For health, largely yes — if you do enough of it. When researchers compared runners and walkers at the same energy expenditure, the reductions in hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and coronary heart disease risk came out similar — that is the authors’ own word, and the running-versus-walking differences were mostly not statistically significant. The catch is in “same energy expenditure”: matching a run takes roughly twice as long on foot.
Is walking as good as running for your health?
The most direct evidence comes from comparing the National Runners’ Health Study and the National Walkers’ Health Study. Per MET-hour per day of exercise, the reported risk reductions were:
- Hypertension — running 4.2%, walking 7.2%
- High cholesterol — running 4.3%, walking 7.0%
- Diabetes — running 12.1%, walking 12.3%
- Coronary heart disease — running 4.5%, walking 9.3%
Now the part that gets oversold, including by us in an earlier draft of this page. Those pairs look like walking winning. Statistically they mostly are not: the difference between running and walking was not significant for diabetes (p = 0.94) or coronary heart disease (p = 0.26), and only marginally favoured walking for cholesterol (p = 0.04) and hypertension (p = 0.06, which is not significant at all). The running–CHD result was itself borderline at p = 0.05, and the authors note they had limited power to assess CHD. Their own conclusion is a similarity conclusion: equivalent energy expenditure by moderate and vigorous exercise produced similar risk reductions.
And these are two separate observational cohorts of self-selected exercisers compared with each other, not a trial. The walkers were 12 to 13 years older than the runners — 61.8 against 48.3 in men, 53.1 against 40.9 in women — which is a large confound, and the authors describe the sample as one of convenience. Read the table as “similar,” not as “walking wins.”
How many steps a day do you actually need?
The other useful body of work is the daily-step literature, which is now large. Pooled across 15 international cohorts, mortality risk fell progressively with more steps until it levelled off — at around 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for adults aged 60 and over, and 8,000 to 10,000 for adults under 60. Beyond that, more steps did not buy more.
Once total step count was accounted for, stepping intensity was attenuated but not eliminated: measures based on time spent above a cadence threshold went null, while peak 30-minute and peak 60-minute cadence stayed significant (hazard ratio 0.67 for both). So the number of steps does most of the work, but a sustained brisk stretch still counts for something.
That said, walking pace does track outcomes in walkers: in the walkers’ cohort, each additional minute per mile of slower pace was associated with a 1.8% higher all-cause mortality risk, with larger associations for heart failure and dementia — though those two rest on just 36 and 44 deaths respectively out of 1,968, so they are fragile. Slow walking may be a marker of underlying health as much as a cause of poor outcomes — the usual reverse-causation problem, which we set out in how much running you actually need.
Where running is genuinely different
Two things do not transfer:
Time. Running is efficient. If you have 30 minutes, you will accumulate substantially more energy expenditure running than walking. Most people’s real constraint is time, not willingness, and that is the strongest practical case for running.
Bone. Bone responds to strain magnitude and rate, and walking does not supply much of either. If bone density is the goal, walking is a weak stimulus — see what running does to your bones.
And one where walking is genuinely better: you can do far more of it, and keep doing it. Running injury figures vary enormously with how injury is defined — across reviews, anywhere from about 20% to 79% of runners in a study period — and the cleanest measure, normalised for exposure, is 17.8 injuries per 1,000 hours in novices and 7.7 in recreational runners. Walking is lower risk, but not risk-free: the one good head-to-head comparison found walking reduced injury odds by roughly a quarter to a third, and the reduction was statistically significant only in men.
So what should you do?
If you are starting out, heavier, coming back from injury, or over 60, walking is not a lesser option — it is often the right one, and building a walking habit first is how a lot of durable running careers begin. Our first 5K plan is a run-walk plan for exactly this reason.
If you have limited time and healthy joints, running gets you the same health return in less of it. And the two are not in competition: brisk walking is an excellent way to add volume around running without adding injury risk. Most weeks, the right answer is both.
References
Williams PT, Thompson PD. Walking versus running for hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes mellitus risk reduction. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol, 2013;33(5):1085–91. · Paluch AE, Bajpai S, Bassett DR, et al. Daily steps and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts. Lancet Public Health, 2022;7(3):e219–28. · Williams PT, Thompson PD. The relationship of walking intensity to total and cause-specific mortality: results from the National Walkers’ Health Study. PLoS One, 2013;8(11):e81098. · Colbert LH, Hootman JM, Macera CA. Physical activity-related injuries in walkers and runners in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study. Clin J Sport Med, 2000;10(4):259–63. · Videbæk S, et al. Incidence of running-related injuries per 1000 h of running in different types of runners: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Med, 2015.