An Oreo cookie is 12mm tall, which is close to half an inch. I located 12mm thickness of the Originals. The 4mm cookie, 4mm cream filling, 4mm cookie structure has been the hallmark of the Original Oreo since its launch in 1912 by Nabisco, and it has not changed significantly over the last 112 years, despite numerous reformulations, flavour extensions and marketing campaigns.
12mm equals around 0.47 inches in imperial units. The diameter of the cookie across the face is 1.75 inches (4.45 cm). The two numbers are the height and width of the Original Oreo in inches, 0.47 and 1.75.
Key Takeaways
- The standard Original Oreo cookie is 12mm (around 0.47 inches or just under 1/2 inch tall) with a 4mm chocolate wafer and 4mm cream filling, a ratio of 1:1:1 in terms of thickness and weight!
- Although the name says otherwise, Oreo Thins are actually thinner cookies, just 7mm (0.28 inches) high, and have a much higher cream-to-cookie ratio.
- Double Stuf Oreos are not double the height of a standard Oreo, but rather about 14mm (0.55 inches) tall, according to verified independent measurements.
- Mega Stuf Oreos are also about 14mm tall by thickness (as measured from top to bottom) which is almost the same height as Double Stuf, since the extra filling material is added across the width and not up the length.
- The diameter of the standard Original, Double Stuf, Mega Stuf and Most Stuf Oreo is 1.75 inches (4.45 cm) across.
- An average Oreo is 11.3 grams (around 0.4 oz), and each part (cookie, creme, cookie) is about 4 grams and 4mm thick.
- The Original Oreo was introduced in 1912. It has hardly changed in size in more than 100 years, and is one of the most size-consistent mass-produced food products in history.
Oreo Height by Type – Full Comparison Table
| Oreo Type | Height (mm) | Height (inches) | Diameter (inches) | Notes |
| Oreo Thins | 7mm | 0.28 in | 1.75 in | 2mm wafers; higher creme-to-cookie ratio than Original |
| Original Oreo | 12mm | 0.47 in | 1.75 in | 4mm wafer + 4mm creme + 4mm wafer |
| Double Stuf Oreo | ~14mm | ~0.55 in | 1.75 in | Not double the height — extra creme spreads wider |
| Mega Stuf Oreo | ~14mm | ~0.55 in | 1.75 in | Virtually same height as Double Stuf |
| Most Stuf Oreo | ~16mm | ~0.63 in | 1.75 in | Maximum creme variant; tallest standard Oreo |
| Oreo Mini | ~8mm | ~0.31 in | ~1.0 in | Smaller diameter and thinner than Original |
| Custom double-cream | ~12–13mm | ~0.47–0.51 in | 1.75 in | Custom fillings add width before height |
Measurements based on independent caliper measurements and comparative analysis. There is slight variation from batch to batch (minors).
The Original Oreo: A Perfectly Proportioned Cookie
The accuracy of the Original Oreo is even more surprising than it sounds. The 4g, 4mm cookie in the Original Oreo is the same for all other thickness levels, so the Thins are the only cookie that has its own wafer. All of the Original, Double Stuf, Mega Stuf and Most Stuf are made with the same 4mm thick chocolate wafer.
This implies that the wafer has not undergone any change over a period of over 100 years of manufacture. The difference between the two Oreo varieties is almost all in the cream filling, which is both the quantity and density of it, and not the cookie that contains the filling. The 4mm wafer is fixed, the creme is variable.
A 1:1:1 thickness ratio (top wafer, creme, bottom wafer) is the same as a 1:1:1 weight ratio. The weight of each 4mm piece is about 4 grams. The total weight of the cookie is about 12 grams (the actual listed weight is 11.3 grams, due to slight variations in each batch and in the conditions for measuring). The combination of thickness and weight (1g per mm per piece that’s the original Oreo) is what makes the Original Oreo an unexpectedly elegant piece of food engineering.
Oreo Thins: Shorter and Creamier
Oreo Thins are the thinnest of the Oreo cookies, and the only variety with a re-designed wafer.
Oreo Thins are 7mm thick, with 2mm of cookies, which are half the thickness of the cookies in the Original Oreos. One of the first interesting things discovered in the independent analysis was that, contrary to their name, Thins actually have more creme than Originals.
