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The metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) predicts the ubiquity of the of 3/4 scaling exponent relating metabolic rate (MR) to body mass, as well as cell‐size invariance coupled with body‐size dependence of cellular MR in quickly dividing cells. An alternative prediction is that MR scales interspecifically with a coefficient that is between 2/3 and 1, depending on the cell size and cell MR, which is mostly driven by the cell surface‐to‐volume ratio. We tested (1) the contribution of cell size to interspecific differences in MR and (2) whether the cell size–MR relationship is mediated by genome size (GS), which usually correlates positively with cell size. We tested (1) and (2) using erythrocyte area as a proxy for cell size in 14 eyelid geckos, which belong to a monophyletic group exhibiting large body‐size variation. The scaling of standard MR (SMR) was significantly lower than 3/4, whereas mass‐specific SMR correlated with …