Free BMR Calculator
Work out your basal metabolic rate, the calories your body burns at complete rest. Enter your age, sex, height and weight, pick a formula, and see your BMR plus the calories you burn on a typical day, from sedentary to very active.
Calories your body burns at complete rest.
Sedentary
Little or no exercise
2,009
Lightly active
Exercise 1 to 3 days a week
2,301
Moderately active
Exercise 4 to 5 days a week
2,452
Active
Daily exercise or intense exercise 3 to 4 days a week
2,594
Very active
Intense exercise 6 to 7 days a week
2,887
Extra active
A hard daily workout, or a physical job
3,180
Maintenance calories for your activity, worked out as BMR times an activity factor (1.2 to 1.9). Eat below your level to lose weight, above it to gain.
BMR and calorie figures are estimates from population formulas. For anything that matters to your health, talk to a doctor or a qualified professional.
Your BMR in four steps.
Enter your details, pick a formula, and read your resting burn and your daily calories. Everything updates as you type.
Enter your details
Set your age and sex, then your height and weight in metric or imperial units. Everything updates as you type.
Pick a formula
Start with Mifflin-St Jeor, the modern default. Switch to Harris-Benedict, or to Katch-McArdle if you know your body fat percentage.
Read your BMR
See the calories your body burns at complete rest in a day, in calories or kilojoules.
Find your daily calories
The activity table turns your BMR into the calories you burn on a typical day, from sedentary to very active.
BMR, TDEE and your calories.
Your resting burn is only part of the story. Here is how BMR, daily burn and calorie planning fit together.
BMR is your resting burn
Your basal metabolic rate is the energy your body uses just to keep you alive at rest: breathing, circulation, keeping warm and repairing cells. For most people it is the biggest share of the calories they burn each day.
TDEE is your daily burn
Add movement and your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE, is higher than your BMR. Multiplying BMR by an activity factor is the quick way to estimate it, which is what the activity table does.
Use it to plan calories
Eat around your TDEE to hold your weight, a little under to lose, a little over to gain. A deficit or surplus of about 500 calories a day is a common, steady pace of roughly half a kilo a week.
Three ways to estimate BMR.
Pick the one you trust. They agree closely for most people, so start with Mifflin-St Jeor unless you know your body fat.
Mifflin-St Jeor
DefaultMen: 10 x weight + 6.25 x height - 5 x age + 5
Women: 10 x weight + 6.25 x height - 5 x age - 161
The modern standard, published in 1990, and the most accurate for most people. Weight in kg, height in cm.
Revised Harris-Benedict
Men: 13.397 x weight + 4.799 x height - 5.677 x age + 88.362
Women: 9.247 x weight + 3.098 x height - 4.330 x age + 447.593
The classic equation from 1919, revised in 1984. Still widely used and close to Mifflin-St Jeor.
Katch-McArdle
BMR = 370 + 21.6 x lean body mass (kg)
Lean mass = weight x (1 - body fat % / 100)
Works from your lean body mass, so it needs a body fat percentage. Often the best if you know yours.
Calorie and health scoring, in your app.
A single BMR estimate is easy. Building calorie targets, macros and progress tracking into a fitness app, a wellness platform or a clinic system, with user accounts, history and reporting behind it, is a different job. That is the kind of custom software and health-tech we build at Techliphant, shaped around how your organisation actually works.
Checking your BMI too? Try the BMI calculator.
Common BMR questions.
BMR stands for basal metabolic rate. It is the number of calories your body burns at complete rest in a day, just to keep the essentials running: your heart, lungs, brain, body temperature and cell repair. It does not include any movement or exercise, so it is the floor of your daily calorie burn, not the whole of it.
This tool uses your age, sex, height and weight in one of three published formulas. The default, Mifflin-St Jeor, is: for men, BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) minus 5 x age plus 5; for women the same but minus 161 at the end. You can also pick the revised Harris-Benedict equation, or Katch-McArdle, which uses your body fat percentage instead of age and sex.
For most people, Mifflin-St Jeor is the current best general estimate, which is why it is the default here. Katch-McArdle can be more accurate if you know your body fat percentage, because it works from your lean body mass. Harris-Benedict is the older classic and still widely used. All three are estimates built from population averages, so treat the number as a good starting point.
BMR is what you burn at rest. TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure, is what you burn across a whole day once you add walking, work, exercise and everything else. TDEE is always higher than BMR. You estimate it by multiplying your BMR by an activity factor, from about 1.2 for a sedentary day to 1.9 for a very active one, which is exactly what the activity table on this page shows.
First find your TDEE from the activity table, since that is roughly the calories that keep your weight steady. To lose weight, eat below it; to gain, eat above it. A gap of about 500 calories a day is a common, sustainable target and works out to roughly half a kilo, or about a pound, a week. Losing faster than that usually means giving up muscle, so slow and steady tends to last.
On average, men carry more muscle and less fat than women of the same height and weight, and muscle burns more energy at rest than fat. The formulas build that difference in, which is why a man and a woman with the same height, weight and age get different BMR figures. The Katch-McArdle formula sidesteps this by working from your lean body mass directly.
Yes, a little. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, so a more muscular body burns a bit more at rest. That is why the Katch-McArdle formula, which is based on lean body mass, can read higher for a lean, muscular person than the age-and-sex formulas do. The effect is real but smaller than most people expect.
No. Your BMR is what you burn lying still all day, so eating only that amount is usually too little once you add any activity. Use your TDEE from the activity table as the everyday number, then adjust up or down from there. As a rule of thumb, most adults should not drop below about 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day without professional guidance.
Yes on both. It is free, there is no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored, so your age, height and weight stay on your own device.
This one is great for a quick personal estimate. If you need calorie, macro or health scoring built into a fitness app, a wellness platform or a clinic system, with user accounts, history and reporting behind it, that is custom software. That is the kind of product we build at Techliphant.
Private by design and not medical advice: this calculator runs entirely in your browser, so nothing you enter is uploaded or stored. BMR and calorie figures are estimates from published population formulas, not a diagnosis or a nutrition plan. For decisions about your health or diet, please speak to a doctor or a qualified professional.
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