Soccer Calories Burned Calculator

Calories burned playing soccer is the energy your body uses to run, sprint, tackle, and recover during a game. It depends mostly on your weight, how long you play, and how hard the game is.

What Soccer Calorie Estimates Measure

This is a gross figure: it is all the energy you use on the pitch, including what your body would burn at rest anyway. It does not track your distance, heart rate, or position on the pitch.

The Formula

Calories (kcal) = MET x body weight (kg) x time (hours)

1 MET = about 1 kcal per kg of body weight per hour

The MET compares the effort of an activity with sitting at rest. The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, a large research list of energy costs for adults aged 19 to 59, is the source of every soccer value here¹.

How This Calculator Computes Your Result

To use it, pick your age group, add your weight in pounds or kilograms, say what kind of soccer you played, and enter your playing time. The tool looks up the MET for your choice and multiplies. Calories come out rounded to the nearest 5 kcal, and the MET shows one decimal place.

The compendium has no separate entry for 5-a-side or 7-a-side games. Pick "casual" for a social small-sided game and "competitive" for one played hard. In the compendium, "football" means American football, so association football is listed as soccer¹.

Along with your total, you see calories per hour and per 30 minutes, plus a table of all four soccer options at your weight. Players under 18 see no result, as youth values differ. At 60 and older, a note explains that the Older Adult Compendium has no soccer entry.

Split my session (optional). If you came off the bench or had a long half-time, enter your minutes playing and your minutes not playing. Only playing time is counted, and the result is labeled "active time only". Do not subtract throw-ins, free kicks, or other normal stoppages. The compendium values already include them.

What Your Result Means

The result is what that soccer game cost in energy, not a target. Here is what two adults burn:

A full 90-minute competitive match at 70 kg (154 lb) comes to about 1000 kcal. Heavier players burn more at the same effort, since they have more body weight to carry around the pitch.

What Changes Your Burn on the Pitch

Casual or competitive. A competitive match is rated about 35% higher than a casual game (9.5 vs 7.0 METs), so how hard the game is played matters as much as how long it lasts¹.

Your position. In a study of 300 elite outfield players across 30 matches, midfielders covered significantly more ground than defenders and forwards⁴. A box-to-box midfielder will likely burn more than the estimate, and a center-back less.

Goalkeepers. Elite keepers covered about 5.6 km per match and spent 73% of the game walking⁵. That is roughly half the distance of an outfield player², so a keeper's burn is likely well below any outfield value. The compendium has no goalkeeper entry.

Game size and futsal. Smaller games can mean more short bursts. In recreational small-sided games, untrained men made 140 high-intensity runs in 1 vs 1 compared with 97 in 7 vs 7⁷. Futsal is played indoors on a small court, and professional players covered about 121 m every minute of play⁶.

Minutes on the pitch. A sub who plays 30 minutes burns about a third of what a 90-minute player does. Use the split helper to count only your time on the pitch.

What Match Studies Show

Elite outfield players run about 10 km in a 90-minute match, at an average of 80 to 90% of their maximal heart rate². That is close to the point where lactate starts to build up quickly².

Most of that time is not sprinting. Over 70% of a match is low-intensity activity, such as walking and jogging, broken up by 150 to 250 brief, intense actions³. Average oxygen use over a game is about 70% of a player's maximum³.

Futsal can be even harder at the top level. In professional players, oxygen use during play averaged 48.6 mL per kg per minute, with heart rate at about 90% of maximum⁶. Divided by 3.5 (the resting value behind 1 MET), that is about 14 METs, far above the compendium's 7.8. The compendium value suits recreational futsal, so elite players likely burn more than this tool shows.

Recreational soccer is still hard work. In small-sided games, average heart rates were high in every group tested, from untrained adults to older men⁷.

Soccer Compared With Other Team Sports

How 60 minutes of soccer compares with other sports, using 2024 Adult Compendium values¹:

Competitive soccer sits near the top of the team sports, about level with steady running at a 10-minute mile pace. The ice hockey value is an estimate in the compendium, not a direct measurement¹.