How Many Calories in a Cup of Rice? Cooked vs Uncooked
A cup of cooked long-grain white rice is 205 calories; a cup of the same rice measured dry, before it goes in the pot, is 675. Both are USDA figures and both are right. Cooking adds only water, so one dry cup swells into about three and a quarter cooked cups. Before you log rice, settle which cup you mean: that one word moves the entry by 470 calories.
- Cooked cup
- 158 g · 205 kcal
- Dry cup
- 185 g · 675 kcal
- 1 dry cup makes
- about 3¼ cooked cups
- Carbs
- 45 g per cooked cup
One cup of rice, dry and cooked, by type
USDA FoodData Central weighs a cup of each rice twice: once dry, the way it comes out of the bag, and once cooked. Each calorie figure below multiplies the record’s own value per 100 g by its own cup weight.
| Rice | 1 cup dry | 1 cup cooked | Carbs, cooked cup | USDA records |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, long-grain | 675 kcal · 185 g | 205 kcal · 158 g | 45 g | FDC 168877 / 168878 |
| White, medium-grain | 702 kcal · 195 g | 242 kcal · 186 g | 53 g | FDC 168879 / 168880 |
| White, short-grain | 716 kcal · 200 g | 242 kcal · 186 g | 53 g | FDC 168881 / 168882 |
| White, long-grain, parboiled | 692 kcal · 185 g | 194 kcal · 158 g | 41 g | FDC 169707 / 169708 |
| White, long-grain, instant | 361 kcal · 95 g | 205 kcal · 165 g | 44 g | FDC 169709 / 169710 |
| Brown, long-grain | 679 kcal · 185 g | 248 kcal · 202 g | 52 g | FDC 169703 / 169704 |
| Brown, medium-grain | 688 kcal · 190 g | 218 kcal · 195 g | 46 g | FDC 169706 / 168875 |
| Glutinous (sticky) rice | 685 kcal · 185 g | 169 kcal · 174 g | 37 g | FDC 168883 / 169711 |
| Wild rice | 571 kcal · 160 g | 166 kcal · 164 g | 35 g | FDC 169726 / 168897 |
Two patterns are worth knowing. Per 100 g, regular cooked white rice is 130 kcal whether the grain is long, medium or short. What changes the cup is how tightly the grains pack: a cooked cup of long-grain weighs 158 g and a cup of medium or short grain 186 g, so the stickier rices come out 37 kcal higher per cup. Brown long-grain is lighter per gram (123 kcal per 100 g) but heavier per cup (202 g), which puts its cup at 248; it also carries 3.2 g of fiber per cooked cup against 0.6 g for white.
Instant rice is the exception in the dry column. The grains are already cooked and dried, so a dry cup weighs 95 g rather than 185 g, and it makes only about a cup and a half once prepared.
Why one dry cup becomes three cooked cups
Dry long-grain rice is 11.6% water. Cooked, it is 68.4% water. Nothing else of consequence enters a pot of plain rice, so the same calories end up spread over about 2.8 times the weight: 100 g of dry rice becomes roughly 280 g cooked. Two separate USDA sources land on the same answer:
- The energy agrees. 365 kcal per 100 g dry divided by 130 kcal per 100 g cooked is 2.8. A 185 g dry cup holds 675 kcal, which at 130 kcal per 100 g is about 519 g of cooked rice: 3.3 cups of 158 g.
- The kitchen agrees. USDA’s Food Buying Guide, which child nutrition programs use to plan quantities, says one cup of dry long-grain white rice makes about 3¼ cups cooked. Its figures for other rices: about 3 cups for short or medium grain, 2¾ for parboiled, 1½ for instant.
Read it the other way round and the cooked cup becomes easy to picture: its 205 calories are what 56 g of dry rice holds, less than a third of a dry cup.
Which number to log
- You measured after cooking, in a cup or on a scale: use a cooked entry, 205 kcal per cup or 130 per 100 g for long-grain white.
- You measured before cooking, a scoop from the bag or the pack’s serving line: use a dry entry, 675 kcal per cup or 365 per 100 g, and only for the share you ate. A quarter cup of dry long-grain rice is 169 kcal by USDA’s figures and makes about 0.8 of a cooked cup.
- You cooked one pot for several people: weigh the dry rice, weigh the cooked pot, and take your share by weight. One dry cup makes a pot of about 519 g; a third of it, 173 g, is 225 kcal.
Pick a state and keep it for the whole meal. The figure is only wrong when the weight comes from one state and the entry from the other.
The trap: a cooked plate logged as dry rice
The mistake runs in both directions, and both are large.
