Calories Burned Calculator

How the calculation works

Every figure here comes from one equation: kcal = MET × 3.5 × weight(kg) / 200 × minutes.

A MET, or metabolic equivalent of task, expresses an activity’s energy cost as a multiple of sitting quietly. One MET is defined as about 3.5 millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of bodyweight per minute; running at 10 km/h is about 9.8 METs, meaning it costs roughly ten times as much energy per minute as sitting still. The rest of the equation just converts oxygen consumption into calories and scales by your bodyweight and the time you spent.

Where our MET values come from

All 35 values are read from the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.), which is the reference that virtually every calorie-burned calculator on the internet is ultimately quoting — though very few of them say so, and fewer still let you check.

We store the Compendium’s own activity code alongside each value in the source, so any number this page produces can be traced back to the published table rather than taken on our word. A MET value with no source is a number nobody can check, and this category of page is full of them.

Gross and net — why we show both

The large number most calculators display is gross energy expenditure: everything your body spent during those minutes, including the calories you would have burned anyway just by being alive. If you walk for an hour, a meaningful slice of that total was never attributable to the walk.

The net figure subtracts a 1 MET baseline, and it is the number that matters if you are thinking about eating any of it back. For low-intensity activity the gap is large — at 3.5 METs, nearly 30% of the gross figure is just your resting metabolism wearing walking shoes. For hard training the gap narrows.

How much to trust any of this

A MET value is a population average, derived from measurements on groups of people, and it knows nothing about you specifically. It does not account for your fitness, your movement efficiency, terrain, temperature, wind, or the load you are carrying. Worse for anyone tracking progress: trained people are more efficient at the same task, so the fitter you get, the more these figures overstate what you actually spent.

Wearables are not the fix. Independent validation work consistently finds consumer devices off by 20 to 30% on energy expenditure, and nearly always in the optimistic direction. Treat every number in this category — ours included — as an order of magnitude that is useful for comparing activities against each other, and unreliable as a budget.

Common questions

How many calories does walking burn?

At a moderate 4.8 km/h (3 mph) pace, walking is about 3.5 METs, which works out to roughly 220 kcal per hour for a 75 kg person. Pace changes it substantially: a slow stroll is nearer 175 kcal per hour at the same bodyweight, a brisk 5.6 km/h walk about 270, and walking uphill at that speed around 380. Bodyweight scales the whole thing proportionally.

How many calories do 10,000 steps burn?

Somewhere around 300 to 450 kcal for most people, and the width of that range is the honest answer. Step-to-calorie conversions depend on stride length, which varies by more than 20% between individuals, and on pace, which a step count does not record at all. Use the figure as an order of magnitude, not a number to eat back.

Where do MET values come from?

From the Compendium of Physical Activities — this calculator uses the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities — which is the reference almost every calorie calculator on the internet is ultimately quoting, whether or not it says so. One MET is defined as the energy cost of sitting quietly, about 3.5 ml of oxygen per kilogram per minute, and every activity is expressed as a multiple of that.

Why is the number here lower than my smartwatch says?

Usually because the two are measuring different things. Most wearables report gross calories including your resting metabolism, use proprietary heart-rate models, and are generally optimistic — independent validation studies routinely find errors of 20 to 30%, almost always in the direction of overestimation. This page shows both the gross figure and the net one so you can see exactly what is being counted.

Should I eat back the calories I burn?

Generally not all of them, and often not any. Your activity level is usually already built into the maintenance figure a TDEE calculator gives you, so eating back exercise calories on top double-counts them. Exercise energy expenditure is also the least precisely measured quantity in the whole equation — if you are going to be wrong somewhere, be wrong on the side that still leaves a deficit.