Pizza calories: how many in a slice, half a pizza or a whole one?

Pick your pizza and how much of it you eat, then add a starter, a dessert and a drink: the total updates instantly, along with the share of a 2,000 kcal day it represents. The weights are those of a standard 400 g pizza, the size of a typical frozen pizza or a medium pizza from a pizzeria. If yours is bigger, or the pizza chef was generous with the cheese, allow a little more.

Good news if you love ham and mushroom: at 208 kcal per 100 g, it is slightly lighter than a margherita (224 kcal), because the ham and mushrooms take the place of some of the cheese. The vegetable pizza comes last with 206 kcal. At the other end of the table, four cheese (269 kcal per 100 g) is the richest: over a whole pizza, it has about 250 kcal more than a vegetable one.

Cured meats sit in between. Chorizo, salami and pepperoni mostly add fat (10.4 g per 100 g against 7.4 g for a margherita) without much extra protein. Alpine-style pizzas topped with raclette or tartiflette get close to 1,000 kcal for a whole pizza. Ciqual has no figure for calzone, so we turned to the USDA database: a meat and cheese calzone has 343 kcal per 100 g, or about 1,200 kcal for a 350 g turnover, because the folded dough wraps a denser, cheesier filling.

A pizza is mostly dough: over half the calories in a margherita come from carbohydrates, close to 120 g for a whole pizza. Protein is far from negligible (30 to 45 g depending on the topping, thanks to the cheese and meat), but fibre is scarce at around 2 g per 100 g, which is why a pizza keeps you full for less time than you might expect. To understand what each of these nutrients does, our guide to macronutrients covers the basics.

The real weak spot is salt. The pizzas in the Ciqual table contain between 1.1 and 1.4 g per 100 g, so a whole 400 g pizza provides 4.2 g (vegetable) to 5.6 g (kebab pizza), while the World Health Organization recommends staying under 5 g a day. Saturated fat follows the same pattern: a whole four cheese pizza provides about 23 g, more than the European reference intake of 20 g a day. Nothing dramatic for an occasional meal, but a good reason to eat light, low-salt food for the rest of the day.

Here is the thin-crust paradox: per 100 g, it has more calories than a thick crust. In USDA data for 14-inch cheese pizzas from American chains, the thin-crust version shows 302 kcal per 100 g, against 266 kcal for the regular crust. The reason: thin dough holds less water and often more fat, and the topping makes up a bigger share of the total. Raw dough tells the same story in Ciqual: 285 kcal per 100 g for prepacked thin pizza dough, against 240 kcal for regular dough.

But nobody eats 100 g of pizza. At the same diameter, the thin-crust pizza weighs much less (590 g against 922 g for the thick crust), and that is what counts on your plate: 1,782 kcal for the whole thin-crust pizza against 2,499 kcal for the thick crust, about 40% more. A cheese-stuffed crust adds almost 300 kcal on top of a regular one. Choosing a thin crust is therefore one of the most effective changes you can make, as long as you do not make up for it with a bigger pizza.

Per 100 g, the difference is small. The prepacked pizzas in the Ciqual table range from 206 to 269 kcal per 100 g, and a regular-crust cheese pizza from an American chain has 266 kcal according to the USDA: the same bracket. What makes the difference is the weight and how generous the topping is.

Frozen pizza has one decisive advantage: its label. EU food labelling rules require the energy value per 100 g on prepacked food, and the weight is printed on the box, so one multiplication gives you the total. At a pizzeria there is nothing of the sort. Sizes vary from one place to the next, the mozzarella is sometimes piled on, and the drizzle of chilli oil poured at the table counts: one tablespoon (10 g) adds about 90 kcal.

Factory-made pizza has its drawbacks, though: many of them fall into the category of ultra-processed foods, with additives, flavourings and often plenty of salt. A pizzeria pizza, made from fermented dough, tomato sauce and mozzarella, usually has a shorter ingredient list. The right choice depends on what you value: control over the numbers (frozen, with the label in hand) or simple ingredients (the pizzeria, keeping an eye on the size).

Per 100 g, pizza (224 kcal for a margherita) has almost twice the calories of spaghetti bolognese (116 kcal). At a sensible portion, though, the contest is closer than you might think: half a margherita (448 kcal) is on a par with a plate of lasagne or spaghetti bolognese, and below a carbonara. The problem with pizza is not its density but the portion: people rarely stop at half.

A whole pizza, at around 900 kcal, beats a pitta kebab with salad and no sauce (696 kcal) and matches a whole tarte flambée. To compare with kebab pizza, chips and sauces, see our kebab calories guide.

Making your own pizza does not automatically make it lighter: a classic homemade margherita, with 150 g of flour, a tablespoon of oil in the dough and a whole ball of mozzarella, comes to about 930 kcal, as much as a shop-bought one. The benefit lies elsewhere: you decide every amount.

Three tweaks are enough for a lighter version. Cut the oil to a teaspoon (5 g), use 80 g of mozzarella instead of 125 g, and add a handful of rocket after baking: you drop to about 790 kcal for an equally generous pizza. Swapping white bread flour for wholemeal flour hardly changes the calories (342 against 350 kcal per 100 g) but triples the fibre (10.2 g against 3.2 g per 100 g), which helps you stay full for longer. Finally, pizza dough can be made ahead and freezes very well, a habit that fits easily into a batch cooking routine.

A standard 400 g pizza has between 820 and 1,080 kcal depending on the topping, and a margherita sits at around 900 kcal. A 50 g slice is modest, between 100 and 135 kcal, but it is the whole pizza, rarely shared, that pushes the total up. The crust and the size matter more than the ingredients: a thin crust and a medium-sized pizza make the biggest difference. Vegetable and ham and mushroom are the lightest choices, four cheese and calzone the heaviest. With half a pizza, a salad and a sugar-free drink, pizza fits easily into a balanced diet.