Free maintenance calorie calculator
See how many calories hold your weight steady. Enter your height, weight, age, sex, and activity level and the maintenance calorie calculator returns your daily maintenance calories (your TDEE), your resting BMR, and your cutting and bulking targets — updated live, as you type.
On this page15 sections
| Activity | × | Maintenance / day |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary · little or no exercise | 1.2 | 2,039 cal/day |
| Lightly active · 1–3 days/week | 1.375 | 2,336 cal/day |
| Moderately active · 3–5 days/week | 1.55 | 2,633 cal/day |
| Very active · 6–7 days/week | 1.725 | 2,930 cal/day |
| Athlete · twice daily / physical job | 1.9 | 3,228 cal/day |
Maintenance calories are an estimate; individual metabolism varies. How accurate is this?
Results are estimates. Consult a professional.
What are maintenance calories?
Maintenance calories are the number of calories you need to eat each day to keep your body weight exactly where it is — no loss, no gain. Eat your maintenance calories and your weight holds steady; eat below them and you lose, eat above them and you gain. It is the single most useful number in any nutrition plan, because every goal — fat loss, muscle gain, or simply staying the same — is defined as a step up or down from this baseline. The maintenance calorie calculator returns that figure the moment you enter your height, weight, age, sex, and activity level.
Your maintenance calories are the same thing as your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) — the total energy your body burns in a day. The two terms are interchangeable: TDEE describes the energy you burn, maintenance describes the energy you eat to match it. When the two are equal, your weight stays flat.
How to calculate your maintenance calories
Finding your maintenance calories is a two-step calculation — the calculator above runs both for you instantly, but here is what it does under the hood:
- Estimate your BMR. Your basal metabolic rate is the calories you burn at complete rest, from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation using your sex, age, height, and weight. This is the floor of your energy use.
- Multiply by your activity factor. Pick the factor that matches a typical week — from 1.2 (desk job, no exercise) up to 1.9 (twice-daily training). BMR × factor is your maintenance calories.
Maintenance calories vs BMR vs TDEE
These three terms get used loosely, so it is worth pinning them down. BMR is your calorie burn at total rest. TDEE is BMR plus everything you do on top of it — moving, working, digesting, exercising. Maintenance calories are simply TDEE viewed from the plate: the calories you eat to match what you burn. Maintenance and TDEE are the same number; BMR is always lower, because nobody lies still for 24 hours.
If you want to dig into either component on its own, the BMR calculator isolates your resting burn and the TDEE calculator shows the full expenditure breakdown.
Maintenance calories by activity level
Your activity level is the single biggest lever on your maintenance number — two people with identical BMRs can have maintenance calories hundreds apart purely from how much they move. The calculator multiplies your BMR by one of five standard factors. Pick the row that honestly matches a typical week, not your best week:
| Activity level | Factor | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | 1.2 | Desk job, little or no exercise |
| Lightly active | 1.375 | Light exercise or sport 1–3 days a week |
| Moderately active | 1.55 | Moderate exercise 3–5 days a week |
| Very active | 1.725 | Hard exercise or sport 6–7 days a week |
| Athlete | 1.9 | Twice-daily training or a physical job plus exercise |
Standard activity factors paired with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. Maintenance calories = BMR × factor.
A worked example using the maintenance calorie calculator
Daniel is 30, stands 175 cm, weighs 75 kg, and trains a few times a week (moderately active). He wants to know how many calories hold his weight steady. Here is exactly what the calculator runs.
Step 1 — Calculate BMR
Using the men’s Mifflin-St Jeor formula: 10 × 75 + 6.25 × 175 − 5 × 30 + 5 = 750 + 1,093.75 − 150 + 5 = 1,698.75, which rounds to about 1,699 calories at complete rest.
Step 2 — Multiply by the activity factor
Moderately active means a factor of 1.55. So 1,699 × 1.55 = 2,633. That is Daniel’s maintenance: eat about 2,633 calories a day and his weight holds.
| Step | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| BMR (resting burn) | 10×75 + 6.25×175 − 5×30 + 5 | 1,699 cal |
| Maintenance (× 1.55) | 1,699 × 1.55 | 2,633 cal |
| Cutting target (− 500) | 2,633 − 500 | 2,133 cal |
| Bulking target (+ 400) | 2,633 + 400 | 3,033 cal |
Daniel's full picture: maintenance plus the deficit and surplus targets around it.
