Maintenance Calorie Calculator
Find your maintenance calories — the daily intake that keeps your weight steady — from your stats and activity.
Your Details
Fill in your details on the left to see your calorie breakdown.
About the Maintenance Calorie Calculator
Your maintenance calories are the amount you can eat each day without gaining or losing weight — the equilibrium point of your energy balance. Knowing this number is invaluable, because every nutrition goal is defined relative to it: eat below it to cut, above it to bulk, or at it to hold steady. This calculator estimates your maintenance level from your age, sex, height, weight and activity.
Maintenance calories are simply your total daily energy expenditure: your resting metabolism plus the energy you spend moving. The calculator estimates your resting burn and scales it by an activity factor to produce the daily figure at which intake matches expenditure. That is the level your body currently balances at given your stats and lifestyle.
Once you know it, planning becomes straightforward and far less guesswork. Many people are surprised by their maintenance number — too high or too low compared to what they assumed — which alone explains stalled progress. Calculate yours, eat around it to confirm it in practice, and adjust from there. It is private and instant, running in your browser.
Looking for more options? Open the full TDEE Calculator — it’s the same tool with every feature.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What are maintenance calories?
Maintenance calories are the number you can eat daily to keep your weight stable — where the calories you consume equal the calories you burn. It is the same as your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), and it is the baseline from which weight-loss and weight-gain targets are set.
How do I find my maintenance calories?
Enter your age, sex, height, weight and activity level, and the calculator estimates your resting metabolism and scales it by your activity to give your maintenance level. Eating around that figure should keep your weight steady; track your weight for a couple of weeks to confirm and fine-tune it.
Do maintenance calories change over time?
Yes. They shift as your weight, activity, age and muscle mass change — losing weight, for example, lowers your maintenance level because a smaller body burns fewer calories. It is worth recalculating periodically, especially after notable weight change, so your targets stay accurate.
Understanding Maintenance Calories
Energy balance explained
Maintenance is the point of energy balance: calories in equal calories out. Eat more than you burn and the surplus is largely stored, adding weight; eat less and your body draws on reserves, reducing weight. Your maintenance number marks that pivot, which is why every diet or bulking plan is described as a deficit or surplus relative to it.
Setting goals around maintenance
Once you know maintenance, goals are easy to set: a moderate deficit below it for steady fat loss, a small surplus above it for lean gain, or eating at it to maintain while improving body composition through training. Defining targets as adjustments from maintenance is more precise and sustainable than following generic calorie figures.
Why your number is personal
Maintenance varies widely between people of the same weight because of differences in height, muscle mass, age and activity. It also moves as those change. Treating the calculator’s figure as a tested starting estimate — confirmed and adjusted against your real weight trend — gives you a personalised maintenance level far more useful than population averages.