Maintenance Calorie Calculator
Estimate daily maintenance calories from resting metabolic rate and activity, with the equation shown and browser-only privacy.
Results
Maintenance calorie calculator
Maintenance calories are what you would eat to hold your weight steady. This is a calculator for maintenance calories and nothing else: it reports that one figure, with the resting rate and activity factor it came from shown beside it.
Calculating maintenance calories takes two steps. A resting metabolic rate comes first, from height, weight, age and sex. An activity factor between 1.2 and 1.9 then scales it to a whole day. Because both are printed, you can see which half of the estimate is carrying the uncertainty.
A calorie maintenance calculator and a maintenance calorie calculator are the same tool named two ways, and a search for a calories maintain calculator lands on the same arithmetic. It runs in your browser, with no account and nothing stored.
How this maintenance-calorie estimate works
This route estimates resting energy with the approved equation you choose, then applies the activity multiplier you select to produce a maintenance target. It stays deliberately narrower than the calorie calculator by stopping at maintenance instead of adding weight-change goals or macro plans.
| Band | Multiplier | Describes |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | 1.2 | Little or no exercise; a desk job |
| Lightly active | 1.375 | Light exercise 1 to 3 days a week |
| Moderately active | 1.55 | Moderate exercise 3 to 5 days a week |
| Very active | 1.725 | Hard exercise 6 to 7 days a week |
| Extra active | 1.9 | Very hard exercise, training twice a day, or a physical job |
If you sit between two bands, the lower one is the safer starting point: overstating activity inflates maintenance, and every goal built on it inherits the error.
What can move the result most
The activity band usually changes the output more than small differences in height or age. Katch-McArdle also depends on body-fat accuracy, so the estimate inherits any error in that input.
Where to go next
Maintenance is a starting point rather than a plan. The calorie calculator applies a goal and a minimum-intake floor to this same figure, the TDEE calculator breaks the same total into resting rate, thermic effect, exercise and everyday movement, and the calorie deficit calculator compares it against an intake target you choose.
Sources and limitations
Sources reviewed 27 August 2026. This is an educational maintenance estimate for healthy adults and not medical or dietary advice.
It is not suitable during pregnancy or breastfeeding, for children or adolescents, or for anyone managing a condition, an eating disorder or a medication that affects appetite, weight or metabolism.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as the calorie calculator maintenance result?
It uses the same maintenance-calorie engine, but this page stays focused on maintenance only instead of layering goal targets and macro plans on top.
What are maintenance calories?
The daily intake at which your weight holds steady, because you are eating what you spend. It is the same quantity as total daily energy expenditure, and it is the figure every goal-based target is built from: a deficit or a surplus is defined relative to it.
How do I calculate maintenance calories?
Estimate a resting metabolic rate from height, weight, age and sex, then multiply by an activity factor between 1.2 and 1.9. Calculating maintenance calories is those two steps, and this page shows both the resting figure and the factor it applied rather than folding them into a single number.
Which equation should I choose?
Mifflin-St Jeor is the default and needs only height, weight, age and sex. Katch-McArdle works from lean mass instead, so it needs a reliable body fat percentage and inherits any error in that figure. Neither is more correct in general; they are derived from different data.
How accurate is a maintenance calorie calculator?
Predicted resting rate differs from measured rate by roughly 10 per cent either way in an individual, and the activity factor adds error on top that cannot be quantified here. Treat the figure as a starting point and correct it against what your weight actually does over several weeks.
Why does this page stop at maintenance?
Because that is the one figure it is for. Goal targets, safety floors and macro splits belong to the calorie calculator, and a timeline to a target weight belongs to the weight loss calculator. Keeping this page to maintenance means the number is not silently adjusted by a goal you did not set.