A typical cooked steak ranges from about 180 to 300 calories per 100 grams (3.5 ounces), depending on the cut. Fattier cuts like ribeye sit at the top of that range, while leaner cuts like flank steak come in near the bottom. The actual calorie count on your plate depends on the cut, the portion size, the grade of beef, and how you cook it.
Calories by Cut
The biggest factor in steak calories is which cut you’re eating. Here’s how the most popular cuts compare when broiled, based on USDA data per 100 grams of cooked meat (lean and fat included):
- Ribeye: 278 to 304 calories
- Filet mignon (tenderloin): 262 to 273 calories
- Top sirloin: 230 to 257 calories
- Flank steak: 183 to 202 calories
The ranges reflect USDA beef grades. Choice grade beef has more marbling (fat woven through the muscle), so it lands at the higher end. Select grade is leaner and sits at the lower end. Ribeye carries the most intramuscular fat of these cuts, which is why it’s both the most flavorful and the most calorie-dense. Flank steak is a naturally lean muscle with minimal marbling, making it the lightest option by a wide margin.
Calories for Real Portion Sizes
The USDA standard serving size for cooked beef is 3 ounces (84 grams), but that’s smaller than what most people actually eat. A home-cooked steak is often 6 to 8 ounces, and restaurant steaks commonly run 10 to 16 ounces. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
For a 3-ounce serving (the USDA reference), you’re looking at roughly 150 to 255 calories depending on the cut. A sirloin comes in around 195 to 215, while a ribeye hits closer to 235 to 255.
An 8-ounce steak, which is a common portion at home or at a restaurant, typically contains 450 to 650 calories. A lean cut like flank steak stays toward the lower end, while a well-marbled ribeye pushes higher. A 10-ounce restaurant steak can reach 500 to 850 calories, especially with fattier cuts like ribeye or strip steak. Order a 16-ounce bone-in ribeye and you could easily be looking at over 1,000 calories from the steak alone, before any sides or sauces.
How Beef Grade Affects Calories
USDA grades beef primarily by the amount of marbling in the meat. Prime has the most fat running through it, Choice has moderate marbling, and Select is the leanest of the three. More marbling means more calories per ounce, since fat contains more than twice the calories of protein gram for gram.
The difference isn’t enormous within the same cut, but it adds up. A Choice ribeye has about 304 calories per 100 grams cooked, while a Select ribeye drops to 278. Over a full 10-ounce steak, that gap works out to roughly 75 extra calories for the higher grade. Prime steaks, which aren’t captured in the standard USDA retail data but carry even more marbling than Choice, would push the count higher still. If you’re eating at a high-end steakhouse that advertises USDA Prime, factor in a meaningful calorie bump over what you’d get from a supermarket steak.
Grass-Fed vs. Grain-Fed
Grass-fed cattle take longer to reach market weight than grain-fed cattle, and the resulting meat is generally leaner with less marbling. That translates to slightly fewer calories per serving, though the two are nutritionally similar overall. The most notable difference is in fat composition: grass-fed beef contains roughly twice the omega-3 fatty acids of grain-fed, though the absolute amounts are still small (about 30 milligrams more per serving). If you’re choosing grass-fed for calorie reasons alone, the savings are modest. The bigger impact comes from choosing a leaner cut in the first place.
Trimming Fat Makes a Measurable Difference
Most calorie data for steak includes both the lean meat and the visible fat cap around the edges. Trimming that external fat before or after cooking reduces the calorie count noticeably. USDA research on trimming beef from a quarter-inch fat border down to an eighth of an inch found reductions of about 1.5 to 5.5 grams of fat per cut, depending on the piece. For a top sirloin steak, trimming removed roughly 3 grams of fat, which translates to about 27 fewer calories.
If you trim even more aggressively, cutting away all visible external fat, the reduction is larger. Since each gram of fat carries 9 calories, removing a thick fat cap from a ribeye could easily save 50 to 100 calories per steak. The marbling inside the meat stays regardless of how much you trim the outside, so a well-marbled cut will still carry more calories than a lean one even after trimming.
How Cooking Method Changes the Count
Cooking concentrates the calories in steak by driving off water. That’s why cooked values are always higher per 100 grams than raw values. A raw flank steak has about 145 to 165 calories per 100 grams, but after broiling, that jumps to 183 to 202. The steak hasn’t gained calories; it’s just lighter because moisture evaporated, so the same nutrients are packed into less weight.
The cooking fat you add is the real variable. A tablespoon of butter or oil adds about 100 to 120 calories. In practice, though, you won’t absorb all of that into the steak. Much of the cooking fat stays in the pan, and if you’re searing a fatty cut, the rendered fat from the meat itself may actually result in a net calorie loss compared to the raw starting weight. For leaner cuts cooked in oil or butter, a reasonable estimate is that 30 to 50 extra calories end up in the finished steak. Grilling or broiling without added fat keeps the count closest to the baseline USDA numbers.
Steak’s Protein-to-Calorie Ratio
Steak is one of the more protein-dense foods available, which is a big reason people tracking their intake gravitate toward it. A lean cut like flank steak or top sirloin delivers roughly 25 to 28 grams of protein per 100 grams cooked, with a relatively modest fat load. That means a large portion of the calories come from protein rather than fat.
Fattier cuts shift that ratio. A ribeye still has plenty of protein, but a greater share of its calories come from fat. If your goal is maximizing protein per calorie, flank steak, top sirloin, and eye of round are your best options. If you’re less concerned about the ratio and more about total calories fitting your day, any cut works as long as you account for the portion size accurately. Weighing your steak after cooking gives you the most reliable calorie estimate, since pre-cooked weights lose 25% or more of their mass to water and rendered fat during cooking.