Walking calorie calculator: by steps, distance and incline

It’s the question we’re asked most, so let’s answer it straight away: for someone weighing 70 kg, 10,000 steps burn about 375 kcal. For a person of average height that’s roughly 7 kilometres, and at a normal pace it takes about 85 minutes.

The figure rises almost in direct proportion to your weight: about 322 kcal at 60 kg, 375 kcal at 70 kg, 429 kcal at 80 kg and 483 kcal at 90 kg. These are gross values; the extra energy the walk costs you is lower — 277 kcal net for a 70 kg person.

Some people who land on this page want to know something simpler than calories first: how many steps a given distance takes, and how many kilometres the step count on their watch adds up to. The answer depends on your stride length, and that depends largely on your height. Using the calculator’s formula (stride length = height × 0.415), for someone 170 cm tall 1 km is about 1,420 steps and 5 km about 7,090 steps; 10,000 steps come to about 7.1 kilometres.

The figures in the table are an average estimate. Two people of the same height can have stride lengths that differ by 10–15%; your stride gets longer when you walk briskly and shorter uphill or on a crowded pavement. When you run, your stride gets noticeably longer, so the same distance takes far fewer steps — don’t use the table for running. The easiest way to find your own figure is to measure it: walk a distance you know, such as one lap of a 400-metre athletics track, at your normal pace, count your steps and divide the distance by the number of steps. If you want to work out calories from your step count, choose the “Steps” option in the walking calorie calculator above and enter your height; the result will be more accurate than this table.

The big number the calculator gives you is gross expenditure: the total energy your body uses while you walk. But if you’d spent those 85 minutes sitting down, you’d still have been breathing and your heart would still have been beating, so you’d have burned some calories anyway. The extra cost of the walk is what’s left once you take that resting share out. That’s what we call net expenditure.

For 10,000 steps and a 70 kg person, that’s 375 kcal gross and 277 kcal net. The 98 kcal in between is energy you’d burn in the same time doing nothing at all.

Which one should you use? If you’re just curious, the gross figure is fine. But if you’re adding your walk on top of your daily calorie needs, use the net figure — your daily needs already include your resting expenditure for those hours. Add the gross figure and you’ll have counted the same calories twice.

Not pace, but terrain and incline. A 70 kg person walking for an hour on a flat road burns 266 kcal. Same time, same pace, different conditions: 371 kcal uphill on a 1–5% incline (+39%), 490 kcal on a 6–10% incline (+84%), 616 kcal on a steep 11–20% trail (+132%), 546 kcal hiking with a backpack (+105%) and 315 kcal on beach sand (+18%).

So an hour on a steep trail is worth more than two hours on the flat. That’s exactly what the “Type of walk” list in the calculator is for: each option matches its own separately measured row, not an estimated multiplier.

If you’re planning long walks with plenty of climbing, give hiking safety some thought before you set off. And blisters are the most common problem over long distances, so choosing the right socks matters more than you’d expect.

This is the formula we use: kcal = MET × weight (kg) × time (hours). MET tells you how many times more energy an activity uses than resting does. The net figure comes from (MET − 1) × weight × time.

We take our MET values from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities (Herrmann and colleagues, Journal of Sport and Health Science, 2024); you can explore the full table at pacompendium.com. Below your result we show the row we used, along with its Compendium code, so you can check it against the source if you want to.

When you enter steps, two estimates come into play, and we don’t hide either of them. The first is stride length, which is calculated as 0.415 times your height. It’s a widely used formula, but it can be 10–15% off for any one person — enter your height and the result gets noticeably more accurate. The second is pace: a step count doesn’t say how long the steps took, so we assume 5 km/h. That assumption has little effect. Taking 4 or 6 km/h instead changes the gross result by only around 5%, because the cost of walking a kilometre barely changes with pace.

The walking calorie calculator’s results are based on population averages measured in healthy adults. Two people of the same weight walking at the same pace can differ by ±20% in what they actually burn, down to fitness, walking economy, air temperature and terrain. In step mode, the margin of the stride length estimate comes on top of that. Read the result as a ballpark figure, not an exact number.

The calculator isn’t valid for under-18s, people who are pregnant or breastfeeding, or anyone with a chronic condition that affects their metabolism. It isn’t a diet or weight-loss programme either: it tells you how much you’ve burned, not how much you should eat.