Dog Protein & Feeding Calculator
How much protein does your dog need, and how much food is that? Put in their weight, life stage and how active they are, and this shows what the published European nutrition guidelines say for a dog like yours: roughly how many calories a day, how much protein sits behind that in grams, and how the guidelines express the same figure to the people who formulate the food. Add the energy figure from your own pack and it will also estimate a starting portion in grams. It shows its working, names its sources, and treats every number as the guidelines do — a starting point to adjust from, not a verdict on your dog or on any food.
Tell us about your dog
Their weight now, not what you think it should be. If they need to lose or gain, that is a conversation for your vet rather than a sum.
Want a grams-per-day starting point?Add the energy figure from your complete food's pack, usually printed as kcal or ME per 100g. Without it we can still show the guideline energy and protein figures, but not a portion — and plenty of packs genuinely do not print it, because energy is not one of the declarations UK and EU labels are required to carry.
“You sell dog food. Is this going to tell me to buy yours?”
No. The calculator never sees a brand, ours included — it only knows a weight, a life stage and an activity level, and it reports what the published guidelines say for those. It gives no score, no ranking and no verdict on whether a food is good, because those inputs cannot tell you that, and it does not treat any manufacturer's feeding guide as the standard — ours included. We test it against our own products before it goes out, precisely so it is not quietly tuned to flatter them.
What the guidelines say, by life stage
These are minimums for a complete food, not targets, and they are expressed two ways: as a share of the food's dry matter (what you can compare a label against, once you have corrected for moisture) and per 1000 kcal of the food's energy (what turns into grams a day for an individual dog).
| Life stage | Minimum protein, % dry matter | Minimum protein, g per 1000 kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Adult maintenanceeating around 95 kcal/kg BW^0.75 — a less active dog | 21.0% | 52.1 g |
| Adult maintenanceeating around 110 kcal/kg BW^0.75 — a moderately active dog | 18.0% | 45.0 g |
| Early growthunder 14 weeks; the same column covers pregnancy and nursing | 25.0% | 62.5 g |
| Late growthover 14 weeks, up to a year | 20.0% | 50.0 g |
Why a bigger dog does not eat proportionally more
Energy needs track metabolic bodyweight — bodyweight raised to the power 0.75 — not bodyweight itself. A 40kg dog is four times the weight of a 10kg dog but needs only about 2.8 times the energy. This is why feeding guides printed as a straight line against weight drift at the ends of the range, and why the sums below start from that power rather than from kilos.
| Daily life | Energy, kcal a day |
|---|---|
| Low activity (< 1 h/day) (e.g. walking on the lead) | 95 x bodyweight^0.75 |
| Moderate activity (1 – 3 h/day) (low impact activity) | 110 x bodyweight^0.75 |
| Moderate activity (1 – 3 h/day) (high impact activity) | 125 x bodyweight^0.75 |
| High activity (3 – 6 h/day) (working dogs, e.g. sheep dogs) | 150–175 x bodyweight^0.75 |
Common questions
How much protein does my dog actually need?
For a healthy adult dog, the European guidelines put the minimum at 4.95g of crude protein per kilo of metabolic bodyweight per day. Metabolic bodyweight is bodyweight raised to the power 0.75, which is why a 40kg dog does not need four times what a 10kg dog needs — it needs about 2.8 times. For a 15kg dog that comes to roughly 38g of protein a day. Growing puppies need proportionally more. The calculator does the conversion, including into a percentage you can check a label against.
Does an active dog need higher-protein food?
Not in the way most people assume. A dog's protein requirement in grams per day is set by their body size, not by how far they run — the published figure does not change with activity at all. What changes is how much food they eat. A more active dog eating more food meets the same protein requirement from a less concentrated recipe, which is why the guidelines pair their lower-energy assumption with a higher protein percentage (21% of dry matter) and their higher-energy assumption with a lower one (18%). So for a busy dog the honest answer is usually more of the same food, not a higher-protein bag.
Is a minimum the same as a target?
No, and treating it as one is the most common misreading of these tables. A minimum is the level below which deficiency becomes a risk in a well-formulated diet. Most quality complete foods sit comfortably above it, and there is no evidence that landing exactly on the floor is better than sitting above it. Equally, chasing the highest protein percentage on the shelf buys nothing on its own — digestibility and whether the food suits your dog matter more than the headline figure.
Do senior dogs need less protein?
