MET Values Chart for Exercise, Sports and Chores

A MET is the cost of an activity relative to sitting still: 1 MET is rest, 6 METs is six times rest. Under 3.0 is light, 3.0 to 5.9 is moderate, 6.0 and up is vigorous. The chart below gives the value for 56 activities from the 2024 Adult Compendium; the calculator turns any of them into calories.

How to read the chart

Three columns. Code is the Specific Activity code the Compendium assigns, which is what you search on if you want to verify a row at the source. MET is the standard MET value. kcal/min is what that costs a 155 lb (70 kg) person, from MET × 3.5 × 70 ÷ 200 — at that weight each MET is worth about 1.2 kcal a minute, so the third column is roughly the second one plus a fifth.

Scale it to your own weight by multiplying: 125 lb (57 kg) is 0.81 of these figures, 200 lb (91 kg) is 1.30. Or skip the arithmetic and use the calories burned calculator, which does it with a weight field.

One warning before you use the third column for anything: it is gross expenditure and includes the roughly 1.2 kcal/min you would spend lying still. Subtract 1 from the MET value first if what you want is the extra cost of doing the activity.

MET values by category

Rest, sleep and sex

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Sleeping	07030	1.0	1.2
Sitting quietly	07021	1.0	1.2
Sexual activity, general, moderate effort	14020	3.0	3.7
Sexual activity, active, vigorous effort	14010	5.8	7.1

Around the house

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Vacuuming, general, moderate effort	05043	3.0	3.7
Cleaning house, general, moderate effort	05030	3.3	4.0
Scrubbing floors or bathroom, moderate effort	05130	3.5	4.3
Walking the dog	17165	3.0	3.7

Walking and stairs

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Walking, 2.0 to 2.4 mph, slow	17152	2.8	3.4
Walking, 2.8 to 3.4 mph, moderate pace	17190	3.8	4.7
Walking, treadmill, 3.0 to 3.4 mph, no incline	17355	3.8	4.7
Walking, normal pace, sand or plowed field	17262	4.5	5.5
Stair climbing, slow pace	17133	4.5	5.5
Walking, 3.5 to 3.9 mph, brisk	17200	4.8	5.9
Walking, 4.0 to 4.4 mph, very brisk	17220	5.5	6.7
Stair climbing, general	17131	6.8	8.3

Running

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Running, 5.0 to 5.2 mph (12 min/mile)	12030	8.5	10.4
Running, 6 to 6.3 mph (10 min/mile)	12050	9.3	11.4
Running, 7.5 mph (8 min/mile)	12080	11.8	14.5
Running, marathon	12200	13.3	16.3

Cycling and cardio machines

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Bicycling, under 10 mph, leisure	01010	4.0	4.9
Elliptical trainer, moderate effort	02048	5.0	6.1
Rowing machine, 100 to 149 watts	02072	7.5	9.2
Bicycling, 12 to 13.9 mph, moderate	01030	8.0	9.8
Bicycling, stationary, spin bike class	01270	9.0	11.0
Bicycling, 14 to 15.9 mph, vigorous	01040	10.0	12.2

Strength, circuits and intervals

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Resistance training, 8 to 15 reps, varied load	02054	3.5	4.3
Home exercise, general	02064	3.8	4.7
Circuit training, moderate effort	02035	5.0	6.1
Resistance training, vigorous (Taylor code 210)	02050	6.0	7.4
HIIT, moderate effort	02210	7.0	8.6
Circuit training with kettlebells, vigorous	02040	7.5	9.2
Rope skipping, general	02068	11.0	13.5
HIIT, vigorous (burpees, mountain climbers, Tabata)	02214	11.0	13.5

Dance, yoga and Pilates

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Yoga, Hatha	02150	2.3	2.8
Pilates, general	02105	2.8	3.4
Ballroom dancing, fast	03030	5.5	6.7
Zumba, group class	02310	6.5	8.0
Yoga, Hatha, high intensity	02153	8.0	9.8
Nightclub, disco, line or folk dancing, vigorous	03031	9.8	12.0

Water and outdoors

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Surfing, body or board, general	18220	3.0	3.7
Swimming laps, freestyle, slow, recreational	18240	5.8	7.1
Swimming, crawl, about 50 yards/min	18290	8.0	9.8
Rock or mountain climbing	15533	8.0	9.8
Swimming laps, freestyle, fast, vigorous	18230	9.8	12.0

