Free tdee calculator
See exactly how many calories you burn in a day. Enter your height, weight, age, sex, and activity level and the TDEE calculator returns your total daily energy expenditure — your maintenance calories — plus the BMR it's built on and your cut, maintain, and bulk targets — updated live, as you type.
On this page13 sections
Mifflin-St Jeor BMR formula × activity multiplier (ADA standard). Individual variation ±10–15% is common.
Results are estimates. Consult a professional.
What is TDEE?
Your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is the full number of calories your body burns in a day — everything, from keeping your heart beating to walking the dog to digesting dinner. It is the single most useful number in any nutrition plan, because TDEE is your maintenance level: eat that many calories and your weight holds steady, eat below it and you lose, eat above it and you gain. The calculator above estimates it the standard way — it works out your resting burn, then multiplies by an activity factor that matches how active your week is.
TDEE is built on top of your basal metabolic rate (BMR) — the calories you would burn lying still for a full day. BMR is the floor; TDEE is the floor plus everything you do on top of it. That is why the two numbers are never the same, and why it is TDEE, not BMR, that tells you how much to eat.
The four components of TDEE
The activity multiplier is a shortcut. What it is really standing in for is four separate kinds of calorie burn that stack on top of each other. Understanding them is what turns a black-box number into something you can actually influence — and it is the part most calculators skip. Your TDEE is the sum of BMR + NEAT + TEF + EAT.
| Component | What it is | Share of TDEE |
|---|---|---|
| BMR — basal metabolic rate | Calories to stay alive at complete rest: breathing, circulation, organ function, cell repair. | ~60–70% |
| NEAT — non-exercise activity | Everything you do that isn't formal exercise: walking, fidgeting, standing, chores, your job. | ~15% |
| TEF — thermic effect of food | The energy it costs to digest, absorb, and process what you eat. | ~10% |
| EAT — exercise activity | The calories burned in deliberate workouts and training. | ~5%+ (varies) |
Typical shares for an average person. The exact split shifts with how active and how heavy you are — an athlete's EAT and a labourer's NEAT both run far higher.
Why the components matter more than the multiplier
Two facts surprise most people. First, NEAT — not exercise — is the biggest swing factor in most people's daily burn: the difference between a desk job and an active one can be 200 to over 1,000 calories a day, dwarfing a typical gym session. Second, TEF rewards protein: your body burns about 20–30% of protein calories just processing them, versus 5–10% for carbs and almost nothing for fat. So a higher-protein diet quietly lifts the TEF slice of your TDEE.
TDEE vs BMR: what's the difference?
BMR and TDEE are the two numbers people mix up most often. Picture them as a stack: BMR is the resting floor — what you'd burn motionless for 24 hours — and TDEE is the whole building, the floor plus movement, work, exercise, and digestion. TDEE is always the larger of the two, and the gap between them is exactly the activity factor at work.
If you want the resting figure on its own, the BMR calculator estimates it with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, and the Harris-Benedict calculator does it with the older 1984 formula. This page takes that floor and turns it into the total you actually burn.
Activity multipliers explained (1.2 to 1.9)
The activity factor is the bridge from BMR to TDEE. It is a single number that bundles your NEAT, EAT, and TEF into one multiplier, calibrated to how active a typical week is. Pick the row that matches a normal week — not your best one.
| Activity level | Multiplier | 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 |
The standard activity factors. TDEE = BMR × the factor for your week.
A worked example using the TDEE calculator
Priya is 35, stands 165 cm, and weighs 68 kg. She trains three or four times a week and wants her maintenance calories. Here is the path the calculator follows — resting burn first, then the activity factor.
- Find the BMR. Using the women's Mifflin-St Jeor equation: 10 × 68 = 680, plus 6.25 × 165 = 1,031.25, minus 5 × 35 = 175, minus the women's constant of 161.
- Add the BMR terms. 680 + 1,031.25 − 175 − 161 = 1,375.25, which rounds to about 1,375 calories a day at complete rest.
- Pick the activity factor. Training three to four times a week is moderately active, a factor of 1.55.
- Multiply for TDEE. 1,375 × 1.55 = 2,131 calories a day.
Using your TDEE to cut, maintain, or bulk
Once you know your TDEE, setting a target is simple: everything is measured relative to maintenance. Framing the adjustment as a percentage of your TDEE — rather than a flat calorie number — keeps it sensible whether you are a 1,800-calorie or a 3,200-calorie person.
- Cut (lose fat) — eat about 10–20% below your TDEE. A moderate deficit near 500 calories a day loses roughly a pound of fat a week while protecting muscle. Pair it with high protein.
- Maintain — eat at your TDEE. This is the number the calculator returns, and it's where you hold weight steady or 'recomp' slowly while training.
- Bulk (build muscle) — eat about 5–10% above your TDEE, a surplus of roughly 200–500 calories a day, aiming for about half a pound of gain a week to keep it lean.
To turn the target into a daily plan, the calorie calculator applies your goal adjustment for you, the maintenance calorie calculator shows your cut and bulk targets side by side, and the macro calculator splits the calories into protein, carbs, and fat.
Why your real TDEE may differ from the estimate
A formula-based TDEE is a well-grounded estimate, not a measurement. Done honestly it lands within about 10% of the truth for most people — but real-world data shows the estimate misses by more than 250 calories a day for at least half of users. The arithmetic is exact; the inputs are where the uncertainty lives. Several things push your real TDEE away from the number on screen:
- Activity is guessed, not measured. The single multiplier can't capture your actual NEAT — and most people overestimate it, which inflates the result.
- Body composition is invisible to the formula. Mifflin-St Jeor sees your weight, not how much of it is muscle. Two people at the same weight can have different real burns.
- Metabolism adapts. Eat in a deficit for a while and your body trims its burn — including a quiet drop in NEAT — so your TDEE drifts down as you lose weight.
- Day-to-day variation is large. TDEE swings with how much you move, sleep, and eat; the number is a weekly average, not a fixed daily fact.
How to dial in your true TDEE over a few weeks
Because the estimate is a starting point, the smart move is to treat it as a hypothesis and let the scale correct it. Two or three weeks of real data beats any equation:
- Eat at your estimated TDEE for two to three weeks. Keep intake as consistent as you reasonably can.
- Weigh yourself daily, first thing, fasted — then track the seven-day average, not any single morning. Daily weight is noisy; the weekly average is the signal.
- Compare the averages. If your week-one and week-three averages are within about half a pound, your estimate is accurate — that's your real maintenance.
- Adjust by 100 calories and retest. If your weight drifted up, lower intake by ~100 calories a day; if it drifted down, raise it. Re-check over another couple of weeks.
Formula and sources
This calculator estimates BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al., A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990) — the formula the American Dietetic Association judged most accurate for adults — then applies the standard activity factors (1.2 sedentary to 1.9 athlete) to reach TDEE. The component shares (BMR ~60–70%, NEAT ~15%, TEF ~10%, EAT the remainder) follow widely cited figures from the energy-balance literature.
Mifflin-St Jeor equation, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1990); American Dietetic Association review of predictive resting-energy equations.Frequently asked questions about the free tdee calculator
About this TDEE calculator
This TDEE 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 and multiplies by a standard activity factor (1.2 to 1.9) to return your total daily energy expenditure, updating instantly as you type.
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