No — and cutting it back is the more likely mistake. The veterinary reviews are consistent that protein restriction in a healthy older dog is unnecessary and may be counterproductive, and that older dogs need at least as much protein as younger adults. Whether they need meaningfully more is genuinely argued: one review puts the increase at around 50%, while a controlled study of young-adult versus ageing Beagles found no age effect on protein turnover at all. What is not in dispute is the direction. Controlled-protein diets are a treatment for a diagnosed condition, prescribed by a vet — not a default for a grey muzzle.
Does high protein damage a dog's kidneys?
The evidence in dogs says no, and it is worth being precise about what was actually tested. The worry began with rat studies. When it was tested in dogs, researchers used animals with surgically reduced kidney mass — a harder test than a healthy dog — and still found nothing: 21 dogs left with a quarter of their kidney mass and fed up to 56% protein for four years showed no pattern of declining kidney function, and 31 geriatric dogs with one kidney removed, fed 18% or 34% protein for 48 months, showed no difference in filtration rate. Nobody has fed high protein to intact healthy dogs for years, so strictly that case is untested — but the harder case came back clean. A separate 24-month study, again in dogs with surgically reduced kidney mass, varied protein and phosphorus independently: it was lower phosphorus, not lower protein, that was associated with longer survival. That does not decide the diet for a dog diagnosed with kidney disease — those are prescription diets and the call belongs to the vet who made the diagnosis.
How accurate is this for my particular dog?
It is exactly as accurate as a published average, which is to say: a good starting point and nothing more. The guidelines themselves say an individual animal's requirement may differ from the average, that these figures should be used only as starting points, and that the owner has to adjust the amount when the animal begins to gain or lose weight. Breed, temperament, neutering, coat and the temperature a dog is kept at all shift the real number, and being housed below their comfortable temperature raises energy needs measurably. Treat the figure as an opening position and let body condition settle the rest.
Can I use this if my dog has a health condition?
No. If your dog has diagnosed kidney disease, diabetes, pancreatitis, liver disease or is pregnant or nursing, their protein and energy needs are a clinical decision and belong with your vet. This calculator describes general guidance for healthy dogs and deliberately does not model medical diets.
Methodology and sources
Protein minimums and the maintenance-energy equations come from the FEDIAF Nutritional Guidelines for Complete and Complementary Pet Food for Cats and Dogs (September 2025), the guidelines UK and EU complete foods are formulated against, cross-checked against the National Research Council's Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats (2006) (doi:10.17226/10668). To be exact about which does what: every figure this calculator displays comes from the FEDIAF tables. NRC is cited as the underlying reference the guidelines are built on, and as a cross-check, not as an input to the arithmetic — the two bodies assume different baseline energy intakes, so blending them would produce a number neither publishes. Energy is estimated from metabolic bodyweight (kg0.75); individual dogs vary widely around any such estimate, which is why the guidelines call these starting points and why body condition, not arithmetic, is the check that matters.
The claims elsewhere on this page trace to these studies. Protein and the kidneys: Robertson et al. (1986), Kidney International, doi:10.1038/ki.1986.29 (21 dogs with 75% nephrectomy, four years, up to 56% protein); Finco et al. (1994), American Journal of Veterinary Research, doi:10.2460/ajvr.1994.55.09.1282 (31 uninephrectomised geriatric dogs, 48 months, 18% vs 34% protein). Phosphorus rather than protein in existing kidney disease: Finco et al. (1992), doi:10.2460/ajvr.1992.53.12.2264. Protein for older dogs: Laflamme (2008), Topics in Companion Animal Medicine, doi:10.1053/j.tcam.2008.04.009 — a narrative review, and the counter-evidence that ageing Beagles showed no change in protein turnover is Williams et al. (2001), doi:10.2527/2001.79123128x. Growth: Nap et al. (1991), The Journal of Nutrition, doi:10.1093/jn/121.suppl_11.s107 (17 Great Dane puppies, protein varied at matched calories, no effect on skeletal development); and on overfeeding rather than recipe, Kealy et al. (1992), doi:10.2460/javma.1992.201.06.857 (48 Labradors to two years; hip dysplasia in 7 of 24 limit-fed versus 16 of 24 fed freely on the same food).
This tool describes published guidance. It does not diagnose, does not score or rank any food, and is not a substitute for veterinary advice — particularly for dogs with diagnosed conditions, and for pregnant or nursing dogs, whose requirements it deliberately does not model. Some Grub sells dog food, which is exactly why this tool is brand-blind: it does not identify, compare, score or recommend any food, ours included.