MyFitnessPal Alternatives

MyFitnessPal has been the leader in nutrition tracking apps for a while, but like all big software companies, they aren't immune to enshittification and price raises. In late 2022 they took the barcode scanner and tucked it behind a paywall. Today Premium runs $19.99/month, and there are now two paid tiers ($79.99 and $99.99 a year) where there used to be one. The app still works. It just keeps asking for more while slowly giving less.

So if you're shopping around, here are our top picks for calorie + macro trackers in 2026.

Cronometer

For serious, accurate nutrition tracking, Cronometer is hard to beat. They offer the most detailed database of food options and dig into micronutrients like the vitamins and minerals in the food you're eating — not just the big three macros, but the stuff most apps pretend doesn't exist. If you're managing a deficiency, an actual medical condition, or you just want to know whether you're getting enough magnesium, this is the one.

The tradeoff is that all that precision asks something of you. Logging is manual and detailed, and the interface feels more like a tool than a toy. That's a feature if you're the kind of person who wants the data to be right, and a chore if you're not. Around $50/year for the paid tier, with a perfectly usable free version underneath it.

Best for: data nerds, people with specific nutritional needs, anyone who finds comfort in a complete spreadsheet of their own body.

MacroFactor

MacroFactor is built by the Stronger By Science team, who have a reputation for evidence-based fitness, and it shows. Instead of handing you a calorie target from a generic formula and calling it a day, its adaptive algorithm watches your actual food logs and weight trend, figures out your metabolic rate, and adjusts your targets every week as your body changes. If you've ever hit a plateau and had no idea how to recalibrate, this is the app that does it for you.

It's also refreshingly clean about how it treats you: just the numbers and the coaching. Logging is still manual — you search and enter your food the old-fashioned way — and there's no free tier; it's about $72/year. But for experienced trackers who want an algorithm doing the math, that price buys something smart.

Best for: people who lift, people who've plateaued, anyone who wants the coaching part of tracking and doesn't mind doing the logging part by hand.

Cal AI

Cal AI is the one that went TikTok viral, and for an understandable reason: you point your camera at your plate, wait a beat, and it fills in the calories and macros for you. It's Jian Yang's SeeFood but.. you know, not just for separating hot dogs from non-hot-dogs.

Worth knowing up front: as of December 2025, Cal AI is owned by MyFitnessPal. It still runs as its own app, but if part of the appeal was escaping the big guy, the big guy now signs the checks.

That aside, when your food is simple and well-separated, like a chicken breast, some rice, a pile of broccoli, it's fast and easy. It pulls in workouts from Apple Health, has a rollover-calories feature, and the App Store reviews are overwhelmingly positive.

Three things to know before you commit.

First: all photo-based trackers have an accuracy ceiling. Cooking oils and loaded-up bowls and plates are just not something an AI analyzing a photo can understand well enough to accurately translate into nutrition data.

Second, the pricing is slippery. It hides the price until you've finished onboarding, and it works out to roughly $200/year if you're on the weekly plan, which is steep for a single-purpose tracker.

Finally, if you care about where your data goes: per Cal AI's own privacy policy, the food photos you take can be used to train and improve their AI models. For some people that's a shrug. For others, "my lunch photos train the model" plus "the model belongs to MyFitnessPal now" might be a dealbreaker.

Best for: people who enjoy logging via photo and aren't precious about nutrition precision.

Lifesum

Lifesum is genuinely one of the most pleasant interfaces in the category. Swedish design sensibility, warm illustrations, a weekly "Life Score" that frames eating as part of a broader wellness picture rather than a clinical audit. Its real substance is the structured diet plans: pick keto, Mediterranean, high-protein, 16:8 fasting, or one of a dozen others, and the app adjusts your targets and surfaces matching recipes.

Where it falls short is depth. The micronutrient tracking is thin compared to Cronometer, the database quality varies by region, and all entry is manual search. Pricing lands around $50–70/year depending on the plan, and like a lot of these apps, it's crept upward over the years while the free tier got thinner. You're paying for the experience and the structure, not for tracking precision.

Best for: first-time trackers and diet followers who want a beautiful app that tells them what to cook.

So that's the established field: a precision tool, a smart algorithm, a photo app, and a design-led diet planner. Pick the one whose tradeoffs you can live with and you'll be fine.

But if you're still reading, notice how all of the options want you to do the following:

1. 1
   Take a picture of your food. A photo doesn't tell the whole story, and honestly, the AI gets stuff wrong constantly. You also have to remember to whip out your phone and take a picture before you eat — and those photos are being used to train AI in many cases.
2. 2
   Scan a barcode. Only works for packaged foods. And barcodes can carry outdated nutrition information.
3. 3
   Search through a database. Is it "grilled chicken" or "chicken, grilled"? Why do they have different nutrition values? How many ounces did I eat?

We built Maccy to offer a 4th way, and are very proud of how pleasant it is to use daily.

Maccy

Maccy came from exhaustion with the typical nutrition tracking input methods. It flips the script by letting you describe what you ate in whatever terms work for you.

• "rice and chicken bowl" — done, logged
• "6oz mixed summer vegetables with 1tbsp olive oil" — that works too, you'll get a more accurate log since you were more specific
• "🍕🍕" — sure, why not
• "my usual latte" — all good, Maccy will figure out what you mean by usual and re-log your last latte

Of course, Maccy is making all sorts of assumptions about what you ate, especially if you're vague in your log. If you're good with what Maccy has logged, you're done! If you feel like you probably ate more like 1 cup of rice and not 1/2 a cup, enter "it was prolly 1 cup rice" and Maccy will fix it. Start with broad strokes and fill in the details from there, like a painter but with food. A food painter, yeah.

We find that for the average person looking to hit their calorie and macro goals, this is more than sufficient, and is actually such a pleasant way to log and think about the way you eat.

Put the phone camera away. Don't decide between "grilled chicken" and "chicken, grilled." Type what you ate. Do it before you eat, after you eat, when you're laying in bed after a long day, or the day after if your memory is good.

A few other things worth knowing, since you've read this far and clearly care about the details:

• No notifications, no streaks, no guilt. We like MacroFactor's ethos and took a page from their book. Tracking should be a tool you pick up when you want it, not something you're harassed into using by a robot. We've also taken care to present your results in relation to your goals thoughtfully. You will go under your calories sometimes. You will go over your calories sometimes. It's information, not a judgment.
• Zero Data Retention (ZDR). Your food logs aren't training anyone's AI model. We pay extra for no-train, ZDR policies enforced at the code level with our AI provider, so the text you input vanishes as far as the AI company is concerned.

If "type what you ate" sounds like the thing you've been waiting for, give it a try. There's a 7-day no-restrictions free trial, then it's $9/mo after that. If you subscribed and decide you don't like it, let us know within 30 days and we'll issue a refund.