How long does it take to walk 10,000 steps?
About 100 minutes at a brisk pace of 100 steps a minute, or about 85 minutes at 120. Nobody has to walk it in one go, since step studies count every step in your day, from the kitchen to the car. Under 60, the drop in risk flattened at 8,000 to 10,000 a day, and at 60 and up at 6,000 to 8,000.
People see 10,000 on their watch, picture a walk of an hour and a half, and decide they don’t have time. Then they skip the 20-minute walk they did have time for. The 10,000 counts everything, and most people already take a few thousand steps without trying.
What we’d do
Don’t chase 10,000 in one walk. Look at your daily average, add one brisk walk of 10 to 20 minutes, which is about 1,000 to 2,000 steps, and let the rest come from your day. Under 60, aim for 8,000 to 10,000 in total. At 60 and up, 6,000 to 8,000 is where the curve flattened.
Steps work like the miles on a car’s odometer. The trip to the store and the long drive on Sunday go into the same number.
How long, at your pace
The times below are the arithmetic at two brisk paces. 100 steps a minute is where moderate effort starts, from a 2019 treadmill study of adults aged 21 to 40.
| Steps | At 100 steps a minute | At 120 steps a minute |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 10 minutes | about 8 minutes |
| 2,000 | 20 minutes | about 17 minutes |
| 5,000 | 50 minutes | about 42 minutes |
| 7,000 | 70 minutes | about 58 minutes |
| 10,000 | 100 minutes | about 83 minutes |
Your real day is a mix. A desk day might give you 4,000 steps from moving around, and a 30-minute brisk walk adds about 3,000 more.
Do you need all 10,000?
It depends on your age, and most of the benefit comes sooner. In 15 studies of 47,471 adults, risk of death kept falling until 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day in people under 60 and until 6,000 to 8,000 in people 60 and up. A 2025 review of 57 studies found that 7,000 steps against 2,000 went with 47% lower risk of death, with the curve bending at around 5,000 to 7,000. These are studies of people who chose how much to walk, so they show what went with a longer life.
Where did 10,000 come from?
In 2004, Catrine Tudor-Locke and David Bassett traced it to Japanese walking clubs and a business slogan from more than 30 years before. Then in 2019, a study of 16,741 US women around 72 found death rates fell from about 2,700 steps a day to about 4,400, and leveled off near 7,500. The authors noted that 10,000 is widely believed but “has limited scientific basis.” The full story is in our 10,000 steps myth.
For what 10,000 steps burns, see tdee.guide’s calories in 10,000 steps. To see how far you are from the flat part of the curve, put your average into Steps for your age.
5 sources
- Tudor-Locke C and others, Walking cadence (steps/min) and intensity in 21 to 40 year olds: CADENCE-adults, International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 2019europepmc.org
- Paluch AE and others, Daily steps and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts, Lancet Public Health, 2022europepmc.org
- Ding D and others, Daily steps and health outcomes in adults: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis, Lancet Public Health, 2025europepmc.org
- Tudor-Locke C and Bassett DR, How many steps/day are enough? Preliminary pedometer indices for public health, Sports Medicine, 2004europepmc.org
- Lee IM and others, Association of step volume and intensity with all-cause mortality in older women, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2019europepmc.org
