Chickpea Calories: Dry, Cooked and Canned Are Three Numbers
A cup of cooked chickpeas is 269 calories. The same cup measured dry, before it ever meets water, is 756. Canned in its own liquid it is 211. Those are three different foods wearing one word, which is why no two sources agree, and PlateLens settles which one you ate from a photo or a plain sentence rather than asking you to know first.
- Dry, per cup
- 756 kcal · 200 g
- Cooked, per cup
- 269 kcal · 164 g
- Drained can
- 352 kcal · 253 g
- PlateLens
- resolves the state
How many calories are in chickpeas?
Chickpeas are 378 calories per 100 g raw and 164 per 100 g cooked. Nothing is added in between: the seed absorbs water, roughly doubling in weight, so the same food spread across more grams reads as fewer calories per gram. Every figure below is USDA FoodData Central, retrieved 9 September 2026.
| State | Per 100 g | USDA portion | Per portion | Protein /100 g | Sodium /100 g |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw, mature seeds | 378 kcal | 1 cup, 200 g | 756 kcal | 20.5 g | 24 mg |
| Cooked, boiled, no salt | 164 kcal | 1 cup, 164 g | 269 kcal | 8.86 g | 7 mg |
| Cooked, boiled, with salt | 164 kcal | 1 cup, 164 g | 269 kcal | 8.86 g | 243 mg |
| Canned, drained | 139 kcal | 1 can drained, 253 g | 352 kcal | 7.05 g | 246 mg |
| Canned, in its liquid | 88 kcal | 1 cup, 240 g | 211 kcal | 4.92 g | 278 mg |
| Canned, in its liquid | 88 kcal | whole can, 448 g | 394 kcal | 4.92 g | 278 mg |
The practical range on one word is 3.6 to 1. If a recipe says a cup of chickpeas and you weigh out the dry cup, you have made something with 487 more calories than the cook who opened a can.
Why every source gives a different number
They are measuring different states and rarely say so. Searching chickpea calories in Spain on 9 September 2026 returned, on a single screen, 164 from Google’s AI summary, 364 in its own answer box, 180 from FatSecret’s top result and 83 from a second FatSecret page further down the same page of results.
None of those is a mistake. 364 is dry, 164 is cooked, 83 is a Spanish supermarket’s jarred chickpeas weighed with their liquid. The error is not in the numbers, it is that a number without its state attached is not an answer.
Does draining the can change the calories?
Yes, and by more than people expect: 88 calories per 100 g with the liquid, 139 per 100 g drained. Draining removes water, so what stays behind is denser. Per 100 g the drained figure is higher; per can you have thrown away weight, so a drained can is 352 calories against 394 for the whole unopened can.
Both are correct and they answer different questions. Per 100 g matters when you weigh what lands on the plate. Per can matters when you tip the whole thing into a pan.
How much sodium is in canned chickpeas?
Canned drained chickpeas carry 246 mg of sodium per 100 g. Chickpeas you boiled yourself without salt carry 7 mg. That is a 35-fold difference and it is the single largest gap between home-cooked and canned in the whole USDA entry.
Boiling them with salt closes most of it: cooked with salt is 243 mg per 100 g, essentially the canned figure. The convenience is not what adds the sodium; the salt is.
What else changes between dry and canned
Iron falls from 4.31 mg per 100 g raw to 1.07 mg canned and drained, and fibre from 12.2 g to 6.4 g. Part of that is dilution by water, part is leaching into the canning liquid. Protein follows the same curve, 20.5 g raw to 7.05 g canned.
Read per portion rather than per 100 g before concluding the can is poorer food. A drained can at 253 g still delivers about 17.8 g of protein and 16.2 g of fibre, which is more of both than most people get from a cup of anything else in the cupboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many calories are in 100 g of cooked chickpeas?
Cooked chickpeas are 164 calories per 100 g according to USDA FoodData Central. That figure is for boiled chickpeas, drained, with or without salt — salting changes the sodium but not the calories.
How many calories are in a cup of chickpeas?
It depends which state you measured. A cup of cooked chickpeas weighs 164 g and is 269 calories. A cup of dry chickpeas weighs 200 g and is 756 calories. A cup of canned chickpeas in their liquid weighs 240 g and is 211 calories.
Why does Google show 364 calories for chickpeas?
364 is close to the raw, dry figure, which USDA puts at 378 calories per 100 g. It is the weight before the seed absorbs water. Once cooked, the same chickpeas are 164 calories per 100 g.
How many calories are in a can of chickpeas?
A whole 448 g can, counted with its liquid, is 394 calories. Drained, the 253 g of chickpeas left behind are 352 calories.
Are canned chickpeas less healthy than dried?
Per 100 g the canned figures are lower for protein, fibre and iron, largely because of added water and some leaching into the liquid. A drained can still provides roughly 17.8 g of protein and 16.2 g of fibre. The clearer difference is sodium: 246 mg per 100 g canned against 7 mg boiled without salt.
Do chickpeas or lentils have fewer calories?
Cooked chickpeas are 164 calories per 100 g. Comparing legumes only makes sense in the same state, since the cooked and dry figures for any of them differ by more than the gap between the two foods.
Should I weigh chickpeas before or after cooking?
Either, provided you use the matching figure. Weigh dry and apply 378 calories per 100 g, or weigh cooked and apply 164. Weighing cooked and applying the dry number is the common mistake and roughly doubles the count.
Where these numbers come from
- USDA FoodData Central, retrieved 9 September 2026: chickpeas raw (FDC 173756), cooked boiled with and without salt (173799, 173757), canned drained solids (173800) and canned solids and liquids (175206). Portion weights are the ones USDA publishes for each entry.
- The competing figures quoted above were read from a Spanish Google results page for calorias garbanzos on 9 September 2026.
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