The Thins wafer is 2mm thick, half that of the Original wafer. The creme is not half the size, but rather a smaller proportion of the cookie, in a Thin compared to an Original. It’s up to the Oreo lover whether this will make Thins more or less satisfying a question that has been lingering since the launch of the Thins variety in 2015.
Oreo Thins are significantly flatter than other Oreo varieties at 7mm tall and 1.75 inches in diameter. In profile, they are more like a traditional thin biscuit than the unique sandwich-cookie shape of the Original.
Double Stuf: Not Quite Double the Height
One of the most controversial and measured cookies in American food culture, the Double Stuf Oreo is in part responsible for a high school maths project that went national news in 2013.
A math class at Queensbury, New York’s high school says the Double Stuf Oreo isn’t really twice the size of the standard version. It’s really only 1.86 times smaller. Math teacher Dan Anderson said his kids were taken aback. If the dimensions don’t necessarily mean double, then Nabisco claims that its Double Stuf recipe contains twice the cream, which would make up for the difference in calories.
The NPR story and the media that followed it proved to be accurate; Double Stuf Oreos are indeed taller than Originals – but not twice as tall.
At 14mm, Mega Stuf are actually the same thickness as Double Stuf. The extra creme in Mega Stuf is not thicker – it’s just a bigger area.
This is the main principle behind the working of Oreo creme scaling. The more creme Nabisco puts in a cookie, the more it spreads out in the cookie sandwich as well as piling up. Which means that the difference in height between the standard Oreo and Double Stuf is not as great as most people think, and the difference between the Double Stuf and Mega Stuf is almost negligible.
What is 1.86x in real life?
The Original Oreo creme is 4mm, so 1.86 times that creme would be about 7.4mm. The two 4mm wafers, when added to the 15.4mm measured in the independent test, would give a true 1.86x Double Stuf at around 15.4mm. The difference is in line with Nabisco’s assertion that the weight of filling doubles, but that the weight is spread through the width, not the height.
In reality: A Double Stuf Oreo is approximately 2mm tall, not 4mm tall, like a doubling of the creme layer would imply.
The Maximum Oreo Mega Stuf and Most Stuf
The upper end of the standard Oreo creme range is Mega Stuf Oreos (2013) and Most Stuf Oreos (2018).
Mega Stuf is 14mm thick, the thickness of Double Stuf. The result for the caliper measurement is counterintuitive: a cookie that has a lot more filling than a Double Stuf is the same height as a Double Stuf. That additional filling is true to form, both in weight and in calorie content, and presents itself in the cookie’s footprint, not its height.
The maximum creme loading of any standard variety of Oreo is in the most indulgent varieties, the most popular being most Stuf Oreos, which grow to the height of about 16mm the tallest of the standard varieties at that extreme filling level, the creme load has to start to add height to the Oreo, as the creme cannot be spread out horizontally across the wafer diameter.
Oreo Dimensions in Context: What 12mm Looks Like
An Oreo is small. The number is more meaningful when compared to the height of everyday objects, like 12mm is taller than a pencil.
- Three layers of Original Oreo make about 36mm or just under 1.5 inches.
- Ten Original Oreos stacked up are about 120mm in height, which is just under 5 inches, or the height of a standard glass of wine.
- About 1,200mm, or 1.2 metres or just under 4 feet is equal to one hundred stacked Original Oreos.
- The height of one standard Oreo is about the same as the height of the end of a standard pencil.
The typical Oreo is less than one-third the height of a typical 500ml water bottle, which is about 8 inches tall more about that in the Shani Levni guide to how tall is a water bottle.
What makes these comparisons satisfying is the everyday measurement instinct, the need to know how tall something is compared to what you already know, which works just as well with very different sized objects. You can visualise an Oreo cookie at 12mm, and a standard door frame at 82 inches or a water bottle at 8 inches, and the same framework works for both. The Shani Levni dimensions guides follow the same approach as the apply of the average door, namely starting from a simple question and then proceeding to a precise and useful answer; the starting point is the dimensions of a door.
The History of Oreo Dimensions: 112 Years of Consistency
The Original Oreo was created by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) on March 6, 1912. Oreo was first introduced in 1912 and has since been the best-selling cookie in the United States. The cookies are about 1.75 inches in diameter.
