Last updated: November 1, 2026
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The short answer: A solo hiker boiling water for freeze-dried meals needs about 28 grams of canister fuel per day in calm, mild weather — roughly 2 liters boiled at about 14 grams per liter on a typical upright stove — and about double that, 50 to 60 grams, once wind and cold get a vote. A 230 g canister therefore covers about eight calm solo days, or about four hard-weather days.
Start with one number: grams per liter boiled
Every fuel plan is the same multiplication: liters you will boil, times grams of fuel per liter, times days. The only input worth arguing about is the middle one, and it is a property of the stove, not of your menu.
The most efficient stove in our comparison is the Jetboil Flash, at about 10 grams per liter. That figure is Jetboil’s own rating — about 10 liters boiled per 100 g canister — and it comes from the FluxRing cup capturing heat that an open burner throws away. A typical upright stove in calm air, the MSR PocketRocket 2 class, runs about 14 grams per liter: MSR rates the PocketRocket 2 at about 16 liters boiled per 227 g canister, which works out to 14.2 grams per liter. The SOTO WindMaster sits in the same upright neighborhood in calm air, and earns its keep when conditions worsen, because its regulator and recessed burner hold efficiency that unregulated stoves lose.
Wind and cold attack that number from both sides. Wind strips heat off the pot, so a boil takes longer and burns more fuel getting there — in our comparison’s wind testing, the weakest stoves could not finish a boil at all, and the strong ones took roughly twice as long. Cold drops canister pressure, stretches every boil, and stretches the fuel bill with it. The planning rule that survives contact with real trips is blunt: take your calm-air grams per liter and double it for a windy, cold trip. If your plan only works at the calm number, your plan is a fair-weather plan.
Then count your liters honestly
Most people undercount water, not fuel. A freeze-dried dinner takes about half a liter. So does breakfast once coffee or tea is in the cup next to the oatmeal. An evening drink is another third to half a liter. A solo boil-and-pour day is therefore about 2 liters boiled, not the single dinner pouch people picture when they pack.
Cooking real food changes the shape of the day more than the total. Two people simmering rice or pasta boil more water — about 4 liters across the day — and then keep burning fuel at a low flame after the boil, which pure boil math does not capture. Budget the boil, then add simmer time on top: an honest allowance is a quarter to a third more fuel for a menu with real simmering in it. Groups scale better than solo hikers do, because one big pot for four loses less heat per serving than four solo pots — but nobody should plan a group trip on the savings.
| Cooking pattern | Water boiled / day | Fuel / day, calm | Fuel / day, wind & cold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo, freeze-dried meals | 2 L | ~28 g | ~55 g |
| Two people, real food | 4 L + simmer | ~70 g | ~130 g |
| Group of four | 8 L | ~110 g | ~210 g |
| Solo, melting snow | 3 L, all from snow | ~65 g | ~100 g |
The calm column is upright-stove math at 14 grams per liter, with the two-person row carrying the simmer allowance described above. On a Jetboil Flash, multiply any row by about 0.7 — its 10 grams per liter is a real saving, trip after trip. The wind-and-cold column is the doubled planning figure, rounded. These are planning numbers, not promises: your first trip on a new stove, weigh the canister before and after each day and replace our grams per liter with your own.
Melting snow is a different fuel bill
Snow deserves its own section because it breaks the intuition that water is water. Melting a liter of snow into water at freezing takes about as much energy as heating that same liter most of the way to boiling — the physics puts the melt at roughly 334 kilojoules per kilogram, against about 418 kilojoules to take liquid water from freezing to a boil. Bringing snow all the way to boiling water therefore costs about 1.8 times the fuel of boiling the same water from liquid, before wind takes its cut.
The bigger effect is volume. On a liquid-water trip you only burn fuel for the water you boil — drinking water comes straight from the creek. On a snow trip, every liter you drink also passed through the pot, even if it never boiled. Add the melt cost to a full day’s water and a snow trip lands at roughly double to triple the fuel of the same menu in summer, which is why winter campers carry liquid fuel or very large canisters and why a 100 g canister on a snow weekend is a rationing plan, not a fuel plan. The snow row in the table above is a solo hiker melting about 3 liters a day; a group melting all its water should scale that row by headcount and then round up.
