We state and prove a Chern–Osserman-type inequality in terms of the volume growth for minimal surfaces$S$which have finite total extrinsic curvature and are properly immersed in a Cartan–Hadamard manifold$N$with sectional curvatures bounded from above by a negative quantity$K$_{$N$}≤$b$<0 and such that they are not too curved (on average) with respect to the hyperbolic space with constant sectional curvature given by the upper bound$b$. We also prove the same Chern–Osserman-type inequality for minimal surfaces with finite total extrinsic curvature and properly immersed in an asymptotically hyperbolic Cartan–Hadamard manifold$N$with sectional curvatures bounded from above by a negative quantity$K$_{$N$}≤$b$<0.