Pick an activity, enter your weight and how long it lasted, and see the calorie burn worked out from the MET table — with the MET on screen and editable.
A MET — metabolic equivalent of task — is a way of expressing how hard an activity is relative to doing nothing. One MET is the energy your body burns at rest: roughly 3.5 millilitres of oxygen per kilogram per minute, which comes to about 1 kilocalorie per kilogram per hour. An activity listed at 8 METs costs eight times that. The numbers on this page come from the Compendium of Physical Activities, the reference table used in exercise science and clinical prescription since 1993, updated through the 2024 Adult Compendium. They were measured by calorimetry — putting people on treadmills and in metabolic chambers and recording how much oxygen they consumed.
The formula behind the result is straightforward: MET × 3.5 × body weight in kilograms ÷ 200 × minutes. That is the expanded version of MET × weight × hours, and it already includes the basal metabolism of the period — the calories your body would have spent lying still for the same time. The page shows that breakdown so you can see how much the activity itself added on top of resting. It also shows the MET as an editable field, because the compendium number is a population average measured in healthy adults, not a measurement of you. Your fitness, body composition, the terrain you ran on, the heat, and how hard you actually went all move the real figure, and differences of 20 to 30 per cent for one person are normal. If your watch reports a MET or a VO₂ for the same session, type it in and the calculation follows.
Two things this page deliberately does not do: it does not tell you how much to eat, and it does not promise precision. Calorie burn from a MET table is an estimate, useful for comparing activities and for getting a rough order of magnitude, not for balancing a diet to the last calorie. Nutrition planning belongs with a professional who knows your history, and weight management is driven far more by what you eat than by what you burn. The page runs entirely in your browser — your weight, your activity and the result never leave your device.
kcal = MET × 3.5 ml O₂/kg/min × weight (kg) × minutes ÷ 1000 × 5 kcal/L O₂. Simplified: kcal = MET × 3.5 × weight ÷ 200 × minutes. The resting component (1 MET) is included in the total.
From the Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.), the reference table used in exercise science since 1993, updated through the 2024 Adult Compendium. Each value was measured by calorimetry — recording the oxygen consumption of subjects doing that activity.
No. A MET is a population average from studies with healthy adults. Your fitness, body composition, terrain, temperature and actual effort all move the real figure, and differences of 20 to 30 per cent for one individual are normal. Treat it as an estimate, not a measurement.
Yes. The MET scale starts at 1, which is the energy you spend doing nothing. A 30-minute walk at 3.5 METs includes the calories you would have burned lying still for those 30 minutes. The "Above just resting" line shows how many the activity itself added on top.
Yes. The MET field is editable: type the figure your watch or heart-rate monitor reports and the calculation follows it. It changes back to the compendium value when you pick a different activity.
No. Your weight, the activity and the result are calculated in JavaScript on your own device. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged anywhere.
Because it burns calories too. Vacuuming is 3.3 METs, mopping 3.5, and playing actively with children 5.8 — comparable to a moderate bike ride. The compendium covers everything from sleeping to competitive sports.
Vai.la turns any URL into a short link with click statistics, QR Code and your own biolink.
Vai.la is not responsible for how the tools are used or for decisions made based on their results.