It’s been over 112 years since that 1.75″ diameter figure was first produced and it has not been modified. The 4mm wafer thickness is not available for both. The only thing that has evolved is the type of fillings available around that fixed wafer, the flavors available on the cream filling, and the few seasonal and licensed versions of the Oreo that have been introduced in other forms.
It’s actually quite remarkable that the Original Oreo is the same size over 100 years.It’s a remarkable consistency for a mass-produced food product over 100 years. Consumer products typically adjust size, shape or weight when the cost of ingredients increases, manufacturing becomes more efficient, or consumers change their preferences. The Oreo’s 4mm thickness and 1.75″ width have held up through the Great Depression, two world wars, metrication, and the entire history of television, the Internet and social media.
The design has not been altered since it works well. The size is just right for dunking, but still big enough to satisfy cravings.
The dunking dimension is the one that is relevant here. A 12mm cookie fits perfectly into a standard glass of milk with space to be fully covered without the hand dipping in the milk. It may have been designed intentionally or it may have been a happy accident over the first few decades of the product’s life, but the outcome is a cookie that fits the physical size of one of its most popular forms of consumption.
How Oreo Dimensions Affect Recipes
The size of a typical Oreo is important for home bakers and recipe writers in a variety of practical applications.
Oreo Crusts
Whole Oreos are used to make a standard Oreo pie or cheesecake crust, usually 24-30 cookies for a 9″ pie pan. The filling weight and moisture content, not height, is important for the texture of the crust; knowing the total cookie count (and therefore the approximate number of 12mm x 44.5mm cookie units) will help to determine how many full packets are required for a recipe.
Oreo Stack Decorations
When making cakes with stacked Oreos or stacks of Oreos, it is important to know the height of each cookie to determine the height of a stack of a certain number of cookies. A tower of 10 cookies will be about 120mm (4.7 inches) tall as a topper for a cake without taking any structural factors into account.
Oreo-Stuffed Cookies
If the cookie is the popular “slutty brownie” or “Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookie” variety, there is enough dough on both sides to cover the 12mm height of the Original without the Oreo working its way up through the dough. The amount of dough on either side of the Oreo is about 8-10mm.
Chocolate-Dipped Oreos
The amount of coating thickness on a dipped Original is about 2-3mm, so the total height of a dipped Original is about 14-15mm. The same increase in diameter occurs with the coating.
The thickness of a chocolate-coated Oreo can vary by amount of chocolate coating, but could be an extra 0.1 inches (or around 2.5mm).
What do the numbers actually mean in relation to the Cream to Cookie Ratio?
When the Oreo varieties are analyzed independently, it turns out that the cookie with the most filling is the smallest!
Even though they’re called “Thins,” Oreo Thins actually have more creme than Originals. Original Oreo is a 1:1:1 ratio of cookie:creme:cookie. The Thins are 2mm wafers with a comparatively high creme content.
The data from independent measurement of all standard varieties:
| Oreo Type | Creme Thickness (approx.) | Total Height (approx.) | Creme as % of Total |
| Oreo Thins | 3mm | 7mm | 43% |
| Original Oreo | 4mm | 12mm | 33% |
| Double Stuf Oreo | ~6mm | ~14mm | ~43% |
| Mega Stuf Oreo | ~6mm | ~14mm | ~43% |
| Most Stuf Oreo | ~8mm | ~16mm | ~50% |
The creme-to-total ratio of the Thins and Double Stuf varieties is essentially the same, and that’s counterintuitive: Thins is a lighter cookie than the Double Stuf, but has the same proportion of creme. This is because the proportion of the reduction in the wafer is larger than the reduction in the cream of the Thins.
What are the dimensions of Oreo?
How many Oreos would stack to the height of the Eiffel Tower?
The height of the Eiffel Tower is 330 metres. If a stack of 27,500 Original Oreos is 12mm tall, how tall will a stack of 27,500 cookies be?
How many Oreos would be needed to send from the earth to the moon?
The average distance to the moon is approximately 384,400 kilometres, or 384,400,000 metres, or 384,400,000,000mm. If the Oreos were Original Oreo cookies, about 32 billion would be about 12mm tall per cookie.
How many Oreos will fit in a standard door frame?
