Dry brown lentils carry 24.63 grams of protein per 100 grams. That’s about 49 percent of the FDA’s 50 gram Daily Value, and it costs roughly 32 cents at July 2026 prices. Red lentils sit at 23.91 grams for about 43 cents. Both beat every raw meat cut in our dataset on protein by weight.
The bag on your shelf is doing more than you think.
| Lentil or pulse (dry) | Protein per 100 g | Fiber per 100 g | Price per 100 g | Protein per dollar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown lentils | 24.63 g | 10.7 g | $0.32 | 77.7 g |
| Red lentils | 23.91 g | 10.8 g | $0.43 | 56.0 g |
| Green split peas | 23.12 g | 22.2 g | $0.31 | 73.9 g |
| Chickpeas | 20.47 g | 12.2 g | $0.36 | 56.7 g |
Source: USDA FoodData Central + US store prices, July 2026. Full methodology at /methodology/.
Which lentils have the most protein?
Brown, by a whisker. 24.63 grams per 100 grams against 23.91 for red. That’s a difference of about seven tenths of a gram, which is nothing, so pick on price and texture instead of chasing the number.
On price it isn’t close either. Brown lentils are $1.44 for a 16 ounce bag against $1.94 for the same 454 grams of red, which is why brown return 77.7 grams of protein per dollar and red only 56.0. The full buying comparison is which lentils are the best.
Texture is the real deciding factor. Brown lentils hold their shape and behave in a salad or a pot of soup. Red lentils disintegrate into something thick and creamy in about twenty minutes, which is exactly what you want in a lentil curry and exactly what you don’t want if you were hoping for distinct little discs.
Why does the dry number look so high?
Because our dataset measures every food the way you buy it. Lentils are dry, meat is raw, and that’s the honest basis for a price comparison even though it flatters the lentils on density.
Cook the lentils and they soak up water, so the protein per 100 grams of the finished pot drops well below 24.63. Cook a chicken breast and it loses water and climbs above 22.5. We don’t have cooked yields in our data, so I’m not going to hand you a converted figure and pretend it’s measured.
What that means practically: the dry number is a shopping number. It tells you what’s in the bag you’re paying for, which is exactly what you want when you’re standing in the aisle. If you want the meat comparison run out properly, that’s which lentils are the best and lentils vs chicken breast.
Are lentils high in fiber too?
Yes, and this is where they pull away from meat entirely. Brown lentils bring 10.7 grams of fiber per 100 grams, red lentils 10.8. That’s about 38 percent of the FDA’s 28 gram fiber Daily Value from the same scoop that hands you half your protein target.
Chicken has zero. Beef has zero. Eggs have zero. The lentils are doing two jobs for 32 cents, which may help explain why a bowl of lentil soup keeps people full longer than the calorie count suggests it should.
If fiber is the thing you’re chasing, green split peas are the better bag. 22.2 grams per 100 grams, more than double the lentils, at 31 cents. Split pea soup is a genuinely underrated pot of food. The full fiber side of the pantry is ranked in the fiber per dollar study.
Is lentil protein as good as chicken protein?
Not gram for gram, no, and pretending otherwise is how food writing loses trust. Lentils score 0.63 on DIAAS, the scale that accounts for digestibility and for whichever amino acid runs short. Lentils run short on the sulfur amino acids. Chicken scores above 1.00.
Multiply the price advantage by the quality score and brown lentils still land at 49.0 quality-adjusted grams of protein per dollar. Chicken breast lands at 24.5. So lentils lose the quality argument and win the arithmetic anyway, roughly two to one. The full re-ranking is in cheap protein adjusted for quality.
The classic fix costs nothing. Legumes and grains complement each other’s amino acid profiles, so lentils with rice or lentils with bread cover more ground than lentils alone. That’s the whole idea behind rice and beans as a complete protein pair, and it works the same way with lentils.
How do you actually eat enough of them?
Cook a pot on a day you’re already in the kitchen. A 16 ounce bag holds 454 grams, which is about 111.8 grams of protein and 48.6 grams of fiber for $1.44, and it will not go bad while you figure out what to do with it.
Brown lentils go in soup, in chili, into a pan with browned onions and a fried egg on top. Red lentils go into a dal with rice or thickened into curry. Neither needs soaking, which is the main reason lentils get cooked in my house more often than dried beans do.
How much to put in the pot per person is the next question, and it has a real answer: how much lentils per person, per day.
