How many calories are in a pretzel?
A German lye pretzel of about 80 g, a Laugenbrezel, comes to about 225 kcal, almost all of it from flour. Split and spread with butter as a Butterbrezel, it is about 375.
The plate, as served
One lye pretzel with coarse salt, about 80 g.
Where the calories come from
| Nutrient | Grams | Calories | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protein | 7g | 28 | 13% |
| Carbs | 40g | 160 | 74% |
| Fat | 3g | 27 | 13% |
| Fibre | 3g | counted within carbs | |
The ring is sized by calories, not grams: protein and carbs are 4 kcal a gram, fat is 9. Drawn by grams, fat would look like a sliver of what it actually contributes.
What is on the plate
| Pretzel (Brezel)One pretzel, about 80 g | 225 kcal |
The same dish, several ways
This is where the calories actually move. Not the ingredient, the cooking.
- Butterbrezel, 20 g of butter375+150
A bakery butter pretzel is spread thickly. The butter is 150 kcal.
- Thinly buttered, 10 g300+75
Half the butter, 75 kcal.
- One lye pretzel with coarse salt, about 80 g.As served225
Where each number comes from
Composition tables list ingredients, not dinners. There is no row anywhere for this plate, so it is built from its parts, and the preparation assumed for each part is written next to it, because that assumption is usually worth more calories than the ingredient.
| Component | Portion and preparation | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Pretzel (Brezel) | One pretzel, about 80 gBLS B723000 (Laugengebäck mit Hagelsalz). Lye pretzel with coarse salt. | 225 |
| Total | 225 | |
Sources: German Nutrient Database BLS 4.0 (Max Rubner-Institut), CC BY 4.0. Every figure is an estimate with a range around it, and is rounded to the nearest 5 kcal rather than pretending to a precision that does not exist.
Why you will see 181 to 258 kcal quoted for this
Bakery figures run from 181 kcal (Penny, 83 g) to 258 (Görtz, 70 g), with Ditsch at 222 for 80 g. A heavier pretzel is not always the higher number, so the recipe matters as well as the size. BLS puts a lye pretzel at 282 kcal per 100 g, which lands an 80 g pretzel in the middle of that spread.
Which is why this page shows the sum instead of asserting a total. Build the plate you actually eat and the number is yours rather than an average of strangers.
Build your own plateCommon questions
- How many calories are in a pretzel?
- About 225 kcal for an 80 g German lye pretzel.
- How many calories are in a Butterbrezel?
- About 375 kcal with 20 g of butter, and about 300 with a thin 10 g spread.
- Is a pretzel a good snack when losing weight?
- It is 225 kcal, mostly carbohydrate, with about 7 g of protein. Fine as part of a meal, not very filling on its own.
- Does the salt on top count?
- Not in calories. BLS lists a pretzel with the salt brushed off at 283 kcal per 100 g against 282 with it.
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