Calorie dataMAY 8, 2026~5 MIN

How many calories are in an egg?

One large egg has 72 calories (USDA). Raw, boiled, fried and scrambled - per egg and per 100 g - and why the pan, not the egg, changes the number.

The short answer

One large egg (about 50 g without shell) has about 72 calories raw or soft-boiled, 78 hard-boiled and 90–100 fried, with 6.3 g of protein. Per USDA FoodData Central, raw whole egg is 143 kcal per 100 g; a medium egg (44 g) is about 63 kcal and an extra-large (56 g) about 80.

Short answer: a large egg (about 50 g) has roughly 72 calories raw or soft-boiled. But "an egg" stops being one number the moment it hits a pan, and most of the confusion around egg calories comes from mixing up three things: the size of the egg, the cooking method, and whether a number is per egg or per 100 grams. Let's untangle all three with real numbers from the USDA database.

The USDA numbers, per 100 grams

Nutrition databases report per 100 g, so that's where we start. These are the values from USDA FoodData Central — the same rows calorie.one looks up when you log eggs:

Preparation	kcal per 100 g	Protein per 100 g
Raw, fresh whole egg	143	12.6 g
Hard-boiled	155	12.6 g
Scrambled	149	10.0 g
Fried	196	13.6 g

Two things jump out. First, raw and hard-boiled are nearly identical — boiling adds nothing and removes almost nothing, and the small difference is mostly a little water lost through the shell. Second, fried eggs are about 37% more caloric per 100 g than raw. The egg didn't change; the pan did.

Why frying adds calories

An egg is mostly water, protein and fat, and cooking it in fat means some of that fat ends up in — and on — the egg. The USDA "fried" entry assumes a typical amount of cooking fat absorbed during frying. A teaspoon of butter is about 34 kcal, and much of it stays with the egg. Scrambled eggs sit in the middle because they're usually made with a splash of milk and a little fat, which dilutes the egg slightly (that's also why their protein per 100 g is lower — milk has less protein than egg).

The practical rule: the egg itself barely changes with cooking; what you cook it in is the variable. If you fry in a generous knob of butter, log the butter. If you dry-fry in a nonstick pan, your fried egg is much closer to the boiled number.

Per egg, not per 100 grams

Nobody eats 100 grams of egg — they eat one, two or three eggs. Egg sizes (without shell):

Small: about 38 g
Medium: about 44 g
Large: about 50 g
Extra large: about 56 g

Multiply those weights by the USDA per-100 g values and you get calories by size:

Egg size (without shell)	Raw or soft-boiled	Hard-boiled
Small (38 g)	~54 kcal	~59 kcal
Medium (44 g)	~63 kcal	~68 kcal
Large (50 g)	~72 kcal	~78 kcal
Extra large (56 g)	~80 kcal	~87 kcal

Using the 50 g large egg as the standard, the per-egg numbers by cooking method work out to:

One large egg (50 g)	Calories
Raw or soft-boiled	72
Hard-boiled	78
Scrambled (as part of a batch)	74
Fried in fat	98

So a three-egg breakfast ranges from about 215 kcal (boiled) to nearly 300 kcal (fried) before you count toast or bacon. Over a year of daily egg breakfasts, that gap alone is worth more than three kilograms of body weight — from one cooking decision.

The protein is the point

Eggs earn their place in a calorie budget. A large egg carries about 6.3 g of complete protein for its 72 kcal, which is one of the better protein-per-calorie deals among whole foods. The protein sits in both the white and the yolk — the white is nearly pure protein and water (about 17 kcal per egg), while the yolk holds the fat, most vitamins, and the remaining protein (about 55 kcal). Discarding yolks cuts calories fast, but it also discards most of the nutrition — we've laid out the whole egg vs egg white trade-off line by line.

How to log eggs correctly

Log the count and the method: "2 fried eggs" and "2 boiled eggs" are different numbers, and a good tracker should treat them differently.
Log the cooking fat if you added a lot. A default "fried" entry assumes a typical amount; a heavy pour of oil is its own line.
Don't sweat egg size unless you're eating many. The medium-vs-large difference is about 9 kcal per egg.
Put the eggs in context. Three boiled eggs are ~215 kcal — about 10% of a typical 2,000 kcal day. If you don't know your own number, the calorie calculator gives you a starting point in a minute.

When you type "2 fried eggs" into calorie.one, the AI identifies the food and the cooking state, then pulls the numbers above from the USDA database — it never guesses a value the database already knows. You'll see the exact row it matched ("Egg, whole, fried") in the meal's line-by-line breakdown, and you can correct the gram amount if your eggs run large. That's the whole methodology: recognition by AI, arithmetic by database.

FAQ

How many calories are in 2 eggs?

Two large eggs are about 144 kcal raw or soft-boiled, 155 hard-boiled, and 180–200 fried. Two medium eggs are roughly 10% less: about 126 kcal boiled.

How many calories are in a boiled egg?

A large hard-boiled egg is about 78 kcal (USDA: 155 kcal per 100 g, 50 g egg). A soft-boiled egg is closer to the raw value, about 72 kcal — the difference is a little water lost during longer cooking, not added energy.

How many calories are in a fried egg?

About 90–100 kcal for a large egg. The USDA "Egg, whole, cooked, fried" row is 196 kcal per 100 g and assumes a typical amount of absorbed cooking fat; dry-fried in a nonstick pan it lands nearer the boiled 78.