Calories Burned Calculator
Estimate calories burned for walking, running, cycling, swimming, or any activity.
How to use
- Pick an activity (or enter a custom MET value).
- Enter your weight and how long you exercised.
- Click Calculate to see calories burned.
For information only — not medical advice. Consult a healthcare professional for personal guidance.
What Is a Calories Burned Calculator?
Every activity has an energy cost, and that cost scales with your body weight and how long you keep going. This calculator estimates the calories burned during exercise using MET values — the standard scientific currency of activity intensity — combined with your weight and duration. Pick a built-in activity such as walking, running, cycling, or swimming, or enter a custom MET for anything else, from gardening to rock climbing.
MET stands for Metabolic Equivalent of Task. Sitting quietly is 1 MET; an activity rated at 6 METs burns energy six times as fast as resting. Researchers have catalogued thousands of activities into the Compendium of Physical Activities, which is what makes a simple calculator like this one possible — and also explains why heavier bodies burn more: moving more mass through the same motion takes more energy.
How to Use the Calories Burned Calculator
- Select an activity — walking (MET 3.5), running (9.8), cycling (7.5), swimming (8.0) — or choose Custom and enter your own MET value.
- Enter your body weight in kilograms or pounds.
- Enter the duration of the activity in minutes.
- Click Calculate to see your estimated total calories burned.
The Formula Behind the Estimate
The calculation is: calories = MET × body weight (kg) × duration (hours) — more precisely, kilocalories per minute = (MET × 3.5 × weight in kg) ÷ 200, a formula published by the American College of Sports Medicine. The 3.5 represents resting oxygen consumption in milliliters per kilogram per minute. Because the formula uses gross energy cost, the total includes the calories you would have burned resting during that time anyway; net exercise burn is roughly (MET − 1) × weight × hours. For most planning purposes the gross figure is the standard convention.
Tips for Better Estimates
- Intensity is the biggest variable: "cycling" can mean a gentle 4 MET cruise or a 10 MET hammerfest — choose the MET that matches your actual effort.
- Fitness trackers and gym machines routinely overestimate burn, sometimes by 20–30%; treat all sources, including this one, as estimates with error bars.
- If you are counting calories for weight loss, a conservative habit is to eat back only part of estimated exercise calories, or none, and let your activity-inclusive calorie target do the work.
Why do heavier people burn more doing the same activity?
Because exercise is mostly the work of moving your own mass. Walking a mile transports every kilogram of you over that distance, so a 90 kg person burns roughly 50% more than a 60 kg person on the same walk. This is also why calorie burn per workout slowly falls as you lose weight — a normal, expected effect, not a broken metabolism.
Where can I find the MET for my activity?
The Compendium of Physical Activities (maintained by researchers and used worldwide) lists METs for everything from badminton (5.5) to shoveling snow (about 6) to vigorous rowing (about 9+). Search for your activity's MET and enter it as a custom value here. When between two values, the one matching how breathless you actually were is the better pick.
Does the afterburn effect (EPOC) add many calories?
Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption is real but modest — for typical workouts it adds roughly 6–15% on top of the session's burn, with the high end reserved for very intense or long efforts. It is a pleasant bonus, not a major factor, and it is already smaller than the estimation error of any calculator.
Is running really better than walking for burning calories?
Per minute, yes — running's higher MET wins easily. Per mile, running still burns somewhat more, because it is a less economical gait, but the gap is smaller than most people expect. The best activity for total burn is usually the one you will actually repeat for months, which for many people is walking done often and briskly.