at 2.1 yards per gram is about 1,010 yards. Six 210-yard skeins, once you have added a margin. | |
Square inches divided by grams is your coverage rate. Project area divided by that rate is the grams you need. Two measurements and one division, and every yardage question you will ever ask is already answered.
Three things move that number. Stitch height is the cheapest lever — trading single crochet for half double buys back nearly a fifth more coverage per gram, with no change of yarn, hook or tension. A bigger hook makes a looser fabric that covers more ground, at the cost of structure. And texture is the one that ambushes people: bobbles, puffs and post stitches pack extra yarn into the same square inch, so swatch the texture you are actually working, never the plain fabric beside it.
Do it once and you rarely do it again. A coverage rate belongs to you plus that yarn plus that hook, so write it down beside the yarn and every future project in that combination becomes a multiplication rather than an experiment.
A percentage from an article tells you what happened in somebody else's hands. A swatch and a scale tell you what will happen in yours.
That is the same kitchen-scale habit our yardage guide runs on, and My Stash is where the answer lives once you have it: log what a yarn really has left, set the craft toggle to Crochet, and the yardage filter on the Patterns page will only offer you projects that fit inside it. Here are the crochet blankets the maths above was worked for.
Sources
- Interweave — Yarn Usage for Knitting vs. Crochet: A Science Experiment — the swatch weights and square-inches-per-gram figures quoted above
- The Flagel Knitting Files — Yarn Usage II: Crochet vs. Knit — the second set of measurements, on four 6.25-inch squares
- Craft Yarn Council — Standard Yarn Weight System — gauge bands and hook sizes by yarn weight