Turn grams into a canister
| Canister size | Fuel it holds | Days for a solo hiker |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 100 g | 3–4 days calm; ~2 in wind & cold |
| Medium | 230 g | ~8 days calm; ~4 in wind & cold |
| Large | 450 g | ~16 days calm; ~8 in wind & cold |
Days here are the solo freeze-dried row at 28 grams per day calm and about 55 grams per day in wind and cold. Two things hide inside this table. First, the grams on the label are fuel only — a full 100 g canister weighs roughly 195 g on a kitchen scale, because the steel weighs about as much as its contents; the medium and large cans carry their fuel more efficiently, at roughly 355 g and 645 g gross. Second, a partial canister is not a plan until you have weighed it: subtract the empty weight stamped on the base and plan on the grams that remain, not the grams printed on the label.
The sizing rule that follows from the math: take the small canister for weekends, the medium for a week, and the large when the group, the snow, or the calendar says the burn rate is not yours to choose. Carrying one size up costs a few ounces of steel and fuel. Running out costs hot food and, in winter, water.
Want the multiplication done for you — for white gas as well as canisters, and with altitude counted? The Fuel-Per-Day Calculator takes fuel type, group size, days, and cooking load, and returns the fuel per day, the trip total, and the canisters or bottles to carry.
Jetboil Flash
SOTO WindMaster
MSR PocketRocket 2
Efficiency is the quiet reason the Flash at $144.99 can still make sense for a boil-and-pour eater: at 10 grams per liter against 14, it burns about 30% less fuel on every trip, forever. The WindMaster at $69.95 buys consistency instead — its rated burn is ordinary, its delivered burn in bad weather is not. The PocketRocket 2 at $49.95 is the baseline because its numbers are the ones the makers publish cleanly and owners reproduce. Pick the stove whose number matches your weather, then do the multiplication above with that number.
Questions readers ask next
Why does my canister stove die in cold weather?
Canister fuel stops vaporizing as it gets cold — butane at about 31°F, isobutane at about 11°F — and burning chills the canister further, so pressure falls and the flame fades with fuel still inside. Cold also stretches every boil, doubling the cold column in the tables above. The full physics and ranked fixes are in the full answer.
How much fuel is left in my canister?
Weigh it and subtract the empty weight stamped on the canister’s base — roughly 95 g for a small can, 130 g for a medium, 195 g for a large, with brand-to-brand variation. The remainder is fuel in grams. Divide by your grams per day from the tables above and you have days left, the only answer worth packing.
Which canister size should I buy, and will it fit my stove?
All screw-on canisters share the same EN417 thread, so any brand fits any stove — buy by grams, not by logo. Small 100 g cans nest inside most solo pots and suit weekends; 230 g is the week-long default; 450 g is for groups, basecamps, and snow. Check nesting space before assuming the medium rides inside your pot.
Is it smarter to save weight on the stove or on fuel?
On short trips, the stove — a few dozen grams off the burner is real weight, and a weekend burns a weekend’s fuel either way. On long trips, fuel wins: the gap between 10 and 14 grams per liter is 4 grams per liter per day, and past a week the efficient stove has repaid its weight in unburned fuel.
More questions like this: this page is one answer from What People Are Asking About Stoves and Fuel — the full set of stove and fuel questions, with the short answers, lives there.
Keep reading
This answer belongs to What People Are Asking About Stoves and Fuel, our hub for the stove and fuel questions readers actually type. The stoves behind the grams-per-liter figures live in our Fire & Cooking hub and in the full dataset at camp stoves compared; the pots that decide how much of that heat your food actually gets are in cook kits compared. Its companion page — the cold-weather half of fuel planning — is why does my canister stove die in cold weather?
Prices last checked: October 26, 2026 — carried from our camp stoves comparison, where each price was verified that morning.
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