Cricket Nutrition Guide
A well-studied feeder cricket.
Banded crickets (Gryllodes sigillatus), also called tropical house crickets, are raised commercially for both animal feed and human food. That has produced a growing body of research into their nutritional composition.
One thing that research makes particularly clear is that a cricket's nutritional composition is not fixed. Diet, life stage, gut contents and even the method used to calculate protein can all affect the numbers reported in a nutritional analysis.
Banded cricket nutrition at a glance
The figures below come from a 2023 analysis of subimago Gryllodes sigillatus obtained from a commercial insect farm. Values are reported on a dry-matter basis, meaning the water has been excluded.
| Nutrient | Banded cricket |
|---|---|
| Crude protein* | 65.66% DM |
| Crude fat | 21.51% DM |
| Crude fiber | 7.36% DM |
| Crude ash | 4.84% DM |
| Calcium | 0.14% DM |
| Phosphorus | 0.83% DM |
| Ca:P ratio | approximately 0.17:1 |
*A note on the protein figure: shown using the conventional 6.25 nitrogen-to-protein conversion factor. The same study also reported 57.68% using a 5.60 factor and 49.03% using 4.76 — an illustration of how the calculation method itself changes the reported protein percentage.
Source: Kępińska-Pacelik et al., 2023, Foods 12(22):4174, “Nutritional Value of Banded Cricket and Mealworm Larvae.” Dry-matter values measured directly in Gryllodes sigillatus.
Why these stay as dry-matter values
The specimens in that study were dried before analysis, at a reported dry matter of 98.05%. That is not the moisture level of a live cricket sitting in a cup on your bench.
Converting these figures into “as-fed” percentages would mean assuming a live moisture content the study did not establish. So we publish them as they were measured, and label them clearly.
Why we don't publish one universal cricket number
A nutritional analysis is a snapshot of crickets raised under one particular set of conditions.
A 2025 study reared Gryllodes sigillatus on a range of formulated diets and found crude protein varying from 51.2 to 64.4 g/100 g dry matter, crude fat from 7.4 to 19.1, and crude fiber from 3.4 to 10.3. The researchers concluded that the diet the crickets were given significantly affected their resulting composition.
That is why we don't assign one supposedly universal nutrition figure to every Pinhead, Small, Small/Medium, Medium and Large cricket we sell. Those commercial size grades have not each been individually analyzed.
Source: Insects 2025, 16(6):600, “Growth Performance and Nutritional Content of Tropical House Cricket (Gryllodes sigillatus) Reared on Diets Formulated from Weeds and Agro By-Products.”
The calcium problem
Banded crickets naturally contain considerably more phosphorus than calcium.
In the 2023 analysis, Gryllodes sigillatus contained 0.14 g calcium and 0.83 g phosphorus per 100 g dry matter — a calculated Ca:P ratio of approximately 0.17:1.
That is an inverse ratio. Banded crickets should not be treated as a naturally calcium-balanced feeder simply because they provide protein, fat and other nutrients. It is one reason calcium supplementation remains an important consideration wherever crickets form part of an insectivore's diet.
What a cricket eats changes what it delivers
A cricket's nutritional composition reflects more than its species.
In the 2025 diet study above, crickets of the same species reared on different formulated diets differed substantially in protein, fat, fiber and mineral content. The spread was wide enough that the rearing diet, not the species alone, accounts for a meaningful part of what a feeder finally delivers.
Which is the practical point behind gut loading: a freshly fed cricket and a deliberately gut-loaded cricket are not necessarily nutritionally identical.
What about dusting?
Dusting and gut loading are different supplementation strategies.
Gut loading changes what is carried inside the feeder, through its diet and digestive tract. Dusting places supplement on the outside of the cricket immediately before feeding.
Because the measured Ca:P ratio of Gryllodes sigillatus is strongly phosphorus-heavy, neither the protein content of the cricket nor its use as a staple feeder removes the need to consider calcium within the animal's overall feeding and supplementation program.
Where banded crickets fit
Banded crickets can serve as a regular feeder for many insectivorous reptiles and other animals. Like any feeder insect, however, they are only one part of the feeding program.
Appropriate feeder size, dietary variety, the condition and diet of the feeder insects themselves, and supplementation appropriate to the animal being kept all affect what ultimately reaches the animal.
Explore: Cricket Care & Storage · Feeder Size Guide · Gut Loading Feeder Insects
About our nutrition data
Feeder-insect composition can vary with species, life stage, diet, gut contents, rearing conditions and laboratory method. We identify whether published figures are reported as-fed or on a dry-matter basis, name the species actually analyzed, publish ranges when the research supports ranges, and leave values unpublished when reliable species-specific data aren't available.