🔥 Basketball Calories Burned Calculator
Enter your weight, minutes played, and how hard you went, and see the MET-based calorie total for your session — from an easy shootaround to a full-tilt competitive game.
🔥 Estimated calories burned
Playing a general game for 45 min at 6.5 MET burns about 371 calories. Actual burn depends on your effort, fitness, and body composition.
Turn court time into a training number
Basketball is one of the best calorie-burning team sports because it mixes sprinting, jumping, and constant direction changes. The MET model captures that: the harder and more continuously you play, the higher the metabolic cost, and the more this calculator returns.
Pair the number with the Vertical Jump Calculator to track explosiveness and the Shot Percentage Calculator to measure efficiency, so your conditioning and your scoring improve together.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
How are basketball calories calculated?
This tool uses the standard MET (metabolic equivalent) formula: calories = MET × 3.5 × body weight in kilograms ÷ 200 × minutes. A MET value represents how intense an activity is relative to sitting still. Pounds are converted to kilograms automatically before the calculation.
What MET value does basketball use?
We use values from the Compendium of Physical Activities: about 4.5 METs for a casual shootaround, 6.5 for a general game, and 8.0 for vigorous, competitive full-court play. Harder, non-stop play burns more; standing around during a pickup game burns less.
How many calories does an hour of basketball burn?
It depends on your weight and effort. A 175-pound (79 kg) player in a general game (6.5 METs) burns roughly 550 calories an hour; the same player going hard (8.0 METs) burns around 680. Enter your own numbers above for a personalized figure.
Is this an exact measurement?
No — it's an estimate. Real calorie burn varies with your fitness, playing position, how much you actually move, body composition, and even temperature. Treat the number as a useful ballpark for training and nutrition planning, not a precise reading.