Calories Burned Walking: Per Mile, per Hour and per Step

Calories burned walking a mile come to about 89 kcal for a 70 kg (154 lb) adult at 3 mph, and 266 kcal over an hour. About 65 kcal of that mile is on top of what the body spends sitting still, and one step costs roughly 0.04 kcal. The figures use METs from the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities, and they scale with your weight.

How many calories does walking burn per hour?

It depends on your weight and your speed. Walking at 3 mph uses 3.8 times the energy of sitting still, which the Compendium writes as 3.8 METs, and one MET is about 1 kcal per kg per hour. So the hourly total is METs × kg. At 70 kg and 3 mph that is 3.8 × 70 = 266 kcal.

I worked out four paces for three body weights. The Compendium gives one MET value for each band of speed, so I picked one speed from each band to match the cadence study further down.

Pace	Speed	METs	55 kg (121 lb)	70 kg (154 lb)	90 kg (198 lb)
Slow	2.0 mph (3.2 km/h)	2.8	154	196	252
Ordinary	3.0 mph (4.8 km/h)	3.8	209	266	342
Brisk	3.5 mph (5.6 km/h)	4.8	264	336	432
Very brisk	4.0 mph (6.4 km/h)	5.5	303	385	495

Values in kcal per hour, resting energy included. Readers in Australia can multiply by 4.184 for kJ, so 266 kcal is 1,113 kJ.

Those totals include the energy you’d have spent sitting on the couch. The part the walk adds is smaller. The shortcut is to subtract your weight in kg: 266 - 70 = 196 kcal an hour at 70 kg and 3 mph. I’d use that smaller number.

How many calories do you burn walking a mile?

About 89 kcal at 70 kg and 3 mph. That’s 55 kcal per kilometer. A mile takes 20 minutes at that pace, so you take a third of the hourly figure. The general rule from the Compendium’s MET definition is kcal per mile = METs × kg ÷ mph.

Pace matters less than you’d think. A faster walker burns more each minute but spends fewer minutes on the mile. Here are the totals, with the extra over resting in brackets.

Pace	55 kg	70 kg	90 kg
Slow, 2.0 mph	77 (49)	98 (63)	126 (81)
Ordinary, 3.0 mph	70 (51)	89 (65)	114 (84)
Brisk, 3.5 mph	75 (60)	96 (76)	123 (98)
Very brisk, 4.0 mph	76 (62)	96 (79)	124 (101)

Values in kcal per mile. The slow row takes the bottom of its speed band, so it is the least reliable one.

At 70 kg the totals stay between 89 and 98 kcal per mile, while the extra over resting rises from 63 to 79 kcal. The total is flat because the Compendium rates a very brisk walk at 5.5 METs and a slow one at 2.8, roughly double, while the mile takes about half as long.

Time one mile on your usual route and pick the closest row. If a mile is all you want, how many calories you burn walking a mile goes through it on its own.

How many calories does one step burn?

About 0.04 kcal at 70 kg and 3 mph, or 39 kcal per 1,000 steps. A step is short, so the answer depends on how many steps fill a mile, and that changes with speed. In a treadmill study of 76 adults aged 21 to 40, the average cadence was 96.1 steps a minute at 2.0 mph, 113.6 at 3.0, 121.5 at 3.5 and 129.0 at 4.0.

Steps per mile follow from the cadence: steps a minute × 60 ÷ mph. I added the energy per step for a 70 kg adult from the table above.

Pace	Steps a minute	Steps per mile	kcal per step	kcal per 1,000 steps
Slow, 2.0 mph	96.1	2,883	0.034	34
Ordinary, 3.0 mph	113.6	2,272	0.039	39
Brisk, 3.5 mph	121.5	2,083	0.046	46
Very brisk, 4.0 mph	129.0	1,935	0.050	50

Energy includes resting. At 3 mph the part the walk adds is 29 kcal per 1,000 steps.

A step costs more as you speed up because strides get longer, so the same mile takes fewer of them. Stride length varies from person to person. The cadences above are averages from adults aged 21 to 40 on a treadmill, so yours may differ. In that study the measured intensity also ran a little above the Compendium values, 4.0 METs at 3.0 mph against 3.8, so these tables may sit on the low side for young adults. Your phone’s step count and distance for one walk will give you your own steps per mile. Say it shows 2,500 steps to the mile at 3 mph. Your step then costs 89 ÷ 2,500 = 0.036 kcal. The mile is the steady number, and the step is derived from it. For a whole day’s steps there is a separate sum in how many calories 10,000 steps burn.

What changes the calories burned walking?

Weight, mostly. The hourly total scales in a straight line, so a 90 kg walker burns about 29% more than a 70 kg walker at the same pace (342 against 266 kcal at 3 mph). After weight comes the surface and what you’re doing. Here are some of the Compendium’s walking entries at 70 kg.

Walking	METs	kcal per hour at 70 kg
Level, 2.5 mph	3.0	210
Downhill, 2.5 mph	3.3	231
Walking the dog	3.0	210
Pushing a stroller, 2.5 to 3.1 mph	3.8	266
Plowed field or sand, normal pace	4.5	315
Grass track	4.8	336

Sand costs 49 kcal an hour more than a firm path at 3 mph (315 against 266). Downhill at 2.5 mph rates higher than level, 3.3 against 3.0. Those are group averages, and your own cost on sand or a hill could land well off them.

Your watch won’t settle it. Stanford researchers put seven wrist-worn devices on 60 volunteers and compared each reading with a lab method while they sat, walked, ran and cycled. The median error in energy ranged from 27.4% to 92.6%. No device was below 20%. A phone app has the same weakness, and walking apps for weight loss shows where a step count helps and where it doesn’t.

To check a walk against your watch, enter your steps and weight in the steps to calories calculator. It uses the cadences and METs above and shows both the total and the extra over resting.

How do I use these numbers?

Pick the pace row that matches your usual walk, take your weight column, and write down the extra-over-resting figure. That’s the number to carry through the day. A half-hour ordinary walk adds half of the hourly extra. Walking is one slice of what you burn, and how many calories you burn a day puts the rest around it.

If walking hurts, or you have a heart condition, follow your doctor’s advice about activity before these tables.

Calsa reads steps and active energy from Apple Health or Health Connect and shows your movement next to your food and your weight trend. That puts a walk and a day’s eating in one place, with the walk’s number as a rough estimate.