The short answer: a 3 mph walk is 20 minutes per mile (4.8 km/h, 12:26 per km), and a 4 mph walk is 15 minutes per mile. The conversion table below is exact arithmetic. What research adds is context: most people prefer to walk at roughly 2.7 to 3.1 mph, and around 4.5 mph is where most people naturally switch from walking to running.
Walking pace conversion chart
MET ratings are from the Compendium of Physical Activities (the energy cost of walking relative to rest), and we give them only for speeds we've verified. The labels are ours and are not formal categories. See calories burned walking for how the ratings become calories.
| Speed (mph) | Min per mile | Speed (km/h) | Min per km | MET rating | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0 | 30:00 | 3.2 | 18:38 | 2.8 | Slow |
| 2.5 | 24:00 | 4.0 | 14:55 | 3.0 | Easy |
| 3.0 | 20:00 | 4.8 | 12:26 | 3.5 | Normal |
| 3.5 | 17:09 | 5.6 | 10:39 | 4.3 | Brisk |
| 4.0 | 15:00 | 6.4 | 9:19 | 5.0 | Very brisk |
| 4.5 | 13:20 | 7.2 | 8:17 | not listed here | Near the usual walk-to-run switch |
| 5.0 | 12:00 | 8.0 | 7:27 | not listed here | Above it for most people |
Converting it yourself
Divide 60 by your speed to get minutes per unit distance, and do the reverse to get speed from pace.
- Minutes per mile to mph: 60 divided by the minutes. A 22-minute mile is about 2.7 mph.
- Mph to minutes per mile: 60 divided by mph. 3.8 mph is about 15.8 minutes per mile (15:47).
- Mph to km/h: multiply by 1.609. 3 mph is about 4.83 km/h.
- Minutes per mile to minutes per km: divide by 1.609. A 20-minute mile is about 12.4 minutes per km.
Typical times for common distances
| Speed | 5K | 10K | Half marathon (21.1 km) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5 mph | 1:15:00 | 2:29:00 | 5:15:00 |
| 3.0 mph | 1:02:00 | 2:04:00 | 4:22:00 |
| 3.5 mph | 53 min | 1:47:00 | 3:45:00 |
| 4.0 mph | 47 min | 1:33:00 | 3:17:00 |
For steps rather than time, see how far is 10,000 steps, steps in a 5K and steps in a half marathon.
What research says about walking speed
Energy cost per distance walked is lowest at about 1.2 to 1.4 metres per second, which is 2.7 to 3.1 mph (4.3 to 5.0 km/h), and rises when you go slower or faster, according to work on the mechanics and energetics of walking and running. That is close to the speed people choose when left alone; one paper puts the typical preferred walking speed at around 4.5 km/h, while noting that most people can walk at up to about 9 km/h. The earlier page said most adults walk at 3.0 to 3.4 mph; the figures above run a little lower, so our walking speed by age page will go through the measured data.
Humans also change gait over a narrow range of speeds. Studies consistently report that the preferred walk-to-run transition for healthy adults is around 2.0 m/s (7.2 km/h, 4.5 mph), with individual differences. That's why the last two rows of the chart are labelled as they are: at 4.5 mph and above, most people jog rather than walk,. So "power walking" at those speeds is not realistic for everyone, and for most people the useful way to describe fast walking is cadence rather than speed; see power walking.
Why pace matters
Pace sets how long a distance takes and how hard the walk is. Walking faster raises the energy you use per minute much more than per distance: going from 3 to 3.5 mph raises the MET rating by about 23%, but you finish sooner, so per mile the extra energy above resting rises by only about 13%. The earlier page's advice that an 8-week program moves most people from a normal to a brisk pace is a training suggestion we couldn't verify; see walking for beginners for how to build up gradually. We found no research to support a specific rate of improvement.
Sources
- Ainsworth BE, Haskell WL, Herrmann SD, et al. 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities: a second update of codes and MET values. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2011;43(8):1575-1581. pacompendium.com
- The mechanics and energetics of human walking and running: a joint level perspective. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. PMC
- What factors determine the preferred gait transition speed in humans? A review of the triggering mechanisms. Human Movement Science. sciencedirect.com
- Walking around the preferred speed: examination of metabolic, perceptual, spatiotemporal and stability parameters. PMC
Correction note: an earlier version of this page labelled 4.5 and 5.0 mph as "power walk" and "fast power walk" and claimed an 8-week program takes most people from a normal to a brisk pace. The conversion table is exact arithmetic and is kept; we added MET ratings, replaced the labels for the fastest speeds with the research on the walk-to-run transition, and flagged the training claim as unverified. We checked the findings against abstracts and summaries on October 2, 2026, and do not have the authors of the energetics paper and the 2023 preferred-speed paper. This article is for informational purposes and does not replace medical advice. This is general information, not medical advice.