The best calorie-tracking apps, compared honestly

Every round-up you find on this subject was written by someone with a favourite. So was this one — Berry Best is ours, and it is the last entry on the page rather than the first. What follows is what each app is genuinely good at, with prices sourced from the vendors on 2026-08-15. Prices are US dollars as shown to a US visitor and change by region and promotion.

The single most useful thing to know before reading: the best tracker is the one you are still using in six weeks. Accuracy you abandon in March produces nothing. Everything below is really a question about which entry flow you will tolerate every day.

MyFitnessPal — the default, and the biggest database

MyFitnessPal has been the category default for over a decade, and its crowd-sourced database is still the broadest thing available. If you eat packaged food sold in Western supermarkets, the barcode will find it.

Premium is $79.99 a year; Premium+ is $99.99 a year or $24.99 a month, and both advertise a 7-day free trial if you are eligible. The thing worth knowing before you commit: barcode scan and Meal Scan are both paid features, as are custom macros, ad-free logging and voice logging. Premium+ adds a meal planner, over 1,500 recipes and grocery syncing.

Best for: packaged-food eaters, people who want the largest database, and anyone whose existing fitness integrations already write to it.

Weakest at: cooked local dishes, where a crowd-sourced entry list turns into guesswork between six similar rows.

Cronometer — the precision instrument

Cronometer is the serious nutrition tool in the category. It states that both its free Basic tier and its paid Gold tier track up to 84 nutrients and other compounds, against a database of over 1M lab-analysed or verified foods. Gold is $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year, and adds Photo Log, Voice Log, a recipe importer, macro scheduling, custom biometrics, nutrition scores and Crono Coach, plus an ad-free experience.

That free tier is unusually generous — the micronutrient depth is not what sits behind the paywall.

Best for: anyone tracking micronutrients against a real target — iron, B12, vitamin D, potassium — or anyone who needs food data with defensible provenance.

Weakest at: speed. Itemised entry is what makes the 84-nutrient breakdown possible, and it is also what makes logging a four-dish plate slow.

Lose It! — the friendliest on-ramp

Lose It! is published by FitNow and rated 4.8 out of 5 from roughly 772,000 App Store ratings. It has been doing photo-based food logging longer than almost anyone: Snap It launched in September 2016, well before AI food recognition was a marketing line.

Its pricing is the most variable in this list. The App Store listing shows Premium at several price points including $39.99, plus Lifetime options at $49.99 and $59.99 — which is consistent with heavy regional and promotional variation, so check what your own store offers. Photo meal logging and barcode scanning are premium features.

Best for: beginners who want a gentle, well-designed weight-loss flow and a large, friendly community.

Weakest at: depth. It is a weight-loss app first and a nutrition instrument second.

MacroFactor — the algorithm

MacroFactor is published by Stronger By Science Technologies and rated 4.8 out of 5 from around 21,000 App Store ratings. Its distinguishing idea is that it does not ask you to guess your maintenance calories — it infers your energy expenditure from your logged intake and weight trend, and adjusts your targets as your metabolism moves. Its own description says it "adapts to changes in your metabolism so you never plateau".

It is subscription-only after a 7-day trial. Listed in-app purchases include monthly options at $9.99 and $11.99 and annual options at $59.99, $71.99 and $89.99.

Best for: people who already lift, already log consistently, and want the target-setting handled by an algorithm rather than a formula.

Weakest at: casual use. It rewards consistent logging and is more app than a beginner needs.

Yazio — the European all-rounder

Yazio is a large European tracker with a paid PRO tier, strong recipe content and a fasting tracker. Its pricing is region-specific and runs frequent promotions on the 12-month plan, so no single figure describes it — this page does not quote one, because none could be sourced to a page that reliably resolves.

Best for: people who want recipes and meal inspiration alongside tracking, particularly in Europe.

Weakest at: South-East Asian food coverage.

Berry Best — built for the food we actually eat

Ours. The premise is narrow on purpose: most trackers are built around barcodes and Western ingredients, and most meals in Malaysia are neither. You photograph the plate, the AI identifies the dishes, you correct anything it got wrong, and the coach answers questions in conversation rather than in a dashboard. Free to start on iOS and Android.

Best for: anyone eating mostly cooked local food — nasi lemak, nasi campur, roti canai, hawker plates — who has quit tracking before because each entry took too long.

Weakest at: micronutrients. If you need 84 nutrients, use Cronometer; this page has already said so twice and it is still true.

How to choose in one minute

If this is you	Use
Mostly packaged food, barcodes everywhere	MyFitnessPal
Tracking iron, B12 or vitamin D to a target	Cronometer
New to this, want the gentlest start	Lose It!
Consistent lifter who wants adaptive targets	MacroFactor
Want recipes and fasting alongside tracking	Yazio
Mostly hawker and home-cooked local food	Berry Best

Before you install anything

Get your numbers first — they are the same whichever app you choose. The TDEE calculator gives you a maintenance figure, the macro calculator splits it into grams, and how to track macros explains what to do with the result. If you have narrowed it down to two, the head-to-head pages go deeper: Berry Best vs MyFitnessPal and Berry Best vs Cronometer.

Every factual claim on this page is recorded with its source and access date in the project's competitor-claims file. Where a figure could not be sourced to a page that resolves — Yazio's pricing — it is not stated.