Count on 90 grams of dry beans per person for a main dish, about 3.2 ounces. For pinto beans that’s 19.3 grams of protein, roughly 14 grams of fiber, and about 20 cents. A four pound bag holds twenty of those portions for $3.97.
That’s the whole answer. Here it is with the working shown, plus what changes when beans are one thing in a bigger pot.
| Dry beans | Protein | Fiber | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pinto, 90 g (one portion) | 19.3 g | 14.0 g | $0.20 |
| Black, 90 g | 19.4 g | 14.0 g | $0.24 |
| Navy, 90 g | 20.1 g | 13.8 g | $0.26 |
| Green split peas, 90 g | 20.8 g | 20.0 g | $0.28 |
| Pinto, 360 g (dinner for four) | 77.1 g | 55.8 g | $0.79 |
| Pinto, 1814 g (whole 4 lb bag) | 388.6 g | 281.2 g | $3.97 |
Source: USDA FoodData Central + US store prices, July 2026. Full methodology at /methodology/.
How much dried beans should you cook for a crowd?
Multiply 90 grams by the number of people and then knock some off if the beans are sharing the pot.
For four people eating beans as dinner, 360 grams dry. That’s about 79 cents of pinto beans and roughly 77 grams of protein spread across the table. For a chili where beans sit alongside vegetables and maybe ground meat, 200 grams dry for four is closer to right, because beans swell and a big pot of chili is mostly not beans.
The classic error is scaling by volume after cooking. Dry beans expand a lot in the pot, so a scoop that looks stingy in the bag turns into a full bowl on the plate. Weigh dry, cook, then be pleasantly surprised. I have cooked an entire four pound bag “just to have some ready” and I can confirm the freezer fills up fast.
What if the recipe is written in cans?
Then weigh out about 123 grams of dry black beans per can and you’ll land in the right place on protein. A 15.5 ounce can is 439 grams at 6.03 grams of protein per 100 grams, so about 26.5 grams in the can, and dry black beans at 21.6 grams per 100 grams need roughly 123 grams to match it.
One honest limit. That’s a protein equivalence, not a cooked-volume equivalence. Our dataset weighs beans as sold, dry, and we don’t measure cooked yields, so I’m not going to tell you how many cups 123 grams turns into. Weigh, cook, eyeball the pot against what a can looks like, and adjust next time.
The nutrition side of the same swap, including what the canning liquid does to the fiber column, is worked out properly in canned beans vs dried beans nutrition and how much protein is in a can of beans.
Is cooking dry beans worth the trouble?
On money, obviously yes. The 123 grams of dry black beans that match a can cost about 33 cents against 88 cents for the can. That’s roughly 2.7 times the price to skip a soak and a simmer.
Across the whole dataset the gap is wider. Dry pinto beans return 97.9 grams of protein per dollar and canned black beans return 30.1. We ran the full comparison across ten beans in canned vs dry beans, and the answer holds in every direction.
On time, it depends on the week. A can opens in four seconds and a bag of dry beans wants a soak and an hour. What makes dry beans workable is cooking a big batch once, which is the whole point of cooking dried beans from scratch, and there’s a same-day route in the quick soak method for the nights you forgot.
What does a four pound bag actually feed?
A four pound bag of pinto beans is 1814 grams for $3.97, so about 20 portions at 90 grams each. That’s 388.6 grams of protein and 281.2 grams of fiber out of one bag, or close to eight days of the FDA’s 50 gram protein Daily Value for under four dollars.
Twenty cents a portion is the number to keep. Nothing else in the store does that. Chicken breast at 24.5 grams of protein per dollar would need about 79 cents to deliver the same 19.3 grams, and ground beef 80/20 would need about $1.68.
Where beans sit against everything else on the shelf is in the cheapest plant protein ranking, and which bag carries the most protein per gram is in which dried beans have the most protein. Once they’re cooked, they turn into three-bean chili or black bean tacos without much negotiation.