Sports

Activity	Code	MET	kcal/min at 70 kg
Skateboarding, general, moderate effort	15580	5.0	6.1
Badminton, social singles and doubles	15030	5.5	6.7
Boxing, punching bag	15110	5.8	7.1
Volleyball, competitive, in gymnasium	15711	6.0	7.4
Soccer, casual, general	15610	7.0	8.6
Basketball, game	15040	8.0	9.8
Tennis, singles	15690	8.0	9.8
Handball, team	15330	8.0	9.8
Soccer, competitive	15605	9.5	11.6
Martial arts, moderate pace (judo, jujitsu, karate, Muay Thai)	15430	10.3	12.6
Handball, general — court handball	15320	12.0	14.7
Boxing, in ring, general	15100	12.3	15.1

Handball is two sports with one name

The Compendium lists handball twice, and the gap between the entries is 4 METs — the difference between a brisk pickup game and boxing a round. In the United States, handball usually means court handball: a wall game struck with a gloved hand, cousin to racquetball, and the Compendium puts it at 12.0 METs. Team handball, the 7-a-side indoor sport played across Europe and at the Olympics, is a separate code at 8.0 METs. Read the chart for the game you actually played.

Light, moderate and vigorous

The cutoffs come from the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, not from the Compendium: light is under 3.0 METs, moderate is 3.0 to 5.9, vigorous is 6.0 or above. That is what makes the weekly target readable — the 150 minutes of moderate activity a week is 3.0 to 5.9 MET work, and the 75 minutes of vigorous is 6.0 and up, which is why the two ranges trade at two to one. The Compendium’s own paper puts the same target at roughly 500 to 1,000 MET-minutes a week.

MET-minutes are the reason the value matters beyond calories: multiply the MET value by the minutes and you get a dose you can add across different activities. Forty minutes of Hatha yoga at 2.3 and 20 minutes of jumping rope at 11.0 both land near 220 MET-minutes, but only the second counts toward the vigorous target. See moderate vs vigorous exercise for the talk test, which sorts your own effort faster than a table can.

Where these numbers come from

Every value above is from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, the third update of a list first published in 1993 by Barbara Ainsworth and colleagues. The 2024 revision screened 32,173 abstracts, extracted 2,356 energy-cost values from 701 papers, added 303 new activities and changed 176 existing MET values. It now holds 1,114 activities across 22 Major Headings, 912 with measured values and the rest estimated.

The paper is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license, which permits neither commercial reuse nor reformatted derivatives of the work. So this page does what the license leaves open: it cites, with attribution and the Specific Activity code, the individual values for the activities this site covers. The complete list of 1,114 activities lives with its authors, at pacompendium.com, and that is where to go for anything not on this page.

Two edition traps worth naming, both visible in the Compendium’s own tracking guide:

• The 2011 values are still circulating. Sleeping was 0.95 and is now 1.0. Sexual activity at moderate effort was 1.8 and is now 3.0 — the old figure is what the current edition assigns to passive activity, kissing and hugging. Rope skipping fell from 12.3 to 11.0, boxing in the ring from 12.8 to 12.3, competitive soccer from 10.0 to 9.5, and scrubbing floors at moderate effort from 6.5 all the way down to 3.5.
• This edition stops at 59. The 2024 revision restricted the Adult Compendium to ages 19 to 59 and moved older adults to a separate Older Adult Compendium, because resting metabolic rate is lower after 60. Applying this chart to a 70-year-old overstates the intensity.

What a table cannot tell you

Compendium values are group averages measured in healthy adults, and the authors say plainly that the list “can serve as a starting point for prescribing individual activities but does not reflect precise individual EE values.” It does not adjust for your sex, age, height, body composition or training economy, and the 3.5 mL/kg/min stand-in for resting metabolism is higher than what many people actually measure — which makes the standard MET an underestimate of the real cost far more often than an overestimate. The 2024 paper also flags water sports and live team sports as the categories where measurement remains hardest.

Use the chart to rank activities against each other and to hit a weekly activity target. Do not use it to balance a meal.

This content is informational and does not replace advice from a physician or an exercise professional.