How many steps is 6 km?
About 8,500 steps for an adult of average height, from about 7,400 at 195 cm to 9,700 at 150 cm. On its own, 6 km passes the 8,000-step mark where, for adults under 60, research finds the benefit of daily steps starting to level off.
The numbers
Steps in 6 km, by height
| 150 cm (4 ft 11 in) | about 9,700 steps |
| 155 cm (5 ft 1 in) | about 9,400 steps |
| 160 cm (5 ft 3 in) | about 9,100 steps |
| 165 cm (5 ft 5 in) | about 8,800 steps |
| 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) | about 8,500 steps |
| 175 cm (5 ft 9 in) | about 8,300 steps |
| 180 cm (5 ft 11 in) | about 8,100 steps |
| 185 cm (6 ft 1 in) | about 7,800 steps |
| 190 cm (6 ft 3 in) | about 7,600 steps |
| 195 cm (6 ft 5 in) | about 7,400 steps |
Step length is about 41% of height. Give or take 10% for how you walk.
Against a daily step count
| A 5,000-step day | 171% of it |
| A 7,000-step day | 122% of it |
| A 10,000-step day | 85% of it |
For an adult of average height, walking only this distance.
On a reTrek route
6.0 km is 1/10 of the way to Everest Base Camp. At that distance a day, the whole route takes about 10 days.
About the Everest Base Camp routeTry your own distance
Steps
about 8,500
7,700 to 9,400 depending on your stride, about 0.70 m a step at this height.
Distance
6.0 km · 3.7 miles
Time on foot
1 h 12 min
at 5 km/h, no stops
Calories
Depends on your weight more than anything else. Enter it to see an estimate.
That is 1/10 of the way to Everest Base Camp.
How many steps is 6 km?
About 8,500 for an adult 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) tall. A walking step is roughly 41% of your height, about 0.70 m at 170 cm, so six kilometres takes 8,500 of them. Someone 150 cm tall takes about 9,700, and someone 195 cm about 7,400. Six kilometres is 3.73 miles, about an hour and twelve minutes at a normal pace.
Six kilometres and 8,000 steps
A 2022 meta-analysis in The Lancet Public Health (Paluch and colleagues) pooled 15 studies of 47,471 adults and found that the risk of dying during the study kept falling as daily steps rose, then levelled off. For adults under 60, it levelled off at about 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, and for adults 60 and over at about 6,000 to 8,000. Six kilometres is about 8,500 steps on its own, inside the younger range and past the older one, before anything else in the day is counted.
Walking with a finish line
Walking is easy to skip when it leads nowhere in particular. reTrek gives your walks a finish line: pick a famous route, like the Camino de Santiago or the Inca Trail, and every walk moves you further along it, with a short film about the place waiting at each milestone. You stop looking for a spare moment to walk and start walking to reach the next milestone.
At 6 km (3.7 miles) a day, Lukla to Everest Base Camp takes about 10 days. Walk it with a friend and pool your steps, or race them there. Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.
Other distances in steps
Sources: One-mile step count at walking and running speeds, Hoeger et al., ACSM's Health and Fitness Journal, 2008 · Daily steps and all-cause mortality, a meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts, Paluch et al., Lancet Public Health, 2022