Calories Burned Calculator

How hard is each activity, really?

MET values climb from rest to all-out effort. The same 30 minutes burns very different energy depending on what you do.

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How it works in 3 steps

Understanding the result

The formula: MET times weight times time

One multiplication gives every answer on this page, and the three inputs are the whole story.

Calories burned equal the activity’s MET value times body weight in kilograms times duration in hours. At the defaults, a custom MET value of 8.0, a body weight of 80 kg, and a duration of 30 minutes, which is 0.50 hours, give 8.0 times 80 times 0.50, which is 320.0 kcal. The page shows the same result with its supporting figures: a burn rate of 640.0 kcal per hour, which is 8.0 times 80, a per-minute figure of 10.7 kcal per minute, which is the hourly rate divided by 60, 4.0 MET-hours, which is 8.0 times 0.50, and a share of 16.0 percent of a 2,000 kcal day, which is 320.0 divided by 2,000. Each supporting figure is a different view of the same multiplication, and each can be checked from the other three.

Every figure in that table was produced by this page’s own calculator and is quoted exactly as displayed: cycling for 30 minutes at 80 kg gives 320.0 kcal, running at 6 mph for 30 minutes gives 392.0 kcal with a burn rate of 784.0 kcal per hour, and running at 6 mph for a full hour gives 784.0 kcal with 9.8 MET-hours and a share of 39.2 percent of a 2,000 kcal day. The table’s purpose is comparison, not precision about any individual: the same 30 minutes burns 52.0 kcal sitting quietly and 392.0 kcal running at 6 mph, a sevenfold difference from intensity alone, with weight and time held fixed. Intensity, in METs, is the lever that matters most on this page, because weight varies within a narrow range for most adults while MET values range from under 1 to over 11 across the page’s own list.

MET-hours deserve a sentence of their own, because the page shows them beside every result and they are often ignored. MET-hours are MET times hours, so 8.0 MET for 0.50 hours is 4.0 MET-hours, and 9.8 MET for 1.00 hour is 9.8 MET-hours. They are a compact way to compare sessions: a 4.0 MET-hour session at any weight burns four times as many calories as a 1.0 MET-hour session at the same weight, because calories are MET-hours times weight. If you know your weight, MET-hours convert to calories by one multiplication; if you compare two sessions at the same weight, MET-hours alone rank them, without any multiplication at all.

Weight and time: the two unit conversions

The formula needs kilograms and hours. The page accepts pounds and minutes too, and converts them before multiplying.

Pounds are divided by 2.20462 to get kilograms, as the page’s own FAQ states, and minutes are divided by 60 and added to hours before the calculation. The default case uses kilograms and minutes already converted: 80 kg and 30 minutes, which is 0.50 hours. Enter 176 lb instead, with the unit set to pounds, and the page converts it to 79.8 kg, as displayed, and gives 319.3 kcal for the same 8.0 MET and 30 minutes, instead of 320.0 kcal at exactly 80 kg. The 0.7 kcal difference is not an error and not a rounding quirk in the formula; it is the real difference between 79.8 kg, which is 176 divided by 2.20462 rounded to one decimal place for display, and 80 kg. A pound figure that converts to 79.8 kg burns slightly less than an 80 kg figure, because the formula multiplies by weight, and weight is what changed.

The unit mistake to avoid is entering a pound figure while the unit is set to kilograms, or the reverse. Enter 176 with the unit set to kilograms, at 8.0 MET for 30 minutes, and the page displays 704.0 kcal, because it multiplies 8.0 by 176.0 kg by 0.50 hours. That figure is arithmetically correct for a 176 kg person and wildly wrong for a 176 lb person, who weighs 79.8 kg and burns 319.3 kcal for the same activity and time. The page cannot know which unit you meant; it can only apply the unit you selected. Checking the unit selector before reading the result is therefore part of using the page correctly, not an optional extra, and the displayed sub-line, which restates the weight in kilograms and the duration in hours, is the check: if it says 176.0 kg when you weigh 176 lb, the unit is wrong.