The average height of a residential door frame in the USA is around 82″ (2,083mm). If you stacked about 173 Original Oreos, they would be the same height as a door frame, at 12mm per cookie.
What is the relative size of an Oreo to a penny?
The US penny is only 1.52mm thick, less than half the thickness of one 4mm Oreo wafer. One Original Oreo is about the same height as 8 pennies.
How to accurately measure an Oreo
When measuring an Oreo for a specific purpose (such as recipe development, project or curiosity), the best way to do it is with digital calipers, not a ruler.
A digital caliper (less than $15 at hardware and craft stores) can be used to measure to 0.1mm, which is enough for cookies. Using a standard ruler, you will be able to get a result within 1mm, suitable for most applications.
To measure height (thickness): Close the caliper jaws around the edge of the cookie at the thickest point, across the face of it. Read a measurement in mm.
To measure diameter: Open the caliper jaws to measure the widest part of the cookie face and read the measurement.
Separate and measure components: Twist Oreo to separate and measure. Position the creme with the creme half facing up and the caliper jaws closed at the centre of the creme. The measurement is the thickness of the creme. Subtract the single wafer measurement (about 4mm for an Original wafer) from this and you will get the pure creme height.
Conclusion
The typical Original Oreo is 12mm tall, which is just under half an inch. It has been the same 4mm chocolate wafer since the cookie was first introduced in 1912, and across hundreds of varieties and limited editions – across Thins and Double Stufs and Mega Stufs and Most Stufs.
The marketing names don’t tell the whole story when it comes to the dimensions of Oreo varieties. Thins are creamier than Originals. Double Stuf is width first, height second. Mega Stuf is the same height as Double Stuf. Most Stuf is the first variety in which the filling is so large that it actually starts to give the cake a bit of height instead of just width.
Knowing these numbers will help you bake, scale recipes, plan decorating, and appreciate the kind of precise measurement curiosity that makes an Oreo more interesting than its name. When you next pick up a regular Original Oreo, you’ll be holding 112 years of consistency in a 12mm stack of wafer and cream.
To learn more about common sizes, measurements, and the numbers of everyday objects, check out the entire library of Shani Levni.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the height of an average Oreo cookie?
The height of a standard Original Oreo cookie is 12mm (about 0.47in) tall. It is made from 2 chocolate wafers (4mm) and a chocolate cream filling (4mm). Each of the three parts is of the same thickness and weight, and has a density of around 1g per mm.
What is the height of a Double Stuf Oreo?
Independent caliper measurement of a Double Stuf Oreo is about 14mm (0.55″) tall. This is about 2mm higher than an Original Oreo, which is not 4mm higher as the doubling of the creme layer would indicate. According to a 2013 high school maths project funded by NPR, the Double Stuf is about 1.86 times the creme of an Original, not a double.
What is the height of an Oreo Thin?
At 7mm (0.28″) tall, an Oreo Thin is a lot shorter than an Original. The Thins wafer is 2mm thick (half the Original wafer thickness). Even though they are called Oreo Thins, they actually have more creme than cookie.
How big is the diameter of an Oreo cookie?
The diameter of the face of a standard Oreo cookie is 1.75 inches (4.45cm). This measurement is the same for all Original, Double Stuf, Mega Stuf and Most Stuf varieties. The Oreo Mini is the only one with a smaller diameter of about 1 inch.
Are Mega Stuf Oreos taller than Double Stuf Oreos?
By independent measurement, Mega Stuf and Double Stuf Oreos are virtually the same height at approximately 14mm. The extra creme in Mega Stuf doesn’t add much to the height of the wafer, but it does give it a wider diameter. The maximum variant of creme is most Stuf Oreos, which are around 16mm tall.
What is the weight of an average Oreo?
The average weight of an Original Oreo is about 11.3 grams. Each of the three components (top wafer, creme, bottom wafer) has a weight of about 4 grams, and thus a thickness density of 1 gram per mm of thickness.
Are the dimensions of Oreo cookies constant?
The Original Oreo’s diameter and thickness haven’t changed significantly since the cookie was first introduced in 1912 and have since stayed at 1.75 inches in diameter and 4mm in thickness. Wafers sizes are the same for all standard Oreo types. The amount and distribution of the cream filling, not the size of the wafer, vary between varieties.