how many steps are in a mile?

About 2,292 steps for someone 170 cm tall, and about 1,424 in a kilometre — a kilometre being 0.62 of a mile, the two counts scale together. But the single number every chart prints is the least useful part of the answer: your height moves it by hundreds of steps, and half the charts on the web are quietly measuring something else entirely.

Steps in a mile and a kilometre, by height

Step length is close to 0.413 × your height. That ratio is what turns a distance into a number of steps, and it is why a 155 cm walker needs about four hundred more steps per mile than a 185 cm one.

The mistake behind most of the charts

A step is one foot landing. A stride is a full cycle — two steps. The two words are used interchangeably across the web, and the difference is a factor of two.

That is the whole reason you can find «2,000 steps in a mile» and «1,200 steps in a mile» quoted with equal confidence. One of them is counting strides. Everything on this page counts single steps, which is also what your phone counts.

Work it out for your height

Steps in a quarter mile, 5K, 10K and a marathon

Running changes these. A running step is longer than a walking one, so a runner covers the same marathon in noticeably fewer steps — the table above is walking.

How many steps in a mile at 3 mph?

There is an exact way to answer this that needs no assumptions about your body at all. Steps in a mile = minutes per mile × your cadence, and cadence is something you can count: steps per minute, for fifteen seconds, times four.

At 3 mph a mile takes 20 minutes. At a comfortable cadence of 110 steps a minute that is 2,200 steps. Change either number and the answer moves:

That table is also why the published figures cluster between about 2,000 and 2,400: those are the ordinary combinations of an ordinary walking speed with an ordinary cadence. It is not that one chart is right and another wrong — they are different walks.

Is it different for women?

Slightly, and the difference is real rather than a rounding error. At the same height a woman's step is about 5 % shorter, which adds roughly a hundred steps to a mile. The by-height table above uses one ratio for everyone, so read it as the middle of a range: if you want the number for you, count your own cadence for fifteen seconds and use the pace table instead.

Why your phone disagrees with this chart

It should, and that is the phone being right. Apple Health records walking and running distance from the motion sensors, and from GPS when you are outdoors — it measures the ground you covered. A chart multiplies steps by an assumed step length, which is a guess about a walk that has not happened yet.

So use a chart for planning a goal, and use your phone for what you actually walked. The full explanation of which number is the real one is on why your step counts don't match.

Does pace change it?

A little. Step length grows with speed, so a brisk mile takes slightly fewer steps than a slow one for the same person. The figures here assume a comfortable walking pace, which is what people mean when they ask the question. If you want the time and the energy rather than the count, they are on how far is that many steps and how many calories do your steps burn.

Where the ratio comes from

Step length ≈ 0.413 × height is the ratio we use everywhere on this site, including inside the app's own estimates. Checked against measured step lengths, it lands within a centimetre or two: for a man of 175 cm the formula gives 72.3 cm against 73.2 cm measured; for a woman of 163 cm it gives 67.3 cm against 65.3 cm — a woman's step is about 5 % shorter at the same height, which is the size of the error in using one ratio for everyone.

These are estimates for planning, not measurements of a walk you took. Nothing here is medical advice.