Apricot vs Peach: Apricots Win 6 Nutrients, Peach Wins 1

Per 100 calories, raw apricots beat raw yellow peaches on six of the nine nutrients both USDA rows carry, and the widest gap is vitamin A: 200mcg against 57.14mcg, or 3.5× as much. The rows are USDA FoodData Central FDC 171697 (apricots, raw) and FDC 325430 (peaches, yellow, raw).

The other three columns are why this is not a clean sweep. Iron and magnesium come out as draws once you allow for how the source figures are rounded, and zinc goes to the peach, 0.55mg per 100 calories against the apricot's 0.42mg — a real lead that survives any rounding. So the honest score per calorie is six wins for the apricot, two draws and one for the peach.

The four gaps big enough to matter

Vitamin A, calcium, vitamin C and potassium are where the apricot leads by close to double or more. Calcium is 27.08mg per 100 calories against 9.52mg (2.84×), vitamin C is 20.83mg against 9.76mg (2.13×), and potassium is 539.6mg against 290.5mg (1.86×).

The vitamin A lead puts the apricot among the best fruits we hold on that column, not just ahead of the peach. Apricots rank 2nd of the 26 fruits with a vitamin A value per 100 calories, behind only cantaloupe at 497.06mcg, and 13th of all 145 foods that report one. The peach is 9th among those fruits. Against the 900mcg Daily Value, 100 calories of apricots covers 22% and the same calories of peaches about 6%.

Potassium tells the same story from further down the table. Apricots are 4th of 33 fruits on potassium per calorie; peaches are 24th.

Why iron and magnesium are called draws

Iron per 100 calories is 0.8125mg for apricots and 0.8095mg for peaches, a 0.4% gap, which is far smaller than the rounding in the figures it is built from. USDA reports iron to two decimals (0.39mg and 0.34mg per 100g) and calories to the whole number (48 and 42). Let each figure move by half its last digit and the two per-calorie ranges overlap almost completely.

Magnesium looks like a 9% apricot lead (20.83mg against 19.05mg), but it rests on whole-number magnesium figures of 10mg and 8mg per 100g. With the same half-digit allowance, the apricot can land anywhere from about 19.6mg to 22.1mg per 100 calories and the peach from 17.6mg to 20.5mg. The ranges cross, so we do not count it as a win.

The same test backs the six real wins. Fiber is the closest of them, 4.17g against 3.57g, and even at the ends of its rounding the apricot stays above 4.0g and the peach below 3.8g.

The one column the peach takes

Raw yellow peaches carry 0.23mg of zinc per 100g against 0.2mg for raw apricots, and 0.55mg per 100 calories against 0.42mg. That holds on both bases and through the rounding check, so it is the peach's win outright. It is also a good result for a fruit: peaches are 2nd of 33 fruits on zinc per calorie, behind only blackberries at 1.23mg.

Keep the scale in view, though. Against the 11mg Daily Value, 100 calories of peach gives you 5% of your zinc and the apricot about 4%. No fruit is where a diet gets its zinc. The peach wins this column and still does not make fruit a zinc source.

Per 100g, the apricot wins eight of nine

Per 100g, apricots lead on eight of the nine nutrients, and zinc is the only one they lose. The two draws turn into apricot wins by weight: iron 0.39mg against 0.34mg, magnesium 10mg against 8mg.

The basis matters here because the peach is the lighter fruit: 42 calories per 100g against 48. So 100 calories buys you 238g of peach and only 208g of apricot. Counting per calorie gives the peach that extra 30g, and the extra weight is just enough to close the iron and magnesium gaps.

Sugar, portions and variety: the gaps in the data

We cannot compare sugar. The peach row has no sugar value. The apricot row reports 9.24g per 100g, but the yellow peach record we hold leaves that field empty. Writing in a peach figure from another source would mix two datasets inside one comparison, so we leave it out. Total carbohydrate is present in both: 11.1g for the apricot and 10.1g for the peach, per 100g.

Fruit sizes are not in this data either. The two records give us weight and energy as the only bases, so those are the only two we use. An apricot is a much smaller fruit than a peach, so "one of each" is not a fair test, and we are not going to make up a per-fruit weight to run one.

Finally, these are two separate USDA records, sampled and analysed independently. Differences of a few percent between them tell you about those samples, not about every apricot and peach. That is why we only count a win where it survives the rounding check.

Related

The per-100g side by side is on apricots vs peach, with the full rows on apricots and peaches. Our highest-protein fruit ranking puts both fruits in context against all 33, and apple vs orange runs the same head-to-head test on two other everyday fruits.

The choice that actually moves your week

Picking the apricot over the peach gets you more vitamin A and potassium for the same calories. That is a real edge, and it is small next to the question of whether the fruit gets logged at all. Most people stop tracking by midweek because opening an app for three apricots feels like too much work. With Sunn you send "3 apricots" on WhatsApp and it goes into your day. Ask how your week looks and you get the totals without opening anything.