Logging too much. You weigh 150 g of cooked rice and pick an entry that describes dry rice. The log says 548 kcal; the plate holds 195. That is 2.8 times what you ate.
Logging too little. You cook half a cup of dry rice for your dinner, eat all of it, and log “1 cup of rice” against the cooked entry. Half a dry cup is 338 kcal and makes about 1.6 cooked cups; the log says 205. You are 133 kcal short, and if rice is on the table every night, 931 kcal short by the end of the week.
The second error is the quiet one, because the log looks reasonable. It is one of the ordinary ways a calorie deficit stops showing up on the scale: the number you wrote down is lower than what you ate.
What the kitchen adds: oil, butter and salt
Plain boiled rice is the leanest version of rice there is. USDA’s survey database, which describes rice the way Americans actually report eating it, prices in what goes into the pot:
| Rice, as prepared | Cup weight | Calories | Fat | USDA record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, cooked, no added fat | 158 g | 204 kcal | 0.4 g | FDC 2708408 |
| White, cooked, made with butter | 163 g | 240 kcal | 4.3 g | FDC 2708405 |
| White, cooked, made with oil | 163 g | 246 kcal | 5.1 g | FDC 2708404 |
| Fried rice, meatless | 166 g | 289 kcal | 5.3 g | FDC 2708951 |
| Spanish rice, from a restaurant | 243 g | 450 kcal | 12.9 g | FDC 2709084 |
| Rice cooked with coconut milk | 200 g | 534 kcal | 34.5 g | FDC 2709032 |
Cooking the rice with oil adds 42 kcal to every cup, and butter 36. Coconut milk more than doubles the cup. Salt changes nothing for calories and a great deal for sodium: USDA’s cooked long-grain rice carries 2 mg of sodium per cup made without salt and 604 mg made with it (FDC 168878 and 169753), about a quarter of the 2,300 mg Daily Value.
Restaurant rice is rarely one cup
A takeout side is portioned by the restaurant, not by your measuring cup. Here is what three chains publish for their rice sides:
| Item | Portion | Calories | Carbs | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Panda Express White Steamed Rice | 11 oz (312 g) | 520 | 118 g | 0 mg |
| Panda Express Fried Rice | 11 oz (312 g) | 620 | 101 g | 1,000 mg |
| Chipotle Cilantro-Lime White Rice | 4 oz (113 g) | 210 | 40 g | 350 mg |
| Chipotle Cilantro-Lime Brown Rice | 4 oz (113 g) | 210 | 36 g | 190 mg |
| CAVA Saffron Basmati Rice | not published | 290 | 54 g | 770 mg |
| CAVA Brown Rice | not published | 310 | 48 g | 770 mg |
Panda Express’s rice side weighs 11 oz, about two USDA cups of cooked long-grain rice by weight, and at 520 kcal it is two and a half times a home cup. Chipotle’s 4 oz scoop is closer to 0.7 of a cup. CAVA publishes calories but no portion weight. To build a whole order, use the Panda Express calorie calculator or the Chipotle calorie calculator, which sum each chain’s own chart.
Jasmine, basmati and the rices USDA does not list
USDA’s reference datasets have no record for jasmine or basmati rice. Its Branded Foods data, which stores the nutrition labels manufacturers submit, has plenty. Counting each product barcode once, the middle value across 135 dry jasmine labels is 356 kcal per 100 g, and across 104 basmati labels it is also 356: 160 kcal for the 45 g quarter-cup serving most of those packs print. Regular long-grain rice labels in the same data, picked the same way and leaving out parboiled packs (230 barcodes), have the same middle value, 356. The 365 in the first table is USDA’s laboratory figure, a different kind of number: 45 g of it is 164 kcal, which a label rounds to 160.
So the variety does not move the number. Whether the cup was dry or cooked changes it 3.3 times over; whether it was jasmine, basmati or plain long-grain does not move the label at all.
How much rice fits a calorie budget
| Calories | Cooked rice | Dry rice | Carbs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 kcal | 77 g · 0.5 cup | 27 g | 22 g |
| 200 kcal | 154 g · 1 cup | 55 g | 43 g |
| 300 kcal | 231 g · 1.5 cups | 82 g | 65 g |
| 400 kcal | 308 g · 1.9 cups | 110 g | 87 g |
| 500 kcal | 385 g · 2.4 cups | 137 g · 0.74 cup | 108 g |
A cooked cup of long-grain white rice is about a tenth of the 2,000 calories the FDA uses as a general guide on food labels, and its 45 g of carbohydrate is 16% of the 275 g Daily Value. Whether that fits your day depends on the rest of the day — and on what came with the rice.
