How Many Calories Do You Burn Exercising? (2026)

Calorie burn during exercise depends on three factors: your body weight, the intensity of the activity (measured as a MET value), and the duration. Heavier people burn more calories doing the same workout, and higher-intensity activities burn more per minute. Use the Exercise Calorie Burn calculator to get an instant estimate for any activity — no account required, all calculation happens in your browser.

How calorie burn is calculated

Exercise scientists express activity intensity as MET — metabolic equivalent of task. A MET of 1 equals your resting metabolic rate (roughly 1 kcal per kg per hour for most adults). Running at 10 km/h has a MET of about 10, meaning it burns ten times your resting rate. The standard formula is: kcal = MET × body weight (kg) × duration (hours). A 75 kg person running for 30 minutes at MET 10 burns 75 × 10 × 0.5 = 375 kcal. Individual variation — fitness level, biomechanical efficiency, heat — can shift real-world results by ±15%, but the formula is accurate enough for planning.

Calorie burn by activity type

The table below shows approximate calorie burn for a 70 kg person over 30 minutes. Scale proportionally for your weight: a 90 kg person burns about 29% more than the 70 kg baseline.

Why body weight is the biggest variable

Moving a heavier body against gravity and air resistance requires more energy at every intensity level. A 50 kg person running for 30 minutes at MET 10 burns 250 kcal; a 100 kg person running the same workout burns 500 kcal — double the calorie expenditure for the same session. This is also why calorie burn falls as you lose weight: the same workout gradually becomes less demanding in absolute terms. Recalculate your targets every 5–10 kg of weight change to keep estimates accurate.

Use the Exercise Calorie Burn to calculate your personalised burn for any activity, weight, and duration instantly.