How much protein is in a 6oz chicken breast?

A 6oz (170g) cooked chicken breast has roughly 52-54g of protein for about 280 calories. Cooked breast runs ~31g of protein per 100g, so multiply 170 by 0.31.

Does cooking change the protein in chicken?

Cooking doesn't destroy protein, but it drives off water, so the meat gets lighter and more protein-dense per gram. Raw breast is ~23g per 100g; cooked is ~31g per 100g because it lost about a quarter of its weight as water.

How Much Protein Is in Chicken Breast?

Q: Is chicken breast the best protein source?

It's one of the best for protein-per-calorie - about 31g of protein for 165 calories per 100g cooked, nearly all of it from protein. It's not the only good option, but it's hard to beat on price and macros.

Cooked chicken breast is about 31g of protein per 100g, which means a typical 6oz breast lands around 50g of protein for roughly 280 calories. That's one of the best protein-per-calorie ratios in any whole food — and it's why it shows up in every cut, including mine. The one catch that trips most people up: weigh your chicken cooked, not raw, or you'll overcount your protein by about a third.

How much protein per 100g, per breast, and per ounce?

Here are the numbers worth memorizing, all for cooked chicken breast:

Per 100g: ~31g protein, ~165 calories
Per ounce (28g): ~9g protein
Per 6oz (170g) breast: ~52-54g protein, ~280 calories

A "typical" breast is fuzzy because they vary a lot — a small one off a value pack might be 4oz cooked (~35g protein), a big one closer to 8oz (~70g). That's exactly why I tell people to own a $12 food scale instead of eyeballing. The difference between a 4oz and an 8oz breast is 35g of protein, which is a meal's worth on its own.

If you don't know what your daily target should be in the first place, start with how much protein you actually need — the per-breast math only matters once you have a number to hit.

Raw vs cooked weight — the mistake everyone makes

This is the single most common protein-counting error, and it's worth slowing down on.

Chicken breast loses about 25% of its weight as water during cooking. So 200g of raw breast becomes roughly 150g cooked. The protein didn't go anywhere — there's the same amount in the pan before and after — but it's now packed into less weight, which is why cooked chicken reads higher per 100g (~31g) than raw (~23g).

Where people go wrong: they weigh the chicken raw, then look up "cooked chicken, 100g" in their tracking app. A 150g cooked breast logged as "150g cooked" is correct (~46g protein). But if you weighed it raw at 200g and logged "200g cooked," you'd record ~62g — overcounting by about a third. Do that across a day and you might think you hit 180g when you really hit 130g.

The engineer in me likes to pick one convention and never break it. Mine: I weigh everything cooked and log it against cooked values. If you'd rather weigh raw — fine, some people prefer it for batch cooking — just make sure you're logging against raw nutrition values too. The error only happens when you mix the two.

Is chicken breast the best protein source?

For protein-per-calorie, it's near the top of the list. About 31g of protein for 165 calories means roughly 75% of the calories in cooked chicken breast come from protein — that's elite. Lean fish like cod or tilapia, egg whites, and nonfat Greek yogurt are in the same neighborhood; fattier cuts of meat, whole eggs, and salmon are still great protein but carry more calories per gram.

So "best" depends on what you're optimizing:

Cheapest high-protein per dollar: chicken breast and eggs win
Most protein per calorie: chicken breast, white fish, egg whites
Most convenient when you can't cook: Greek yogurt, jerky, a whey shake

There's no single best — there's the one you'll actually eat repeatedly. Chicken breast earns its reputation because it's cheap, flexible, and hard to mess up the macros on. For a fuller menu, here's a rundown of other high-protein foods worth rotating in so you don't burn out on chicken by Wednesday.

How to hit your day's protein with chicken

Say your target is 180g and you want chicken to carry a chunk of it. One 6oz breast at lunch and another at dinner gives you ~104g — more than half your day from two breasts you can cook in the same pan. Add a 50g breakfast and a Greek yogurt, and you're done.

A few things that make this painless:

Batch-cook two days at once. Four breasts on a sheet pan, weigh them cooked, portion into containers. Now lunch is solved without thinking.
Don't overcook it. Dry chicken is why people quit chicken. Pull it at 165°F internal, not 185°F.
Stack it with one fast protein. Chicken does the heavy lifting; a shake or yogurt covers the gap so you're not eating four breasts a day.

If you want the exact meal structure I use to put this together, I laid it out in how to hit 200g of protein a day — four meals, real food, no meal-prep-influencer routine required.

And if you'd rather just have the targets and food swaps in one place, I put together a free one-page protein cheat sheet — grab it here. It's the thing I wish I'd had when I was still guessing.

The bottom line

Cooked chicken breast is ~31g of protein per 100g, a 6oz breast is ~50-54g, and an ounce is ~9g. Weigh it cooked, log it against cooked values, and you'll stop the single most common overcounting mistake. It won't be the most exciting food in your week — but for hitting a protein target on a budget, almost nothing beats it.