Purine content of Chicken
across 20 measured preparations · median 153.8 mg · spans fairly low to extremely high
Chicken sits higher than almost anyone expects. Across every chicken measurement in this database the range runs from 58.9 mg per 100 g for raw skin to 368.7 mg for cooked boneless skinless breast — and the breast, the cut chosen precisely because it is the lean healthy one, is at the top.
Avoid or strictly limit — significant gout flare risk.
On this page (6)
The lean cut is the high-purine cut
Purines live in cell nuclei, so purine content tracks how much dense, active muscle tissue a cut contains — not how much fat it contains. Lean means more muscle per 100 g, which means more purines per 100 g. Chicken breast is the clearest demonstration of that inversion in the whole database.
The USDA and ODS-NIH database records boneless skinless chicken breast at 368.7 mg per 100 g cooked and 288.5 mg raw. The Chinese National Health Commission's 2024 guideline lists chicken breast at 208 mg. Meanwhile chicken skin — the part usually removed for health reasons — measures 58.9 mg raw, the second-lowest band on this scale.
Darker cuts sit lower than breast too: thigh at 141.7 mg raw, drumstick 132.7 mg, wing 137.5 mg, leg 118.2 mg. If someone switched from thigh to breast on general health advice, they raised the purine density of their protein without being told.
More practical swaps
Lower-purine options you can realistically buy or order instead — not only the lowest numbers in the category.
- Chicken leg or thigh118–149 mg
The same bird, well below breast. The simplest change on this page is the cut, not the meat.
- Eggsunder 1 mg
Raw or boiled egg is close to zero, and it is complete protein.
- Tofu21.9–35.8 mg
Boiled three to five minutes. Boiling leaches purines into water that is then discarded.
- Cod71 mg
Fresh cod, per 100 g — a white fish at roughly a third of chicken breast.
Why the numbers vary
Why sources disagree about chicken breast, and what to do about it
Purine charts circulating online commonly quote chicken breast at around 165–170 mg per 100 g, and some build portion guidance on top of that figure. The USDA table's cooked boneless skinless breast is more than double it.
Both can be defensible, because they are almost certainly not measuring the same thing. Cooking method, water loss, whether skin and bone were included, and whether the sample was weighed before or after cooking all move the number substantially — and the USDA table itself records roasted breast at 178.5 mg and stewed breast at 183.5 mg alongside the 368.7 mg cooked entry. Wet methods leave more water in and leach purines out; the highest figures belong to the driest preparations.
The practical response is not to pick a favourite number. It is to notice that chicken breast plausibly spans roughly 175 to 369 mg per 100 g depending on how it was cooked and measured, and that any single figure quoted without its preparation — including ours — is an average standing in for a range. That is why every row in this database names the preparation it belongs to.
Portion is doing more work than the cut
A 250 g chicken breast is an ordinary restaurant main course. At the NHC's 208 mg it contributes about 520 mg of purines; at the USDA's cooked figure, closer to 920 mg. Either way it is a larger contribution than 100 g of pork liver, which is the food everyone already knows to be careful with.
This is the recurring shape of the whole database: the foods with alarming headline numbers are usually eaten in small amounts, and the foods with unremarkable numbers are eaten as the centre of the plate. Neither fact is visible from a colour-coded chart alone.
The meats measured here run from 49.9 mg to 252 mg per 100 g, so the category is a poor guide on its own — which specific food, and prepared how, decides almost everything.
Preparation matters more than the food's name. Chicken breast, boneless, skinless, cooked measures 368.7 mg, while Chicken skin, raw measures 58.9 mg — a difference of 6.3 times. Drying and grilling remove water and concentrate what is left; boiling can move purines into water that is then poured away.
Every form of chicken measured (20)
Highest first, each with the preparation that was measured.
| Food as measured | Per 100 g | Level | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast, boneless, skinless, cooked | 368.7 mg | Extremely high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken breast, boneless, skinless, raw | 288.5 mg | Very high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken breast | 208 mg | Very high | NHC 2024 |
| Roast chicken | 188 mg | High | NHC 2024 |
| Chicken breast, stewed | 183.5 mg | High | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken breast, roasted | 178.5 mg | High | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken breast, raw | 174.9 mg | High | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Silkie chicken (raw) | 173 mg | High | NHC 2024 |
| Silkie chicken (cooked) | 159 mg | High | NHC 2024 |
| Chicken, ground, raw | 158.7 mg | High | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken thigh, roasted | 148.9 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken thigh, stewed | 146.3 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken thigh, raw | 141.7 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken wing, raw | 137.5 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken drumstick, raw | 132.7 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken neck, raw | 122.9 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken leg, raw | 118.2 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken, light meat, raw | 111.4 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken skin (from drumsticks and thighs), braised | 93.8 mg | Fairly high | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
| Chicken skin, raw | 58.9 mg | Fairly low | ODS-NIH 2.0 |
Questions about chicken and purines
Is chicken lower in purines than red meat?
Not reliably. Chicken breast measures 208 mg per 100 g in the NHC 2024 guideline and 288.5–368.7 mg in the USDA database depending on preparation, while pork measures 138 mg and beef 105 mg in the same NHC guideline. The lean-white-meat assumption does not hold for purines, because purine density tracks muscle tissue rather than fat.
Is chicken skin high in purines?
No — raw chicken skin measures 58.9 mg per 100 g in the USDA database, which is the second-lowest band on this scale, and far below any chicken muscle cut. Skin is mostly fat and connective tissue rather than the dense cellular material purines come from. It carries plenty of other nutritional considerations, but purine content is not the reason it gets removed.
Which chicken cut is lowest in purines?
Among the cuts measured here, raw chicken skin is lowest at 58.9 mg per 100 g, followed by braised skin at 93.8 mg. Among muscle cuts, light meat at 111.4 mg and leg at 118.2 mg are the lowest, with breast the highest. Broadly, the darker and less lean the cut, the lower the purines per 100 g.
Source
- USDA and ODS-NIH Database for the Purine Content of Foods, Release 2.0 (2025) — Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- Dietary Guideline for Adults with Hyperuricaemia and Gout (2024 Edition) — National Health Commission of China, appendix 1. Issued February 2024.
Reference information only. Purine values describe foods, not people: they cannot tell you what is safe for you to eat, and nothing here diagnoses or treats gout. Talk to your doctor or dietitian about your own diet and medication.