I've been cycling and swimming for almost thirty years and enjoy both for different reasons. Personally I've never taken any notice of calorie estimates.
It might seem obvious, but intensity can vary a lot in both sports. Most of my cycling tends to be at medium or low intensity, but sometimes I do interval sessions on a turbo trainer or exercise bike, or maybe hill repetitions outside. I find that 30 mins of that sort of cycling is tougher than an hour or so at my normal pace, and probably burns as many calories.
With swimming I often do sprints as part of a session, partly to keep it interesting. Swimming up and down for 30 minutes can be boring, and you can get stuck on a fitness plateau if you do the same thing each time.
So overall I try to keep things varied doing different types of session and different sports (I also do yoga). It works for me.
Calorie burning
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