Time conversion has a smaller trap of the same kind. The page takes hours and minutes as separate fields, so 1 hour and 30 minutes is 1.50 hours, not 1.30 hours, because minutes are divided by 60 and added to hours, as the page’s own FAQ states. The safest habit is to enter the duration as you lived it, hours in the hours field and minutes in the minutes field, and to check the sub-line’s hours figure, which restates the total as a decimal, before trusting the calorie figure. At the defaults the sub-line reads 0.50 hours for 30 minutes, at one hour it reads 1.00 hours, and any mismatch between the sub-line and the duration you intended is a signal to recheck the fields, not the formula.

Estimates, not measurements

MET values are published averages, and this page is honest about what that means for any single result.

The page’s own FAQ states that MET values are published averages from the Compendium of Physical Activities, and that individual results vary with fitness, body composition, terrain, and effort. The guide on the page repeats the point: real burn shifts with fitness, body composition, terrain, temperature, and how hard you actually push, and the number should be treated as a solid planning estimate, not a laboratory measurement. That framing is the correct one for every figure on the page, including the anchor figures quoted in these sections. Cycling at 12 to 13.9 mph is listed at 8.0 MET, but a cyclist pushing hard on a hill is not doing the same work as a cyclist cruising on the flat, even though both might describe their ride the same way, and the page has no way to distinguish them. The MET value is an average over people doing nominally the same activity, and any individual session will fall on one side of it.

The practical consequence is to use the figures for planning and comparison, not for accounting. Comparing activities at the same weight and time, as the table in the first section does, is robust, because the same averaging applies to every row, and the ranking, sitting far below walking, walking below cycling, cycling below running, survives any reasonable individual variation. Adding daily totals to the nearest calorie, or treating 320.0 kcal as exact to the decimal place, is not robust, because the decimal place is an artefact of the multiplication, not a claim about measurement precision. The page displays one decimal place because the formula produces it, not because the underlying MET average is known to that precision.

The share-of-a-day figure needs the same caution. The page compares each result with a 2,000 kcal day, so 320.0 kcal is 16.0 percent and 784.0 kcal is 39.2 percent of that reference. The 2,000 kcal figure is a reference the page chose for display, not a recommendation for any individual, whose daily needs vary with size, age, sex, and activity level in ways this page does not model. The share is useful as a scale: it says whether a session is a small or a large fraction of a typical day’s energy, and it says it in a way that is easier to grasp than a bare calorie count. It does not say that the individual should eat 2,000 kcal, or that the session covers 16.0 percent of their personal needs, and reading it that way would be a mistake this page does not invite.

Four mistakes with calorie estimates

All four mistakes inflate or deflate the estimate by a clean factor, which makes them easy to spot once you know to look.

1. Wrong weight unit. Entering pounds as kilograms more than doubles the result, as the 176 lb case shows: 704.0 kcal instead of 319.3 kcal. The sub-line’s kilogram figure is the check, and it should be read every time the unit changes.

2. Wrong time unit. Entering minutes as hours multiplies the result by sixty. Thirty minutes entered as 30 hours at 8.0 MET and 80 kg would give 19,200.0 kcal by the formula, a figure so large it should trigger immediate suspicion, but smaller versions of the same slip, such as entering 90 minutes as 1.30 hours instead of 1.50 hours, produce plausible-looking errors that survive unnoticed. The sub-line’s decimal hours figure is the check here too.

3. Using a MET value for a different activity. The page’s list distinguishes activities that sound similar but differ in MET value: walking at 2.0 mph is 2.8 MET, walking at 3.0 mph is 3.5 MET, and walking at 4.0 mph, brisk, is 5.0 MET. Picking the wrong row because the activity names are close changes the result in proportion to the MET ratio, and the page cannot know which row matches the session actually done. Reading the full activity label, including the speed, is part of entering the data correctly.

4. Treating the estimate as a prescription. This calculator gives an energy estimate for planning only, as its own FAQ states. It does not diagnose, treat, or replace advice from a health professional, and it does not set a calorie target, a weight-loss plan, or an exercise prescription. Using its output as any of those things would be using a planning estimate as a medical decision, which is outside both the page’s scope and these sections’ scope. The page’s figures are general information, and any health decision based on them belongs with a health professional, not with a calculator.

Planning a week with MET-hours

MET-hours turn a week of varied sessions into a single comparable total, without any new arithmetic.

