How many calories in a beer? 330 ml, pint, alcohol-free

Nobody weighs their beer at the bar: you order a small glass, a bottle or a pint, and it rarely makes it into the food diary. Yet the maths is simple. According to Ciqual 2025, the French national food composition table run by the food safety agency ANSES, a regular lager (4 to 5% alcohol) provides 39 kcal per 100 g, which works out to about 129 kcal for a 330 ml bottle and 195 kcal for 500 ml.

The style of beer changes the total a lot. The stronger the beer, the more calories it carries: a 5 to 6% special beer climbs to 56 kcal per 100 g, a strong beer above 8% to 62.5 kcal. A 330 ml bottle of Belgian tripel or strong abbey ale can therefore easily pass 200 kcal. At the other end, a low-alcohol beer (3%) drops to 35 kcal and an alcohol-free beer to 29 kcal.

Many people assume beer is fattening because of sugar. In fact, a regular lager has almost no sugar left: the yeast turned it into alcohol during fermentation. What remains are more complex carbohydrates from the malt and, above all, ethanol. And alcohol is energy-dense: the EU food information regulation gives it 7 kcal per gram, against 4 kcal for carbohydrate and protein and 9 kcal for fat.

The result: in a 330 ml bottle of lager, nearly two thirds of the calories come from alcohol, a little under a third from carbohydrate and almost nothing from protein. Germany’s BLS table reaches the same conclusion, with 71% of the energy in a Pilsner coming from alcohol. Beer contains no fat at all.

National food tables don’t test exactly the same beers, but they tell the same story. In Germany, the Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel (BLS 4.0) from the Max Rubner Institute lists 38 kcal per 100 g of Pilsner. In Norway, Matvaretabellen gives 41 kcal for a 4.7% pils. In the United States, the USDA’s FoodData Central lists 43 kcal for a “regular” beer. In other words, a 330 ml lager lands between 125 and 142 kcal wherever you are.

Light beers are where the real difference lies. Norway’s 2.5% lettøl has just 25 kcal per 100 g, German Leichtbier 27 kcal and American light beer 29 kcal: about a third less than a regular lager. The “low-carb” beers sold in Germany and Norway stay at 32 kcal because they keep their alcohol: removing the carbohydrate only saves a few calories.

Beer brands don’t have to show calories. In the EU, Regulation No 1169/2011 exempts drinks above 1.2% alcohol from the nutrition declaration, which is why many cans and bottles only show the strength. Some brewers publish their figures anyway. We have only included brands whose numbers we could read on the brewer’s official website.

Heineken lists 42 kcal per 100 ml for its 5% lager, about 139 kcal per 330 ml, slightly above the Ciqual average. Mahou, the Madrid brand that Spanish drinkers search for most, gives 49 kcal per 100 ml for its 5.5% Cinco Estrellas. The alcohol-free versions of both brands drop to 21 and 26 kcal.

Yes, but it isn’t “zero”. Taking the alcohol out removes the main source of calories, but the malt carbohydrates stay, and there are often a few more of them than in regular beer. Depending on the table and the brand, an alcohol-free beer has 18 to 29 kcal per 100 ml, 25 to 50% less than the alcoholic version, or about 60 to 100 kcal per 330 ml bottle.

Sugar moves the other way. In Ciqual, alcohol-free beer contains 3.3 g of sugars per 100 g, against almost none in a regular lager. At Mahou, the 0,0 Rubia shows 3.4 g of sugars per 100 ml, against 0.1 g for the Cinco Estrellas. Nothing alarming, since a sugary cola has three times as much, but it explains why alcohol-free beer is not a calorie-free drink.

Volume for volume, wine has about twice the calories of beer: 76 kcal per 100 g of red wine in Ciqual 2025, against 39 kcal for a lager. But nobody drinks 330 ml of wine in one go. The fair comparison is per glass served, and there the gap narrows: a 100 ml glass of wine provides 76 kcal, a 250 ml glass of beer 98 kcal. Both hold about 10 g of alcohol, what the French public health agency Santé publique France calls a standard drink.

Soda is a different case. A 330 ml can of sugary cola provides 132 kcal, as much as a bottle of lager, but all of its calories come from sugar: 10 g per 100 ml, or 33 g per can. To see how that compares with the recommendations, read our guide to added sugar. The sugar-free version drops to 1 kcal per 100 g.

To limit the risks, Santé publique France and the French National Cancer Institute recommend no more than 10 standard drinks a week, no more than 2 a day, and some alcohol-free days every week. A 500 ml beer at 5% contains about 20 g of alcohol, so it already counts as two standard drinks. The World Health Organization also points out that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for health. These limits matter more than any calorie count.

On the calorie side, the most common blind spot isn’t the beer itself but what comes with it: crisps, peanuts, a cheese and charcuterie board or a shared pizza. Three 500 ml lagers already add up to nearly 600 kcal before the first snack. If a beer and pizza night is planned, our guide to pizza calories will help you estimate the whole evening.