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Padel Calories Calculator — what the night burned

An 80 kg player burns roughly 810 kcal across a 90-minute match night. Put your own weight, your court time and how hard the night actually went through the standard MET formula — kcal = MET × 3.5 × kilos ÷ 200 × minutes — with the arithmetic shown, the padel figure named for what it is, and tennis and running lined up beside it for scale.

The night
Your weight 80 kg

176 lb

Time on court 90 min

1 h 30 min — court time, not the time you left the house.

How the night went

Match night uses MET 6.4, the figure calorie databases carry for padel — no edition of the Compendium of Physical Activities lists the sport. Social rallies and full send are that value −20% and +20% — a band, not a measurement.

Method

How the calorie estimate is made

The arithmetic is the standard MET equation and it is one line: kcal = MET × 3.5 × kilos ÷ 200 × minutes. A MET is a multiple of resting metabolism, and the 3.5 ÷ 200 converts millilitres of oxygen per kilogram per minute into kilocalories. An 80 kg player at MET 6.4 for 90 minutes: 6.4 × 3.5 × 80 ÷ 200 × 90 = 806 kcal, which this page shows as 810, because a population average does not deserve single-calorie precision. Pounds are converted at 2.20462 to the kilogram, and the result is rounded to the nearest ten.

Now the part most calorie calculators leave out. There is no published MET value for padel. No edition of the Compendium of Physical Activities lists the sport — not 2011, not the 2024 adult update — and the systematic review of racket-sport physiology found that no study has recorded oxygen consumption during an actual padel match, only VO2max in the laboratory. The 6.4 this page uses is the figure the burned-calories.com padel entry publishes. It is a calorie-database estimate, not a measurement, and treating it as a published physiological constant would be pretending.

The two comparison figures ARE from the Compendium, and they are the honest anchors on this page: tennis doubles is 6.0 (activity code 15680) and running at six miles an hour is 9.8 (code 12050). So padel sits fractionally above doubles tennis and well below an easy run — which is what every player already suspects.

The intensity band is ours too. Social rallies use 5.1 and full send uses 7.7, which are 6.4 minus and plus 20%. That is a band drawn around an estimate, not three measurements. The croissant on the result is 270 kcal, one food unit and only one, because a calorie figure this soft cannot support a shopping list.

One thing that will change your number more than any of this: the minutes. The equation counts time on court, so if you booked 90 minutes and sat a third of them out, enter the minutes you played.

Where this comes from

  1. 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities (tennis, doubles: 6.0, code 15680; running, 6 mph: 9.8, code 12050 — and no padel entry) Ainsworth et al., Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2011
  2. Physiological demands of racket sports: a systematic review (no study recorded VO2 during a padel match) Cádiz Gallardo et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2023 (PubMed)
  3. Padel tennis — the 6.4 MET figure this calculator uses burned-calories.com

Rivals is not affiliated with any padel federation and nothing here is coached, reviewed or official. Where a number is our own judgement rather than a published figure, the note above says so and cites nothing. Method last checked 21 August 2026.

How thin every sport calorie figure is

Every calorie figure for a sport comes from the same place: a MET value, which is how many times your resting metabolism a given activity costs. The figure used for padel is 6.4 — the number burned-calories.com publishes, and not a Compendium value, because no edition of the Compendium of Physical Activities lists padel — and the arithmetic around it is one line: kcal = MET × 3.5 × kilos ÷ 200 × minutes. That is the whole model, and it is worth knowing how thin it is.

What the model cannot see is you. It does not know whether you covered the court or parked at the net, whether the rallies ran twelve shots or two, whether it was 32 °C in a glass box or a cold indoor hall, or how fit you already are. Two players of the same weight in the same match can differ by a couple of hundred calories, which is why the social, match and full-send settings here are the published value ±20% and are labelled as estimates rather than readings.

Used honestly, it is still useful. A 90-minute match night at 80 kg comes out around 800 kcal — enough to explain the appetite afterwards, not enough to justify treating the number as a licence. If you want precision, wear a heart-rate strap; if you want the truth about consistency, count sessions rather than calories.

Questions

How many calories does an hour of padel burn?
For most club players, somewhere between 400 and 600 kcal an hour. The standard estimate uses MET 6.4, the figure the burned-calories.com padel entry publishes: kcal = MET × 3.5 × kilos ÷ 200 × minutes. An 80 kg player at that intensity burns about 540 kcal in an hour and roughly 806 kcal across a 90-minute session — this calculator shows 810, because rounding a population average to the nearest calorie would be pretending. Worth knowing: no edition of the Compendium of Physical Activities lists padel at all, so 6.4 is a calorie-database estimate rather than a measured physiological constant.

Does padel burn more calories than tennis or running?
More than doubles tennis, less than running. Padel is estimated at MET 6.4 against 6.0 for doubles tennis and 9.8 for running at six miles an hour — those two ARE Compendium of Physical Activities figures, codes 15680 and 12050 — so the same 90 minutes gives padel a small edge over tennis and running a decisive one. What padel wins on is time actually spent moving: rallies are longer, the walls keep the ball alive, and almost nobody runs for 90 minutes twice a week without hating it.

Does rotating off court change the number?
Yes, and this is the honest catch in every calorie estimate. The figure here is court time, so if your night is 90 minutes of booking but you sit out a third of it, enter the minutes you actually played. Standing behind the glass burns roughly what standing anywhere burns.

Is padel good for losing weight?
It is good at the part most exercise fails at: getting you to turn up. Two sessions a week at 500–800 kcal each is a real weekly deficit if the rest of your eating stays put, and the social pull of a fixed crew beats a treadmill you have to talk yourself onto. But weight is decided mostly at the table, and a MET estimate is a band rather than a measurement — treat the number as a rough guide, not a budget you can spend.

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Read next

How Many Calories Does Padel Burn? Padel burns roughly 400 to 600 kcal an hour for most club players. Here is the MET arithmetic, a worked 80 kg example, and what the number cannot see. 6 min Is Padel a Good Workout? An Honest Comparison Padel against the gym and the treadmill, measured honestly: what it trains, where it loses to running, and the one metric it wins by a distance. 7 min How Often Should You Play Padel? One or two padel sessions a week is sustainable for most club players. Here is what the injury data says about a third, and how to add one safely. 6 min

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