A typical steak dinner lands somewhere between 300 and 700 calories, depending on the cut and how large the portion is. Per 100 grams of cooked meat (about 3.5 ounces), steak ranges from roughly 230 calories for a lean sirloin to over 300 for a well-marbled ribeye. The cut you choose and the size of your portion matter far more than how you cook it.
Calories by Cut
Not all steaks are created equal. Marbling, the white streaks of fat running through the meat, is the biggest factor separating a lighter cut from a calorie-dense one. USDA data for cooked steak with a standard fat trim breaks down like this per 100 grams:
- Sirloin: 230 to 257 calories, 13 to 16 grams of fat
- Strip steak (New York strip): 250 to 278 calories, 15 to 18 grams of fat
- Tenderloin (filet mignon): 262 to 273 calories, 17 to 18 grams of fat
- Ribeye: 278 to 304 calories, 18 to 22 grams of fat
The range within each cut reflects the USDA grading system. Choice-grade beef has more marbling than Select, which adds both fat and calories. Prime-grade steaks, common at high-end steakhouses, contain even more marbling and will sit above these numbers.
Sirloin is the leanest mainstream cut, with about 70 fewer calories per serving than a ribeye. Tenderloin surprises some people: despite its reputation as a premium cut, its calorie count is moderate because the tenderness comes from the muscle’s location (a low-use muscle along the spine), not from fat.
How Portion Size Changes the Total
The 100-gram figures above are useful for comparison, but restaurant portions are significantly larger. A 100-gram piece of steak is only about 3.5 ounces, and most restaurants serve at least double that. Here are the typical portion sizes you’ll encounter:
- Filet mignon: 6 to 8 ounces
- Sirloin: 8 to 10 ounces
- New York strip: 8 to 10 ounces
- Ribeye: 10 to 12 ounces
- T-bone: 12 to 16 ounces
To estimate your total calories, multiply the per-100g number by the portion weight. A 10-ounce (284g) Choice ribeye works out to roughly 860 calories from the steak alone. An 8-ounce (227g) sirloin comes in around 580. A 6-ounce filet mignon, one of the smaller portions you’ll find, runs about 465 calories.
If you’re cooking at home and want tighter control, weighing your steak before cooking gives you the most accurate count. Steak loses about 25% of its weight during cooking as moisture evaporates. So if you look up the nutrition info for a 4-ounce raw steak but weigh out 4 ounces after cooking, you’re actually eating the equivalent of roughly 5 to 5.5 ounces of raw meat, and underestimating your intake.
Does Cooking Method Matter?
Grilling, broiling, and pan-searing all produce similar calorie counts for the steak itself. The real variable is what you add. A tablespoon of butter basted over a pan-seared steak adds about 100 calories. A tablespoon of olive oil in the pan adds roughly 120. If you grill without added fat, the steak’s calories come entirely from its own protein and marbling.
One counterintuitive finding: trimming the external fat cap before cooking doesn’t significantly change the calorie content of the finished steak. Research from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada found that cooking a ribeye with the fat cap on versus off made no measurable difference in calories. The external fat doesn’t migrate into the meat during cooking the way many people assume.
Protein and Fat Breakdown
Steak is one of the most protein-dense foods available. Across cuts, cooked steak delivers roughly 25 to 30 grams of protein per 100 grams. That means even a modest 6-ounce sirloin provides around 45 grams of protein, close to the entire daily target for many adults.
Where cuts diverge is fat content. A Choice ribeye gets about 65% of its calories from fat and 35% from protein. A Select sirloin flips closer to 50/50. If you’re tracking macros, the cut you pick shifts your fat-to-protein ratio more than almost any other protein source. Choosing sirloin or tenderloin over ribeye is the simplest way to get a high-protein meal without the extra fat calories, while ribeye is the better choice when you’re less concerned about total calories and want richer flavor.
Quick Calorie Estimates for Common Steaks
For a fast reference, here are approximate total calories for popular restaurant-sized steaks, using Choice-grade USDA data:
- 6 oz filet mignon: ~465 calories
- 8 oz sirloin: ~580 calories
- 8 oz New York strip: ~635 calories
- 10 oz ribeye: ~860 calories
- 16 oz T-bone: ~1,050+ calories
These numbers assume the steak is cooked without added butter or oil. A steakhouse finish with butter can push each of these up by 100 to 200 calories depending on how generous the kitchen is. Side dishes, sauces, and drinks are separate, and at most restaurants they’ll add more to your total than the steak itself.