Calories in a Banana: Small, Medium and Large, With Macros

A medium banana has about 105 calories. It’s one of the easiest foods to log, because bananas come in fairly standard sizes. Here are the numbers for every size, what those calories are made of and why ripeness matters more for your blood sugar than for your calorie count.

Banana calories by size

All values are for the peeled fruit, based on USDA FoodData Central.

Size	Length	Weight without peel	Calories
Extra small	Under 15 cm (6 in)	81 g	72 kcal
Small	15 to 18 cm (6 to 7 in)	101 g	90 kcal
Medium	18 to 20 cm (7 to 8 in)	118 g	105 kcal
Large	20 to 23 cm (8 to 9 in)	136 g	121 kcal
Extra large	Over 23 cm (9 in)	152 g	135 kcal

Per 100 g, a banana has about 89 kcal. If you weigh a banana with its peel, count roughly 65% of the weight as edible fruit.

Banana nutrition facts

What’s inside a medium banana (118 g):

Nutrient	Amount
Calories	105 kcal
Carbohydrates	27 g
of which sugars	14 g
Fiber	3.1 g
Protein	1.3 g
Fat	0.4 g
Potassium	422 mg (about 9% of daily needs)
Vitamin B6	0.4 mg (about a quarter of daily needs)

Almost all the calories in a banana come from carbohydrates. That makes it a good source of quick energy before a workout, and a weak source of protein: if you want a snack that keeps you full longer, pair it with Greek yogurt or a handful of nuts.

Ripe or green: does it change the calories?

Barely. As a banana ripens, its starch turns into sugar. A green banana is mostly starch, much of it resistant starch that behaves like fiber, while a spotty yellow banana is mostly sugar.

The total calories stay about the same. What changes is how fast those carbohydrates reach your blood:

• Green or just ripe bananas raise blood sugar more slowly.
• Very ripe bananas raise it faster, which is useful before exercise and less ideal if you’re managing blood sugar.

Bananas have a glycemic index of around 50 on average, which counts as low, and it rises as they ripen. A small study in people with type 2 diabetes found that overripe bananas raised blood glucose more than underripe ones.

Bananas and weight loss

A banana isn’t fattening. At about 100 kcal with 3 g of fiber, it’s more filling than most snacks with the same calories. Compare:

Snack	Calories
1 medium banana	105 kcal
1 cereal bar (25 g)	about 100 to 120 kcal
2 chocolate digestive biscuits	about 160 kcal
1 medium banana + 150 g of 0% Greek yogurt	about 190 kcal, with 16 g of protein

Where calories do add up is in banana-based foods. A slice of banana bread is often 300 kcal or more, and a banana smoothie made with milk, honey and peanut butter can pass 400 kcal.

How to log bananas quickly

The fastest way is to count a medium banana as 105 kcal and adjust for size. If you want more precision, weigh it once without the peel and use 89 kcal per 100 g.

In BananaCal you can snap a photo of the banana, or of the whole breakfast bowl it’s in, and the app estimates the calories and macros for you. It seemed only right to know our namesake well.

For the full picture of how many calories you need in a day, try the calorie calculator, or read our guide on how many calories to eat to lose weight. For a heavier favorite, see calories in pizza.