The objective of this study was to estimate the requirements for maintenance and gain of crude protein in Japanese and European quails aged 16-36 days. To determine the maintenance requirements, one experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with four decreasing feeding levels (100, 75, 50 and 25%) and four replicates per treatment. The method of comparative slaughter was used, through a feeding assay. A total of 352 quails from each strain were housed by supply level in 16 pens measuring 1.0 × 1.5 m, totaling 22 birds per cage under ambient temperature conditions (26±0.5 ºC). To estimate the requirement gains, one experiment was conducted with five groups of quails fed ad libitum and housed under controlled temperature of 18 ºC. All poultry were slaughtered at 16, 21, 26, 31 and 36 days of testing for determination of body composition in protein throughout growth. The requirement for maintenance of the Japanese quail differs from that obtained with the European quail. The protein was retained at the proportion of 32% for European quails and 25% for the Japanese quails. This difference in retention promoted estimate of 0.65 g/g gain in European quails and 0.84 g/g gain in Japanese quails. Quails should be fed diets formulated considering the requirement for protein of each genotype.