Take a week made only of sessions already quoted on this page, at a constant 80 kg, so the comparison is clean. Five sessions of cycling at 8.0 MET for 30 minutes each give 4.0 MET-hours per session, or 20.0 MET-hours for the week, and 20.0 times 80 gives 1,600.0 kcal for the week from cycling alone. Two sessions of running at 6 mph for 30 minutes each give 4.9 MET-hours per session, or 9.8 MET-hours, and 9.8 times 80 gives 784.0 kcal. The weekly totals are additions of the per-session MET-hours, multiplied once by weight at the end, which is simpler and less error-prone than multiplying each session separately and adding the calories, although both routes give the same answer when done correctly. The MET-hour route also makes substitution visible: replacing one cycling session with one running session adds 0.9 MET-hours, which at 80 kg is 72.0 kcal, a small change that is easy to see in MET-hours and easy to miss in calories.

That weekly view also shows why the page’s per-session figures should not be summed uncritically across different weights or different people. MET-hours add across sessions for one person at one weight, because the weight factor is constant. They do not add across people, because each person’s calories are their own MET-hours times their own weight. A household total computed by adding MET-hours across members and multiplying by one weight would be wrong for everyone except the member whose weight was used. The page computes one person at a time, and weekly planning should follow the same rule: one person’s sessions, one weight, one total, and a separate total for anyone else.

Finally, keep the planning horizon honest. A week of sessions estimated from average MET values is a planning estimate for the week, with the same averaging uncertainty as any single session, and the uncertainty does not cancel out across sessions in the way that measurement errors sometimes do, because the same person’s fitness and effort bias applies to every session. If every session was done harder than the average for its label, the week’s total will be underestimated by a similar proportion throughout, and if every session was done easier, it will be overestimated throughout. The weekly total inherits the bias of its sessions, and the only remedy is the same as for a single session: treat it as a planning estimate, compare sessions and weeks with it, and do not account to the decimal place with it.

The full MET ladder, at 80 kg for 30 minutes

The page’s activity list is a ladder from rest to all-out effort, and running the same weight and time up the ladder shows how steep it is.

Every figure in this section was produced by this page’s own calculator at 80 kg for 30 minutes, using the page’s own MET values, and is quoted exactly as displayed. Sleeping, at 0.95 MET, gives 38.0 kcal. Sitting quietly, at 1.3 MET, gives 52.0 kcal. Yoga, Hatha, at 2.5 MET, gives 100.0 kcal. Walking at 2.0 mph, at 2.8 MET, gives 112.0 kcal. Walking at 3.0 mph, at 3.5 MET, gives 140.0 kcal. Cycling, leisure under 10 mph, at 4.0 MET, gives 160.0 kcal. Rowing, moderate, at 4.8 MET, gives 192.0 kcal. Walking at 4.0 mph, brisk, at 5.0 MET, gives 200.0 kcal. Swimming laps, moderate, at 5.8 MET, gives 232.0 kcal. Hiking, at 6.0 MET, gives 240.0 kcal. Soccer, casual, at 7.0 MET, gives 280.0 kcal. Cycling, 12 to 13.9 mph, at 8.0 MET, gives 320.0 kcal. Jump rope, moderate, at 8.8 MET, gives 352.0 kcal. Running at 6 mph, at 9.8 MET, gives 392.0 kcal. Running at 8 mph, at 11.8 MET, gives 472.0 kcal.

Read as a ladder, the figures show two things. First, the range is enormous: the same half hour at the same weight burns 38.0 kcal sleeping and 472.0 kcal running at 8 mph, more than twelve times as much, from intensity alone. Second, the steps are uneven in a way that matches experience: the jump from sitting to walking is large in relative terms, because even slow walking more than doubles the sleeping figure, while the jump from running at 6 mph to running at 8 mph is large in absolute terms, adding 80.0 kcal for the same half hour, because both figures are already high. The ladder also shows why activity labels need their qualifiers: walking appears at 2.8, 3.5 and 5.0 MET depending on speed, cycling appears at 4.0 and 8.0 MET depending on pace, and swimming appears at 5.8 and 9.8 MET depending on vigour. Picking the row whose qualifier matches the session actually done is not pedantry; it is the difference between 112.0 kcal and 200.0 kcal for two sessions both honestly described as “walking”.

