Abstract We introduce a trilinear functional of differential one-forms for a finitely summable regular spectral triple with a noncommutative residue. We demonstrate that for a canonical spectral triple over a closed spin manifold it recovers the torsion of the linear connection. We examine several spectral triples, including Hodge-de Rham, Einstein-Yang-Mills, almost-commutative two-sheeted space, conformally rescaled noncommutative tori, and quantum SU(2) group, showing that the third one has a nonvanishing torsion if nontrivially coupled.