Find how much protein you need per day from your weight, activity, and goal — grams per day and per meal, plus what that looks like in food.
Pick a goal to see typical protein needs, then enter your weight.
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Protein builds and repairs muscle, keeps you full, and supports nearly every process in your body — but how much you actually need depends on your weight and what you're trying to do. This calculator turns that into a clear daily target: enter your body weight and pick a goal (general health, building muscle, losing fat, or training as an athlete), and it returns your recommended protein in grams per day, a sensible range, and the amount per kilogram and per pound. It even shows how many meals to split it across and what that total looks like in real food — chicken, eggs, Greek yogurt, or whey. It's free, instant, and works in pounds or kilograms.
Protein needs are usually expressed in grams per kilogram of body weight. The official RDA is 0.8 g/kg, but that's the minimum to prevent deficiency, not an optimal target — the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines suggest 1.2–1.6 g/kg for general health. Active people need more: roughly 1.4–1.7 g/kg for general fitness, 1.6–2.2 g/kg to build muscle (about 1 gram per pound when training hard), and 1.8–2.2 g/kg when losing fat, since higher protein preserves muscle and curbs hunger in a calorie deficit. Endurance and strength athletes can benefit from up to 2.2–2.7 g/kg. For example, a 175-pound (79 kg) person building muscle targets about 79 × 2.0 ≈ 160 g of protein per day. Spreading it across 3–5 meals of 20–40 g each helps your body use it efficiently. This is a protein-only tool — for a full carbs-and-fat split, use our macro calculator.
Protein Formula
Hit the higher protein intake that supports muscle growth while training.
Keep protein high in a calorie deficit to preserve muscle and stay full.
Find a sensible everyday target above the bare-minimum RDA.
Split your daily protein into per-meal goals and pick foods to match.
Set a higher intake to support heavy endurance or strength training.
Aim toward the higher end, since protein needs rise with age to protect muscle.
Get a daily protein number tailored to building muscle, losing fat, or general health.
See your need expressed every common way, in pounds or kilograms.
Break the daily total into per-meal targets your body can actually use.
Translates grams into real servings — chicken, eggs, Greek yogurt, or whey.
A chart shows how your target shifts from sedentary to athlete.
No signup — and pair it with our macro calculator for the full picture.
For general health, about 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight (roughly 0.5–0.7 g per pound) — more than the bare-minimum RDA of 0.8 g/kg. A 165-pound person lands around 90–120 g per day. Enter your weight and goal above for a tailored number.
Aim for about 1.6–2.2 g/kg of body weight (around 1 gram per pound) when you're training to gain muscle. For a 175-pound person that's roughly 130–175 g per day, ideally spread across several meals.
Keep protein high — about 1.8–2.2 g/kg — when losing fat. Higher protein preserves muscle during a calorie deficit and helps you feel full, which makes the diet easier to stick to.
Both describe the same thing. Multiply grams per kilogram by 0.45 to get grams per pound — so 2.2 g/kg is about 1 g/lb. This calculator shows your target both ways.
For healthy people, high-protein diets (up to ~2.7 g/kg) are generally safe. Very high intakes offer little extra benefit for most goals. People with kidney disease should follow medical advice, as they may need to limit protein.
Spreading protein across meals helps your body use it. Many people do well with 20–40 g per meal across 3–5 meals. Enter your meals per day above and the calculator splits your total for you.
Yes. Muscle is harder to maintain with age, so many experts suggest older adults aim toward the higher end (around 1.2–1.6 g/kg or more) to help prevent muscle loss, alongside resistance training.
Lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, beans and lentils, tofu and soy, and protein powders like whey. A chicken breast has about 37 g, an egg about 6 g, and a scoop of whey about 24 g.