How many calories are in a scone?

One regular scone weighs 70 g and carries 267 calories. Per 100 g a scone runs 382 calories, denser than a plain muffin at 374 or a cheese biscuit at 374. The surprise is not the calorie count, though. It is the saturated fat: 6.8 g in one scone, 34% of a day's worth.

You'd need to walk about 53 minutes to burn the 267 calories in one regular scone (70 g).

On this page

• Scone quick facts
• US scone servings, from a mini to a full bakery scone
• Fruit, blueberry and iced scones
• Saturated fat, not calories, is the catch
• How does a scone compare?
• Most popular scone brands
• Scone FAQs

Scone quick facts

The row used here is FNDDS 2707808, "Scone", from the 2021-2023 survey release. It is the only USDA entry for a plain scone of the kind a person actually picks up, and the only one that comes with US household portions attached: one regular scone and one miniature. Everything below is scaled from it unless a different record is named.

Two label rows are missing on purpose. This FNDDS edition does not publish added sugars or trans fat for the record, so those lines are left out rather than guessed. Cholesterol and potassium do exist: a 70 g scone holds 52 mg of cholesterol, 17% of the Daily Value, and 83 mg of potassium, only 2%.

% Daily Value is based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Total sugars carry no Daily Value on the US label, which is why that cell stays empty. The percentages come from the reference amounts the FDA publishes for the Nutrition Facts panel.

US scone servings, from a mini to a full bakery scone

Only two of those are USDA household measures: the regular scone at 70 g and the miniature at 20 g. The ounce and the half scone are our own arithmetic from the USDA 100 g figure, and the 100 g line is that USDA figure itself rather than a household serving, which matters if you are logging by eye rather than by scale.

The gap between the two real portions is the whole story of this food. A miniature is 76 calories, a regular is 267, and nothing about the recipe changed between them. That is a 191-calorie swing driven entirely by 50 g of dough. Coffee-shop scones are usually heavier still, often well past 100 g, and USDA does not publish a record at that size, so weigh one if you can rather than assuming the 70 g figure covers it.

Fruit, blueberry and iced scones

Adding fruit does almost nothing to the calorie count. The USDA fruit scone is 374 per 100 g against 382 for plain, because berries bring water and sugar while displacing a little butter: 18.58 g of sugars per 100 g instead of 13.4 g, but 16.54 g of fat instead of 18.35 g. Sweeter, marginally lighter, same ballpark.

Icing is the same non-event. A supermarket blueberry scone with icing sits at 392 per 100 g, ten calories above plain, and the piece itself comes in at 200 calories only because it weighs 51 g. Packaged bakery scones range from 342 to 421 per 100 g across the brands USDA lists, and a three-pack of two-bite blueberry scones weighing 60 g is 230 calories, so three small ones can cost nearly as much as one large one.

Saturated fat, not calories, is the catch

Look back at the percentage column. Calories aside, one 70 g scone delivers 34% of the Daily Value for saturated fat, against 14% for sodium, 12% for carbohydrate and 9% for protein. Nothing else on the panel comes close. The Daily Value used on US labels is 20 g of saturated fat, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans advise keeping saturated fat under 10% of daily calories. One scone takes a third of that budget before anything is spread on it.

The sodium is easy to miss too. At 312 mg, a scone holds about an eighth of a teaspoon of table salt, more than most people expect from something sweet. Fiber runs the other way: 0.8 g per scone, 3% of the Daily Value, because refined flour is doing the work. If a pastry is the plan, MyPlate's guidance on grains is the useful counterweight, since it puts the emphasis on whole grains for the rest of the day rather than on the scone itself.

If you are watching saturated fat, the miniature is the honest pick at 1.9 g. If you want the full scone, treating it as the fat allowance for the morning rather than an add-on to it keeps the math straightforward.

How does a scone compare?

USDA lists a one-ounce household measure for all three neighbors, so the table compares them at the same weight. At a 70 g piece, our own arithmetic from those 100 g figures puts the plain muffin at 262 calories, the cheese biscuit at 262 and the unspecified muffin at 263, against 267 for the scone.

Our take: the scone is the densest of the four, but only by two calories an ounce, so swapping a scone for a muffin buys you almost nothing. What actually differs is what comes with the energy. The cheese biscuit brings the most protein at 8.7 g per 100 g and the fewest carbs at 38.78 g, but also the most fat at 20.43 g. The scone's real weakness against all three is the saturated fat and the fact that people eat 70 g of it in one sitting. If you want a smaller number rather than a different pastry, order the mini.

Most popular scone brands in the United States

Ranked by how widely each product appears among foods sold in the United States, from the BodyPal food database of over 3.3 million products. Calories are the figures printed on each Nutrition Facts label, checked against USDA FoodData Central.

Brand popularity: BodyPal food database. Nutrition: manufacturer labels / USDA FoodData Central.

Scone FAQs

Similar foods

• Cinnamon Roll — 335 cal plain, 407 frosted
• Chocolate chip muffin — 523 cal per medium muffin
• Apple Fritter — 455 cal per fritter
• Crescent roll — 114 cal per crescent roll
• Garlic Bread — 143 cal per slice
• Beignet — 188 cal per beignet

Count it without the math

Point the camera at the plate and BodyPal counts the scone for you, icing and all.