Calories in chicken breast: raw, cooked, skin on and off

Skinless chicken breast is the reference food of calorie counting: 165 kcal per 100 g, roasted, with 31 g of protein. But that famous number only applies to cooked meat without skin, and the gap between the variants is bigger than most people think — the same breast can honestly be logged at anything from 120 to 230 kcal per 100 g depending on state, skin and breading.

The USDA numbers

All per 100 g, from USDA FoodData Central — the rows calorie.one matches when you log chicken:

Read the first two rows carefully, because they hide the most common chicken-logging error.

Raw 120 vs cooked 165: same meat, different water

Chicken doesn't gain calories in the oven. It loses water — about 25% of its weight — so the same calories end up packed into fewer grams. A raw 200 g breast carries about 240 kcal; after roasting it weighs roughly 150 g, and 150 g × 165 kcal/100 g = ... about 248 kcal. Same chicken, same energy, two correct ways to count it.

The error comes from mixing the states: weighing the cooked 150 g piece but applying the raw value of 120 gives 180 kcal — a 28% undercount on every chicken meal you ever log. Do that daily with a 200 g portion and you're silently eating ~60–70 unlogged kcal per meal. The rule is the same as for rice and pasta, just in the opposite direction: meat shrinks, grains swell. Weigh whichever state is convenient, but log the matching value.

Skin: 32 extra calories per 100 g

Skin-on roasted breast is 197 vs 165 skinless — about 20% more, because skin is mostly fat. On a typical 170 g cooked breast that's a 54 kcal difference. Worth logging correctly, not worth fearing: the skin also carries flavor that might save you from a heavier sauce. What moves the number far more is breading and frying — the fast-food row at 230 kcal per 100 g has both added fat and a carbohydrate crust, and notice its protein is *lower* per 100 g because breading dilutes the meat.

The 6 oz portion math

Menus and fitness plans love ounces, so here's the conversion (28.35 g per oz), using cooked skinless roasted breast at 165 kcal per 100 g:

One caution: when a recipe says "6 oz chicken breast", it almost always means raw weight. 6 oz raw (170 g × 120) is ~204 kcal and cooks down to about 4.5 oz — if you then log "6 oz cooked" you've overcounted by ~77 kcal. Recipes speak raw, plates speak cooked.

Why chicken breast earns its reputation

At 165 kcal per 100 g cooked with 31 g of protein, chicken breast delivers about 19 g of protein per 100 kcal — one of the best ratios of any whole food, better than eggs (~8 g per 100 kcal) and most fish. If you're trying to hit a protein target inside a calorie budget (see how much protein per day), it's hard to beat, which is exactly why it's in every cutting diet ever written.

Logging it right

• Name the state: "150 g grilled chicken breast" and "150 g raw chicken breast" are different numbers, and a good tracker treats them differently.
• Say if the skin stayed on.
• If it was pan-fried in oil, the oil is its own line — a tablespoon is ~120 kcal, often more than the difference between every row in the table above.
• Know what the portion is a share of. 280 kcal of chicken is 14% of a 2,000 kcal day and 11% of a 2,500 one; the calorie calculator tells you which of those is closer to yours.

When you log chicken in calorie.one, the AI reads the cooking state and skin from your description or photo, matches the specific USDA row (you'll see "Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat only, cooked, roasted" on the line), and estimates the grams — which you can correct in one tap. The per-100 g values are always database lookups, never AI guesses; that split is the whole methodology.

FAQ

How many calories are in 150 g of cooked chicken breast?

About 248 kcal with 46 g of protein, using the USDA roasted skinless value of 165 kcal per 100 g. The same 150 g weighed raw is about 180 kcal — but it cooks down to roughly 112 g, which is why the raw and cooked numbers don't match gram for gram.

How many calories are in 100 g of raw chicken breast?

120 kcal, with 22.5 g of protein and about 2.6 g of fat (USDA "Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat only, raw").

How many calories are in one chicken breast?

A typical supermarket breast is 140–180 g cooked, which is 230–300 kcal skinless. Large breasts of 220–250 g cooked reach 360–410 kcal. Raw, the same breasts weigh about a third more and carry the same calories.

How many calories are in a pound of chicken breast?

One pound (454 g) of raw skinless breast is about 545 kcal and 102 g of protein. Cooked, a pound is about 750 kcal — because a cooked pound started as roughly 1.35 lb of raw meat.

How many calories are in chicken breast with skin?

197 kcal per 100 g roasted with skin, versus 165 without — about 32 extra kcal per 100 g, or roughly 55 kcal on a 170 g breast. The skin is almost all fat, so the protein per 100 g drops slightly to 29.8 g.