Free protein calculator
How much protein per day — in grams, not percentages.
Protein requirements scale with your body, not with your calorie total, so this calculator works in grams per kilogram the way the research does. Enter your weight and what you are currently doing, and it gives you a daily range, what that is per meal, and what it looks like in real food.
General wellness guidance, not medical advice. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, under 18, or managing a medical condition, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before acting on any of these numbers.
The ranges, and where they come from
The government minimum — 0.8 g/kg — is the amount that prevents deficiency in sedentary adults. It is a floor, not a target, and it gets quoted as though it were the ceiling. Anyone training, dieting or over about fifty does better higher.
| Situation | Grams per kg | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Not training | 0.8 – 1.2 | Health floor; the low end is deficiency prevention, not optimisation |
| Training, weight stable | 1.4 – 1.8 | The range position stands settle on for people who lift or run regularly |
| Losing weight | 1.8 – 2.2 | Higher because calories are lower — this is what keeps the loss mostly fat |
| Building muscle | 1.6 – 2.2 | Above this the extra grams stop showing up in the results |
Why protein goes up when calories go down
In a deficit your body needs energy from somewhere, and it is not fussy about the source. Adequate protein plus resistance training is the combination that biases that choice towards fat and away from muscle. This is the single highest-value thing most people can change about a diet, and it is the one a percentage-based target quietly gets wrong: thirty per cent of 2,400 calories is 180 g, but thirty per cent of 1,600 is 120 g — the target fell exactly when the need rose.
Turning a number into meals
A daily gram target is only useful if you can see it in food. Twenty-five to forty grams per meal across three or four meals covers most people's totals without any single plate looking strange. If you also want the carb and fat side of the plan, the macro calculator splits a calorie target three ways, and the calorie calculator works out what that target should be.
Then it becomes a logging problem, which is what the app is for: NutriLog AI tracks protein as its own daily target rather than burying it inside a calorie ring, so falling short is visible on the day it happens rather than at the end of the month.
Common questions
How much protein per day do I actually need?
For general health the floor is around 0.8 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight. If you train, 1.4 to 1.8 g/kg is the usual working range. In a calorie deficit it goes up rather than down — 1.8 to 2.2 g/kg — because protein is what stops the weight you lose from including muscle. Building muscle sits at 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg. Above roughly 2.2 the extra stops buying anything measurable.
Why grams per kilo instead of a percentage of calories?
Because your protein requirement is a property of your body, not of your diet. Set protein at thirty per cent and it silently falls every time you cut calories — exactly when you need it most. A gram-per-kilo target holds still while the calories move around it, which is the behaviour you want.
Should I use my body weight or my goal weight?
If you are within a reasonable range of your goal, current weight is fine. If you are carrying a lot of fat, current weight inflates the target — fat tissue has very little protein demand — so use your goal weight, or lean body mass if you know it. Nobody needs 250 g of protein a day because a scale said so.
Does protein timing matter?
Far less than the daily total, but it is not nothing: spreading it across three or four meals of 25 to 40 grams stimulates muscle protein synthesis more effectively than one very large serving and two small ones. That is a refinement worth maybe a few per cent. Hitting the daily number at all is worth far more.
Is a high-protein diet bad for your kidneys?
In people with healthy kidneys, controlled trials up to around 2.5 to 3 g/kg have not shown harm. The caution is real and specific: it applies to people with existing kidney disease, who should be following a clinician’s advice rather than a calculator. If you have any kidney condition, ask your doctor before raising protein.
Can I hit these numbers on a vegetarian diet?
Yes, and it takes deliberate planning rather than luck. Paneer, curd and Greek yoghurt, whole and skimmed milk, eggs if you eat them, soya chunks — which are close to 50 per cent protein by dry weight — tofu, dals and rajma, and a whey or plant isolate if the rest still falls short. The usual failure is not the absence of options, it is assuming a dal-and-rice plate is doing more work than it is.
Other free calculators
Knowing the number is easy. Hitting it daily is not.
NutriLog AI tracks protein as a first-class target, with a food database that knows paneer and dal as well as it knows chicken. Free, no ads, Android. Free on Google Play.