The ladder is also a check on the formula’s linearity. Because weight and time are held fixed, every figure in the ladder is the MET value times 40, which is 80 kg times 0.50 hours, and the ladder’s figures follow that exactly: 0.95 times 40 is 38.0, 5.0 times 40 is 200.0, and 11.8 times 40 is 472.0. That linearity is why the page’s MET-hours figure is so useful: at fixed weight, MET-hours rank sessions, and at fixed MET-hours, weight scales the result. A ladder computed once at 80 kg can be rescaled to any weight by multiplying by that weight divided by 80, which is arithmetic on the page’s own formula, but the figures quoted above are the calculator’s own displays at 80 kg, not rescaled estimates, and any rescaling for another weight should be run through the page itself to get its displayed figure.

What this page does not do: energy balance

Calories burned in one session are not a weight plan, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

Weight change depends on energy balance over time: energy in from food and drink, minus energy out through resting metabolism, daily activity, and exercise sessions like the ones this page measures. This page measures only one term of that balance, the exercise session, and it does so as an estimate from average MET values. It does not measure resting metabolism, it does not measure daily activity outside the session, and it does not measure energy intake at all. A session that burns 392.0 kcal does not by itself imply any weight change, because the rest of the day’s balance is unknown, and a week of sessions totalling 1,600.0 kcal does not imply a particular weight change either, for the same reason. The page’s related tools include a calorie calculator, a TDEE calculator, and a weight-loss calculator, which address the other terms of the balance, and any weight plan should consider those terms together, with a health professional where health decisions are involved, rather than from this page’s session figures alone.

The share-of-a-day figure illustrates the same boundary. A session’s share of a 2,000 kcal day, such as 16.0 percent for the default 320.0 kcal session or 39.2 percent for an hour of running at 6 mph, is a scale for the session, not a statement about the individual’s total expenditure or intake. An individual whose total daily expenditure is far from 2,000 kcal will find the share misleading if it is read as a personal fraction, and an individual who eats far from 2,000 kcal will find it misleading if it is read as a fraction of intake. The page chose 2,000 kcal as a display reference, and the new sections here treat it as exactly that: a reference for scale, not a target, not a recommendation, and not a personal figure.

There is also a behavioural boundary worth stating. Exercise sessions are often followed, consciously or not, by extra eating or by reduced activity later in the day, both of which offset part of the session’s burn in the full energy balance. This page cannot see those offsets, because it only sees the session’s MET, weight and time. A plan that counts every session’s calories as pure deficit, without allowing for compensation, will overstate the deficit systematically. The honest use of the page is comparative and planning-oriented: which sessions burn more, how sessions add up across a week at one weight, and what order of magnitude a session represents against a day’s energy. Those are the questions the page answers well, and they are the questions these sections have used it for.

A day of activities, added up honestly

A day is several sessions, and the page’s figures add across them, provided the weight stays the same and the addition is done in MET-hours first.

Take a day at 80 kg made of sessions already quoted on this page. Thirty minutes of walking at 3.0 mph gives 140.0 kcal, or 1.75 MET-hours, because 3.5 times 0.50 is 1.75. Thirty minutes of cycling at 12 to 13.9 mph gives 320.0 kcal, or 4.0 MET-hours. Thirty minutes of running at 6 mph gives 392.0 kcal, or 4.9 MET-hours. Added together, the day’s sessions total 10.65 MET-hours, and 10.65 times 80 gives 852.0 kcal, which is also the sum of the three session figures, 140.0 plus 320.0 plus 392.0. The two routes agree, as they must, because both are the same multiplication done in a different order, and the MET-hour route is the one that makes the addition transparent: sessions add in MET-hours, and weight multiplies once at the end.

The day total also shows why session choice matters more than session counting. Three sessions totalling 90 minutes give 852.0 kcal in this example, while three sessions of sitting quietly for the same 90 minutes would give 156.0 kcal, which is three times the 52.0 kcal half-hour figure. The difference, 696.0 kcal, comes entirely from intensity, because the time and the weight are identical. A day plan that counts minutes without counting intensity will miss that difference completely, and a day plan that counts MET-hours will capture it automatically. That is the practical value of the MET-hour figure the page displays beside every result: it is the unit in which days, weeks and training plans should be compared, with calories as the final step, not the first.

