Important problems in load cells are creep and hysteresis. Expensive high grade steels are used in order to reduce these effects. In this paper a silicon load cell design is presented which is based on a force-to-liquid-pressure transformation. The design is insensitive to hysteresis and creep, can be made at very low costs and is able to measure loads up to 1000 kg with an accuracy of 0.03 %. Analytical, numerical and experimental results on a macroscopic steel load cell are in very close agreement with each other