Walking calorie calculator

How many calories do you burn walking for 30 minutes?

It depends mostly on your body weight and how briskly you walk. For a 70 kg walker at a moderate pace (3.8 MET, roughly 2.8–3.4 mph on level ground), 30 minutes comes to about 140 kcal in total, of which around 103 kcal is above what you would have used at rest. At 90 kg the same walk is about 180 kcal in total; at a brisk 4.8 MET the 70 kg figure rises to about 176 kcal.

The calculator above uses the standard MET equation from the Compendium of Physical Activities: kilocalories per minute equal MET × 3.5 × body mass in kilograms ÷ 200. Multiply by minutes for the total. The “active” figure subtracts one MET so that resting energy is not counted as exercise.

When to use time instead of steps

The steps-to-calories tool starts from a step count and turns it into minutes with a cadence. This walking calculator skips that step: if you know you walked for 45 minutes, enter 45 minutes. It suits treadmill sessions, timed lunchtime walks and anything your watch records as a duration rather than a count. (If you searched for a “calories burnt walking calculator” with British spelling, this is the same tool.)

For a distance you know rather than a time, work out the minutes first. Calories burned walking 6.5 miles, for example: at 3 mph that is 130 minutes, so enter 130 and your weight to see the estimate.

What the estimate leaves out

MET values describe categories of activity, not your individual metabolism. Hills, carried loads, soft ground, wind and your fitness all change the real energy cost, and the Compendium values are drawn from adults aged 19–59. Treat the result as a scenario estimate with visible assumptions, and compare like with like: a total figure from one tool against a total figure from another.