Logging rice when “a cup” could mean two things
One word runs through this page: a cup of long-grain rice is 205 calories cooked and 675 dry. Cook half a dry cup each night, log it as a cooked cup, and the week ends 931 calories light. PlateLens logs rice from a photo of the plate, or a sentence you would say — “about a cup and a half of jasmine rice under the curry” — and records its carbs with the calories. Adjust it in plain words: “it was one cup, cooked with butter.” Its photo estimates have a measured track record: the Dietary Assessment Initiative reported a ±1.1% calorie error across 180 weighed meals in its published validation study, and the open-source Foodvision Bench has also reproduced that result on 231 meals in its public leaderboard on GitHub.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the easiest app for tracking how much rice you actually eat?
PlateLens logs rice in one step, from a photo or a sentence like “a cup and a half of rice,” with no weighing or hunting for a cooked or dry entry, and tracks its carbs and calories; “only half” fixes the portion. An entry is only as good as the one you pick: a cup of long-grain rice is 205 calories cooked and 675 dry, and half a dry cup logged as one cooked cup drops 133 calories nightly. PlateLens was measured on finished plates: in the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s 180-meal weighed-food study, published as a validation study, its photo calorie error was ±1.1%, a figure Foodvision Bench has also reproduced on 231 meals in its public leaderboard on GitHub.
How many calories are in 1 cup of cooked rice?
205 calories for long-grain white rice, which USDA weighs at 158 g a cup (FDC 168878). Medium- and short-grain white rice are 242 because a cup of them weighs 186 g; brown long-grain is 248 at 202 g; parboiled is 194. Per 100 g, regular cooked white rice is 130 kcal whether the grain is long, medium or short.
How many calories are in 1 cup of uncooked rice?
675 calories for long-grain white rice: USDA weighs a dry cup at 185 g and gives 365 kcal per 100 g (FDC 168877). That cup makes about 3¼ cups of cooked rice, according to USDA’s Food Buying Guide, and the 675 calories are spread across all of them.
How much cooked rice does one cup of uncooked rice make?
About 3¼ cups for regular long-grain white rice, 3 cups for short or medium grain, 2¾ for parboiled and 1½ for instant, per USDA’s Food Buying Guide. The calorie arithmetic agrees: 675 kcal of dry long-grain rice at 130 kcal per 100 g cooked is about 519 g, or 3.3 cups of 158 g.
How much rice is 500 calories?
About 385 g of cooked long-grain white rice, which is 2.4 cups, or 137 g of dry rice, about three-quarters of a dry cup. That much rice carries 108 g of carbohydrate.
Is 1 cup of rice too much for weight loss?
A cooked cup of long-grain white rice is 205 calories and 45 g of carbohydrate, about a tenth of the 2,000-calorie general guide the FDA uses on labels. Whether it fits depends on the rest of your day and on what comes with it: cooking the rice with oil adds 42 calories a cup, and Panda Express’s 11 oz side of White Steamed Rice is 520.
Does jasmine or basmati rice have fewer calories than white rice?
No. USDA has no reference record for either, but the middle jasmine and basmati label in its Branded Foods data is 356 kcal per 100 g dry, the same as the middle regular long-grain rice label in that data. Brown rice is not lower per cup either: 248 calories cooked against 205, with more fiber.
Where these numbers come from
All sources were accessed on 3 October 2026 unless another date is given.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, FoodData Central: SR Legacy (final 2018 release) records 168877, 168878, 168879, 168880, 168881, 168882, 169703, 169704, 169706, 168875, 169707, 169708, 169709, 169710, 168883, 169711, 169726, 168897 and 169753; FNDDS 2021–2023 (Survey) records 2708408, 2708404, 2708405, 2708951, 2709084 and 2709032. Each per-cup figure multiplies the record’s value per 100 g by that record’s own cup weight, rounded at the end. Jasmine and basmati: FoodData Central Branded Foods (April 2026 release), plain dry jasmine or basmati rice labelled with a dry serving, one value per product barcode.
- USDA Food and Nutrition Service, Food Buying Guide for Child Nutrition Programs, Section 4: Grains, for cooked yield per dry cup.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label (2,000 calories as a general guide) and Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels (carbohydrate 275 g, sodium 2,300 mg).
- Restaurant rice: each chain’s own published US nutrition information — Chipotle’s nutrition chart (revision OCT-2024-US); Panda Express’s nutrition information and CAVA’s Nutrition and Allergen Guide, retrieved 7 September 2026. Menus change; check the chain’s current chart for a specific order. Panda Express, Chipotle and CAVA are not affiliated with PlateLens.
- Arithmetic that combines these figures (portions, ratios, calorie budgets) is ours and is labelled where it appears.