How many steps a day: 7,000 or 10,000?

Short answer: 10,000 is a round number, not a medical threshold. Large observational studies have found that people who walk more have lower health risks, with most of the difference appearing well before 10,000 steps — often somewhere around 7,000 to 8,000 — and some further benefit beyond that for some groups. The best goal is one a little above what you do now.

Where 10,000 came from

The number is widely traced to a pedometer sold in Japan in the 1960s whose name, manpo-kei, means “10,000-step meter”. It was a memorable marketing figure. It was not derived from a study, and research since then has tried to check whether it holds up.

What larger studies found

• Lee and colleagues, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2019. In a study of older women, those who took more steps had lower mortality over the follow-up period, and the association levelled off at around 7,500 steps a day.
• Paluch and colleagues, The Lancet Public Health, 2022. A meta-analysis of 15 cohorts found that the risk reduction levelled off at roughly 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for adults aged 60 and over, and roughly 8,000 to 10,000 for younger adults.
• Ding and colleagues, The Lancet Public Health, 2025. A review of studies across several health outcomes found that around 7,000 steps a day was associated with meaningfully lower risk compared with about 2,000, and that additional gains past 7,000 were smaller for most outcomes.

These are observational studies. They show that more steps go together with better outcomes, not that a specific number causes them, and people who walk more also differ in other ways. Treat them as a sensible direction, not a prescription.

So which should you pick?

• If you are well below 5,000 today: start with 5,000. Going from very few steps to a moderate amount is where studies consistently show the clearest difference.
• If 5,000 is already easy: 7,000 is a reasonable, research-backed target that fits into a normal day.
• If you like 10,000: keep it. It is not too many for most healthy adults, and a goal you enjoy chasing beats a “correct” one you ignore.
• If you have a health condition or are recovering from an injury: ask your doctor what is appropriate for you.

Make the goal stick

A goal you can see is easier to keep. One reviewer wrote that a pedometer “helped me to have a goal every day”; another liked knowing “how much left for the goal of the day”. Seeing steps left rather than steps taken turns the evening into a concrete choice: 1,200 steps to go is roughly a short walk around the block.

Walkmint

Walkmint starts you with a choice of 5,000, 7,000 or 10,000 steps, or any number you set, and you can change it at any time. The home screen shows steps left to the goal, a streak counts days in a row you reach it, and your history shows a daily average so you can raise the goal when it becomes easy. Walkmint is not a medical device, and its steps, distance and calories are estimates.

Coming soon to Google Play · About Walkmint