MET calculator: calories for any activity
Choose an activity from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, or type in a MET value, then your weight and the minutes. You get the textbook figure and a corrected one based on your own resting rate, plus how much of the total is above what you would have burned sitting still.
– kcal
Code – in the 2024 Adult Compendium.
What a MET is
Every option in the list above carries a MET: the activity's energy cost divided by the cost of sitting still. Swimming fast laps at 9.8 means nearly ten times the resting rate for each minute in the pool. The values and the five-digit codes come from the 2024 update of the Compendium of Physical Activities, the reference researchers maintain for exactly this purpose, so you can look any figure up at the source. Our TDEE calculator uses the same values for your weekly workouts. For the background, read what METs are.
Standard vs corrected
The first figure on the right is the textbook one: MET × weight in kg × hours, which quietly assumes everyone rests at the same rate per kilo. Open "Correct for my resting rate" and fill in age, height and sex, and the calculator swaps that assumption for your own resting rate from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. For smaller, older or female users the corrected number usually comes out lower, and it is the one to trust.
Total vs extra calories
The total covers everything your body spent during the session, including the slice it would have spent lying on the sofa. The "extra above rest" line takes that slice out. Use the extra figure whenever you add a workout to a daily total that already counts your resting burn; otherwise those minutes get counted twice.
Limits
MET values are averages for an activity done at the described pace. Effort, fitness, terrain and technique move the real number up or down, so treat the result as an estimate. Fitness watches use heart rate on top of the activity type and can be closer for steady cardio, less so for lifting.