One caution closes the day out. The day total above is a sum of estimates, each carrying the averaging uncertainty described earlier, and the uncertainties do not cancel across sessions for the same person, because the same fitness and effort bias applies throughout the day. If the day’s sessions were all done harder than their labels’ averages, the true total exceeds 852.0 kcal by a similar proportion throughout, and if they were all done easier, it falls short by a similar proportion. The total is therefore a planning estimate for the day, useful for comparing days and for understanding the order of magnitude of activity energy, but not a measurement to be accounted to the calorie. Treat it as a guide to the day’s activity, not as a ledger entry, and it will serve its purpose well.

The desk day: sitting, standing, and walking breaks

Eight hours at a desk is the largest block of the day for most adults, and the choice of how those hours are spent is worth hundreds of calories.

At 80 kg, eight hours of sitting quietly at 1.3 METs burns 1.3 times 80 times 8, which is 832 calories. Eight hours at a standing desk, at about 2 METs, burns 2 times 80 times 8, which is 1,280 calories, a difference of 448 calories for the same eight hours, with no exercise session involved. The standing figure is approximate, since standing intensity varies with fidgeting, shifting, and light tasks, but the order of magnitude is robust: standing burns roughly half as much again as sitting, and the difference accumulates across a working week to over 2,000 calories, the equivalent of a full day’s food for many adults. A mixed day, four hours sitting and four hours standing, burns about 1,056 calories across the eight hours, splitting the difference, and the practical pattern for most desk workers is alternation, standing for part of each hour rather than all day, since continuous standing brings its own fatigue and discomfort.

Walking breaks add a second layer. Three ten-minute walks at 3.5 METs burn 3.5 times 80 times 0.5 hours, which is 140 calories, on top of the desk figure, and the walks also break the sitting time, which matters for health independently of the calories, since prolonged uninterrupted sitting carries risks that a single daily workout does not fully undo. The honest desk-day total is therefore the sum of its segments: the sitting hours, the standing hours, the walking minutes, and the rest of the day’s activity, each at its own MET value, which is exactly the MET-hours arithmetic the companion per-hour guide works in full. Count the day in segments, and the desk stops looking like dead time and starts looking like the largest adjustable block in it.

Turning a daily burn into a weekly deficit

Activity burns calories, but weight change follows the deficit: the gap between energy in and energy out, sustained over weeks.

The conventional equivalence is that a deficit of about 3,500 calories corresponds to a pound of body fat, so a daily deficit of 250 calories predicts about half a pound a week, 500 calories predicts about a pound a week, and 750 calories predicts about a pound and a half a week. The equivalence is approximate, not exact: the body adapts as weight falls, resting expenditure declines, appetite rises, and the composition of weight lost mixes fat, lean tissue, and water, so real loss runs slower than the arithmetic predicts over months, and plateaus interrupt the line. The deficit can come from eating less, moving more, or both, and the activity contribution can be read off the tables in this guide: at 80 kg, 500 calories is about 1 hour and 47 minutes of walking at 3 mph, about 10,600 steps at a moderate pace, about 47 minutes of cycling at 12 to 14 mph, or about 38 minutes of running at 6 mph. A deficit built entirely on activity is hard to sustain at 750 calories a day, which is over two and a half hours of walking, and most sustainable plans combine a moderate dietary reduction with a moderate activity increase, so neither side carries the whole deficit alone.

Plan the deficit weekly, not daily, since daily intake and activity vary, and judge it by the trend over four or more weeks, not by any single weigh-in, which reflects water and glycogen as much as fat. Keep the activity estimate honest: count the segments actually performed, at the MET values actually sustained, and do not add a basal metabolic rate figure on top of MET-based activity calories, since the 1-MET baseline is already inside every MET value. The calculator above prices any single session; the weekly deficit is the sum of seven days of sessions minus seven days of intake, and the scale, the waist, and the fitness gained are the verdict, not the arithmetic. This guide is general information about energy expenditure, not medical advice, and a deficit plan for a health condition or a large weight change should be discussed with a clinician.

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