Recipe Nutrition Calculator

It uses the USDA SR Legacy database, the same reference dataset behind FDA-compliant food labels and professional nutrition software like ESHA Genesis. Nutrient values come from laboratory analysis of real food samples, not AI estimates or crowdsourced data.

Most errors come from the input side: inaccurate portion sizes, forgetting the cooking oil, or picking the wrong form (raw vs. cooked). A kitchen scale and the right USDA entry go a long way. If you also need to track ingredient costs alongside nutrition, see our guide on what you actually need from recipe costing software.

All 15 nutrients required on the FDA Nutrition Facts label: calories, total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, dietary fiber, total sugars, added sugars, protein, vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium. Each nutrient shows the amount per serving and the percent Daily Value (%DV) based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Note: Added sugars data is not available for most whole foods in the USDA database, since added sugars are primarily found in processed products.

Percent Daily Value tells you how much one serving contributes to a day's recommended intake of a nutrient, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. If a serving has 6g of saturated fat, that is 30% DV, meaning it covers 30% of the daily recommended maximum.

Quick rule of thumb: 5% DV or less is low, 20% DV or more is high. Useful for spotting nutrients you want more of (fiber, calcium, iron) and ones to watch (sodium, saturated fat).

Add every ingredient with accurate quantities, then set the number of servings your recipe makes. The calculator sums calories across all ingredients and divides by servings.

The formula: Calories per Serving = Total Recipe Calories ÷ Number of Servings. A pot of soup with 2,400 total calories that serves 6 gives you 400 calories per serving. You can pair this with our cost per serving calculator to track both nutrition and cost per plate.

It depends on when you measure. If you weigh chicken before cooking, search for "chicken breast, raw." If you weigh the cooked portion on the plate, search for "chicken breast, cooked, roasted" or the matching cooking method.

This matters because cooking changes weight. 150g of raw chicken breast becomes roughly 110g cooked (water loss), but the total calories stay the same. Using the wrong entry can throw off your per-serving calories by 20-30%.

This calculator generates an FDA-style Nutrition Facts label with the correct format, nutrients, and daily values. For meal planning and recipe development, the numbers are solid.

For commercial food labeling (selling packaged food), the FDA requires labels based on laboratory analysis or calculated from a nutrient database using specific rounding rules. This tool follows standard rounding conventions, but if you are selling a product, verify with a lab or FDA-accepted software. For a quick draft label, try our AI nutrition label generator.

The USDA SR Legacy database covers 7,793 whole and minimally processed foods, which handles the vast majority of recipe ingredients. If you can't find something specific:

• Search for a close equivalent. "Coconut aminos" isn't in the database, but "soy sauce, reduced sodium" has a similar nutrition profile.
• For branded or packaged ingredients, check the product label and use the closest USDA match.
• For composite sauces or spice blends, add each sub-ingredient separately.

This calculator uses the USDA food composition database with lab-analyzed nutrient data for 7,793 foods. You add ingredients one by one and get precise, verifiable numbers.

The AI nutrition label generator uses a language model to estimate nutrition from a free-text ingredient list. Faster for rough estimates and handles vague descriptions ("a handful of spinach"), but less precise than database-driven calculation. Use this calculator when accuracy matters. Use the AI generator when you just need a ballpark.