Published July 8, 2026. MET values sourced to the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities.
Multiply a MET value by your body weight in kilograms, then by the hours spent doing the activity, and you get an estimate of calories burned. Enter a weight, pick from 15 activities pulled from the Compendium of Physical Activities, and set a duration above; the number updates as you type, along with a table showing what the same weight and time would cost across every other activity on the list, so a bike ride and a swim are easy to compare without re-entering anything.
Where the MET numbers come from
MET stands for metabolic equivalent of task, a way of rating how hard an activity works your body relative to sitting still. One MET is roughly the energy cost of resting quietly; an activity rated at 6 METs burns about six times that resting rate per minute. Every MET value on this page comes from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, a peer-reviewed update published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science by Stephen Herrmann, Erik Willis, Barbara Ainsworth and coauthors. The Compendium traces back to a project Ainsworth and a team of exercise scientists first published in 1993, and it has been revised twice since, most recently in 2024, replacing older estimated figures with newly measured ones where the data existed. Running at a 10-minute-mile pace carries a MET of 9.3 in the current edition; a moderate 3.0 mph walk sits at 3.0; jump rope lands at 11.0, among the highest values on this page.
Why the same workout burns different amounts for different people
The formula multiplies MET by weight in kilograms, so weight is doing real work in that equation rather than sitting there as a footnote. Moving a heavier body through the same motion costs more energy than moving a lighter one, which is why a 200 pound runner and a 130 pound runner covering an identical 30 minutes at the same pace end up with different calorie totals even though their MET value is identical. Switch the toggle to kilograms if that is how you track your weight; the math underneath does not change, only the conversion step does.
A full example, worked by hand
Take a 170 pound hiker on a 45 minute cross country hike. Convert weight to kilograms first: 170 times 0.453592 equals about 77.1 kg. Convert the 45 minutes to hours: 45 divided by 60 is 0.75. Cross country hiking carries a MET value of 6.0 in the Compendium, so the full calculation is 6.0 times 77.1 times 0.75, which comes out to roughly 347 calories. Change any one input, weight, MET or duration, and the total moves with it; nothing about the formula is hidden or rounded behind the scenes before it reaches the results panel.
What this number can't tell you
A MET value is an average measured in a lab, usually on a treadmill or cycle ergometer, under conditions that will not match every real workout. Hills, wind, water resistance, cold weather and plain unfamiliarity with a movement all push actual energy cost above the table value; smooth, well practiced technique can pull it below. A 2017 Stanford Medicine study published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine tested seven wrist-worn fitness trackers, including Apple Watch and Fitbit Surge, against directly measured energy expenditure in 60 volunteers and found calorie estimates off by 27 to 93 percent even with a heart-rate sensor built in. That is not a knock on this calculator specifically; it is a reminder that any calorie-burn number, whether it comes from a MET table or a wrist sensor, is a planning estimate rather than a lab reading of your actual metabolism.
Pair this figure with your resting numbers rather than reading it alone. The TDEE calculator adds a full day's activity level on top of your resting burn, and if the goal is losing weight, the calorie deficit calculator turns a target number into a daily plan. Training toward a bulk instead? The macro calculator's high-protein preset is built around a calorie surplus for muscle gain, and pairing it with the workout burn above keeps that surplus honest rather than guessed at.