How far is 10,000 steps? Steps to km, time and calories

10,000 steps is about 7 kilometres. The exact answer depends on your step length: with short steps of 65 cm it is 6.5 km, with long steps of 80 cm it is 8 km. A kilometre is about 1,400 steps and a Swedish mil (10 km) about 14,000. Here are the tables, how to work out your own step length, how long 10,000 steps take and what they burn.

Steps to km

The table shows three step lengths. 72 cm is a common reference for an adult of 175 cm. If you are shorter, read the 65 cm column; if you are tall, the 80 cm column. How to work out your own step length is further down.

How many steps is a kilometre, a mile and a Swedish mil?

Work out your step length

A common reference is that step length is about 41.5 percent of height for men and 41.3 percent for women, at walking pace. The formula comes from pedometer research and is used by most step counters that do not measure with GPS. For an exact figure: walk 20 steps at your normal pace, measure the distance and divide by 20.

When you run, steps get longer, often over a metre, so the same number of steps covers more distance.

How long do 10,000 steps take?

At walking pace, 5 km per hour, 10,000 steps of 72 cm take about 1 hour and 25 minutes. At a brisk 6 km per hour, just over an hour. Over a whole day of everyday walking, errands, stairs and room to room, many people reach 3,000 to 5,000 steps without going for a walk.

How many calories do 10,000 steps burn?

About 300 to 450 kcal, depending on body weight. Walking on level ground at 4.5 to 5 km per hour is 3.5 MET according to the Compendium of Physical Activities, and energy use is roughly MET times body weight in kilograms times hours. 10,000 steps in 1 hour 26 minutes then gives 300 kcal for 60 kg, 350 kcal for 70 kg, 400 kcal for 80 kg and 450 kcal for 90 kg. The figures are the total for the walk, including what the body would have used at rest, and they rise on hills and at a faster pace.

Why 10,000 steps?

The number comes from a Japanese pedometer from 1965 called manpo-kei, “the 10,000 step meter”. It was a marketing target, not a research result. A pooled analysis of 15 studies in The Lancet Public Health in 2022 found that the risk of premature death fell with the number of steps up to about 6,000 to 8,000 a day for people over 60 and 8,000 to 10,000 for younger adults, and that more steps than that gave no further reduction. Walking pace made no clear difference beyond the number of steps. So 10,000 steps is not wrong, but most of the gain comes before it.

Steg, the old Swedish unit

The site’s steg converter uses the historical Swedish length unit steg, which was 3 Swedish feet or 0.9 metres. That is not the same as a step on a pedometer, which is shorter. To convert pedometer figures, use the tables on this page. To read a measurement in an old text, use the converter, or the one for kilometres to steg.

Sources: step length of 41.5 and 41.3 percent of height, ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal 2008 (“One-mile step counts by height, sex and pace”); 3.5 MET for level walking, Compendium of Physical Activities, walking; steps and mortality, Paluch et al., The Lancet Public Health 2022. The tables are calculated from the step length and rounded.