How Many Calories in a Cherry?
A cherry is a five-calorie bite. An 80 g handful, around 14 cherries, comes to about 50 calories, and cherries without their stones are 63 kcal per 100 g. So how many calories in a cherry depends less on the fruit and more on how many times your hand goes back to the bowl.
On this page
- Quick facts
- Counting cherries
- Candied and stewed cherries
- How do cherries compare with other small fruit?
- The sugar question
- FAQ
Quick facts
| Nutrient | Per 100 g | Per 80 g handful | RI* per handful |
|---|---|---|---|
| Energy | 63 kcal / 264 kJ | 50 kcal / 209 kJ | 3% |
| Protein | 1.2 g | 1.0 g | 2% |
| Carbohydrates | 14.6 g | 11.7 g | 4% |
| — of which sugars | 14.6 g | 11.7 g | 13% |
| Fat | 0.4 g | 0.3 g | under 1% |
| Fibre | 1.9 g | 1.5 g | – |
| Salt | trace | trace | 0% |
*RI = Reference Intake of an average adult (2,000 kcal a day). Figures are for flesh and skin, stones removed.
Verified nutrition data
Numbers on this page come from CoFID, the UK government’s Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset, and from manufacturer labels where a branded product is named. Last verified September 2026. How we verify our data →
Counting cherries
One cherry weighs about 8 g and carries roughly 5 calories, which makes cherries one of the few snacks you can genuinely count one bite at a time. Ten cherries, about 36 kcal. Fourteen, the 80 g five-a-day portion, about 50 — still fewer calories than a single nectarine.
If you weigh cherries whole at home, use the with-stones figure: 58 kcal per 100 g. The stones are around 8% of the weight, so a bowl that reads 200 g on the scale is about 116 kcal, not 126.
Candied and stewed cherries
Fresh cherries and baking cherries share a name and nothing else. Glacé cherries, the candied ones on Bakewells and in fruit cakes, are 294 kcal per 100 g in CoFID: nearly five times the fresh figure, because they are essentially cherries preserved in sugar.
Stewing is gentler. Cherries stewed without sugar drop to 42 kcal per 100 g as they take on water; stewed with sugar they rise to 82. The pattern is the same as with most fruit — the pan is innocent, the sugar bowl is not.
How do cherries compare with other small fruit?
Same 80 g handful, four different bills:
| Fruit | 80 g portion | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| Strawberries | ~ half a punnet | 24 kcal |
| Blueberries | a small handful | 32 kcal |
| Cherries | ~ 14 cherries | 50 kcal |
| Grapes | ~ 16 grapes | 52 kcal |
Verdict: strawberries give you the same bowl for half the calories, and cherries sit with grapes at the top of the small-fruit table. None of these numbers should scare anyone, but if you graze without counting, the strawberry punnet is the more forgiving one. A single plum at 23 kcal splits the difference nicely.
The sugar question
Cherries are among the most sugary of the small fruits: 14.6 g per 100 g, roughly double what the same weight of strawberries carries. An 80 g handful delivers 11.7 g of sugar, 13% of the daily reference intake.
That sugar comes packaged as whole fruit, which the NHS treats differently from free sugars in drinks and desserts. The practical reading: cherries are a fine daily fruit, but "it's only fruit" stops being a useful thought somewhere around the third handful.
FAQ
How many calories are in one cherry?
About 5 calories. A single cherry weighs around 8 g, and cherry flesh is 63 kcal per 100 g, which works out at roughly 5 kcal per fruit. Ten cherries come to about 36 kcal, so precision here is a luxury rather than a necessity.
How many calories are in a handful of cherries?
About 50 calories for an 80 g handful, which is roughly 14 cherries and also the NHS five-a-day portion. A generous double handful of 160 g would come to around 100 kcal, which is still modest for what feels like proper grazing.
How many calories are in 100 g of cherries?
63 kcal per 100 g of flesh and skin with the stones removed, per CoFID. Weighed whole with stones, the figure is 58 kcal per 100 g, the number to use when you tip the bag straight onto kitchen scales.
How much sugar is in cherries?
14.6 g per 100 g, or about 11.7 g in an 80 g handful, which is 13% of the daily reference intake. That makes cherries one of the more sugary small fruits, roughly twice as sugary as strawberries weight for weight.
How many calories are in glacé cherries?
294 kcal per 100 g, getting on for five times the fresh fruit. Glacé cherries are candied in sugar for baking, so a few scattered through a fruit cake carry more calories than a whole bowl of fresh cherries.
How many calories are in stewed cherries?
42 kcal per 100 g stewed without sugar, and 82 kcal per 100 g stewed with sugar. Plain stewing actually lowers the per-100 g figure below fresh, because the fruit takes on water; added sugar is what doubles the bill.
Are cherries good for you?
At 50 kcal per 80 g portion with 1.5 g of fibre and virtually no fat or salt, cherries are an easy way to cover a five-a-day portion. Their sugar is on the higher side for berries-and-cherries territory, but it arrives as whole fruit.
Are cherries fattening?
Not at any normal portion: a 5-calorie bite and a 50-calorie handful leave a lot of room. The only realistic way cherries become a calorie problem is the glacé kind at 294 kcal per 100 g, or eating fresh ones by the half-kilo.
Similar foods
- Grapes — 52 kcal per 80 g handful
- Mango — 48 kcal per 80 g portion
- Apple — 66 kcal a medium apple
- Pomegranate — 77 kcal per 150 g bowl of seeds
- Banana — 81 kcal per medium fruit
- Clementine — 45 kcal per 100 g
Handfuls, counted for you
Photograph the bowl and BodyPal counts the cherries' calories and macros for you, handful by handful.