How to find your true maintenance by tracking
The calculator gives you a well-grounded starting estimate, but no equation can read your exact metabolism, NEAT (the calories you burn fidgeting and moving around), or how accurately you log food. Your real maintenance is whatever the scale says it is. Here is how to pin it down precisely over a couple of weeks:
- Take the calculator's number as your starting target. Eat that amount consistently every day — weekdays and weekends alike.
- Track your intake honestly for 10–14 days. Weigh and log everything, including oils, drinks, and bites while cooking. Consistency matters more than perfection.
- Weigh yourself each morning and take a weekly average. Daily weight swings with water and food; the seven-day average is the signal.
- Adjust by 100–200 calories. If your weekly-average weight is climbing, your true maintenance is lower than the estimate — trim 100–200 calories. If it is dropping, add the same. If it holds flat, you have found your real maintenance.
Bulking and cutting from your maintenance calories
Once you know your maintenance, both weight goals are simple arithmetic. A calorie deficit (eating below maintenance) drives fat loss; a calorie surplus (eating above it) supports muscle gain. The size of the gap controls how fast — and how cleanly — you change.
| Goal | Adjustment from maintenance | Typical pace |
|---|---|---|
| Cutting (fat loss) | −500 cal/day | About 0.5 kg (1 lb) of fat per week |
| Lean bulk (muscle gain) | +300 to +500 cal/day | Slow, mostly-lean gain |
| Maintenance | ±0 | Weight holds steady |
A 500-calorie daily deficit removes roughly one pound of fat a week, since a pound of fat stores about 3,500 calories.
For cutting, a deficit of about 500 calories a day is the sustainable sweet spot — fast enough to see progress, gentle enough to protect muscle. For bulking, keep the surplus modest at 300–500 calories; going much higher (500+ over maintenance) just adds fat without building muscle any faster, because muscle growth is capped by training and recovery, not by extra food.
To turn a target into meals, pair this with the calorie calculator for goal-adjusted intake and the macro calculator to split it into protein, carbs, and fat.
What changes your maintenance calories
Your maintenance number is not fixed for life — it drifts as your body and habits change. Recalculate (or re-track) whenever one of these shifts:
- Body weight. A bigger body costs more energy to run, so maintenance rises as you gain and falls as you lose — which is exactly why a fat-loss deficit shrinks over time and progress stalls.
- Muscle mass. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, so adding lean mass through resistance training nudges your maintenance up, even at the same body weight.
- Activity level. A new job, a training block, or a quiet winter all move the activity factor — and with it your maintenance.
- Age. Maintenance tends to ease downward through adulthood, largely because muscle mass falls and movement slows with the years.
- Hormones. Thyroid output sets your metabolic pace; an underactive thyroid lowers maintenance, an overactive one raises it.
How accurate is this maintenance calorie calculator?
The arithmetic is exact and the formula is the best of the common options — the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, judged the most accurate predictive BMR formula for adults by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. But “most accurate” is not “exact.” Because the equation works from population averages and cannot see your individual body composition or NEAT, any single maintenance estimate can land roughly 10% above or below your true figure. The activity factor adds further uncertainty, since self-rated activity is notoriously optimistic.
Treat the result as a high-quality starting point, then refine it against the scale using the tracking method above. The lab gold standard for measuring expenditure is indirect calorimetry (or doubly labelled water for free-living TDEE); no formula matches them, but for everyday planning the calculator is more than good enough. For the wider picture of your body, the BMI calculator sits alongside this one.
Data sources and methodology
Maintenance calories are computed as BMR × activity factor. BMR uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990), identified by the American Dietetic Association (now the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) in its 2005 review as the most reliable predictive equation for adults. Activity factors are the standard 1.2–1.9 multipliers used throughout the sports-nutrition literature. Deficit and surplus targets follow the widely used 500-calorie-per-pound-per-week guideline.
Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990.Frequently asked questions about the free maintenance calorie calculator
About this maintenance calorie calculator
This maintenance calorie calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your height, weight, age, sex, and activity level never leave your device — nothing is sent to a server, logged, or shared. It estimates your BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, multiplies by your activity factor to find your maintenance calories (TDEE), and sets your cut and bulk targets around it, updating instantly.
Calculators Cloud offers 400+ free tools with no sign-up. The whole Health calculators shelf includes TDEE, BMR, and macro tools alongside this one. Or browse the full calculator directory.