Best Carb Counter Apps for Low-Carb and Keto, Compared

The best carb counter turns the food on your plate into grams of carbohydrate without a scale, and is quick enough that you log every meal and snack, not just the easy ones. On a ketogenic diet, which the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health describes as typically under 50 g of total carbohydrate a day, a misjudged scoop of rice or an extra slice of bread can take a large share of the day’s carbs. Our picks: PlateLens as the best overall carb counter, because it logs a meal in one step from a photo, your voice or a sentence such as “steak, a fried egg and half a cup of rice”, estimates each food and its portion, counts the carbs in grams against your daily target and takes fixes in plain words, free forever with no card and AI logging within daily allowances. Its calorie estimates have been measured from outside: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study found the lowest mean error of six apps, ±1.1% on 180 weighed meals, and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced it on 231 meals, as aggregate results rather than a per-meal or macronutrient guarantee. The others fit specific needs: Carb Manager for a keto-specific program; Cronometer for weighing food against curated, lab-analyzed entries; MyFitnessPal for a 20.5-million-food database; Senza for a free keto and fasting app on your phone; and Lose It! for a calorie budget first.

Keto

Typically under 50 g of total carbs a day

Low-carb

Below the 130 g a day RDA

Net carbs

Total minus fiber and sugar alcohols; no FDA definition

PlateLens

Carbs from a photo or a sentence, free plan, no scale

The apps side by side

Prices are the US App Store in-app purchases and each vendor’s own pricing page. Lose It! lists $79.99 a year but says most users receive discounted offers in the app, and its App Store listing also shows a $39.99 purchase, so check the store before you subscribe.

On PlateLens, carbs, protein, fat and calories are on every plan; net carbs and fiber are detailed nutrient views in PRO, and the estimates are saved on the free plan for later PRO access. MyFitnessPal’s Net Carbs Mode works only in its iPhone and Android apps in the US and Canada, and Lose It!’s photo, voice and barcode tools work in English only.

Which app fits which need

PlateLens: best overall for counting carbs without weighing

PlateLens starts from the plate, not from a database entry. Photograph the meal, say it out loud or type a sentence such as “two chicken tacos on corn tortillas with rice and black beans”, and it identifies each food, estimates its portion and logs the carbs with protein, fat and calories, in about 2.1 seconds on average. Barcode scanning and catalogue search cover packaged foods. If a portion looks off, describe the fix in plain words with Fix it, such as “half the rice” or “one tortilla, not two”, and the meal is analyzed again; when a meal offers Weight under Portion, you can type the grams you weighed and the whole meal scales to them. Food data comes from USDA FoodData Central, NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix, plus 45,000+ restaurant menu items from 380+ chains. The steps are in how to log a meal and portions and corrections.

Carbs, protein, fat and calories are on every plan, Free included; net carbs and fiber are detailed nutrient views in PRO, explained in extra nutrients. Your carb target keeps pace with your calories: edit your base daily calories and protein, carbs and fat adjust together in the same proportions, or set carbs in grams yourself. The adaptive calorie algorithm, on the free plan, learns your expenditure every week from your logged meals and weigh-ins and every 14 days reviews your targets, suggesting new ones that you choose to apply. It also has an intermittent fasting timer, an AI coach and an Apple Watch app where you can speak a meal. The free plan never expires and needs no card; PRO is $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month, with a 3-day trial for new users (see pricing). It runs on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and the web.

Its calorie estimates have been measured from outside. The Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study, which no app paid for or supported, compared six apps on 180 weighed meals and found the lowest mean calorie error for PlateLens: ±1.1% in photo mode, against 6.8% for Cronometer, 9.4% for Lose It! and 11.2% for MyFitnessPal. Foodvision Bench, an open-source leaderboard on GitHub, has also reproduced the result on 231 weighed meals. Both are calorie averages, not a per-meal or carb guarantee, and Carb Manager and Senza were not among the apps tested.

Carb Manager: best for a keto-specific program

Carb Manager is built around low-carb eating, from keto to paleo and carnivore, and its App Store listing promises “ALWAYS free net carb tracking” along with free barcode scanning. Its Carbs to Track setting counts total or net carbs; net carbs are total carbs minus fiber, sugar alcohols and allulose. Its database lists more than 1 million foods: Common Food entries are verified against USDA and NCCDB data, while Member Food entries are created by members and have not been verified. The free Basic plan logs food, exercise, weight and water. Premium adds photo, voice and natural-language logging, Smart Macros that adjust your goals as you lose weight, ketone and intermittent fasting tracking, meal plans, recipes and the Keto Academy course, for $39.99 a year, $8.49 a month or $16.49 a quarter on the US App Store. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Android and the web, with an Apple Watch app for daily and weekly nutrition summaries.

Cronometer: best for curated, lab-analyzed entries

Cronometer is built on a curated database of more than 1.1 million verified foods, including lab-analyzed entries, with data from sources such as NCCDB and USDA. You track carbs as net or total; by default net carbs are total carbs minus fiber and sugar alcohols, and the target can also subtract allulose and fructose. The free Basic plan, which shows ads, includes custom macro targets, barcode scanning, the full database, and reports and charts within a 7-day window. Gold adds photo and voice logging, which match your meal to foods in Cronometer’s database; since April 2026, photo logging also suggests commonly missed extras such as butter on toast or cooking oil. Gold also adds the Macro Scheduler, a fasting timer and the Ketogenic Nutrition Score, for $59.99 a year or $10.99 a month. It runs on the web, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Android.

MyFitnessPal: best for a 20.5-million-food database

MyFitnessPal logs from more than 20.5 million foods, including restaurant dishes. Free accounts log food and exercise, see their macros and set calorie and macro goals by percentage; the free app shows ads. Net Carbs Mode, which subtracts fiber and sugar alcohols from total carbs, is a Premium setting that works in the iPhone and Android apps for users in the US and Canada. Premium also unlocks macro goals in grams, the barcode scanner, voice logging and Meal Scan, which identifies food with your phone’s camera and suggests matching foods from the database, in English. It costs $79.99 a year or $19.99 a month, with a 7-day free trial for new members. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, Wear OS and the web.

Senza: best for a free keto and fasting app on your phone

Senza is a mobile-only app that guides you through the transition to ketosis one day at a time, on iPhone and Android. Its App Store listing describes 1.6 million food items and 5,000 keto recipes, food records verified for net carbs and sugar alcohol, a barcode scanner, restaurant menus and build-your-own tools, and tracking for fasting, exercise, sleep, mood, weight, glucose and ketones, with sync to Fitbit, Biosense and Apple Health. Net carbs are total carbs minus fiber and sugar alcohol, and you can switch to total carbs. The app is a free download with no in-app purchases listed on the App Store or Google Play; Senza sells 14-day keto meal plans separately for $15 each. Its current App Store version dates from December 2025.

Lose It!: best for a calorie budget first

Lose It! starts from a personalized daily calorie budget and a food database its help center puts at more than 50 million items. Carbs come in through custom nutrient goals, in grams or percentages, which can track net carbs, and through its Low Carb and Keto nutrition strategies; both are Premium, and macro goals stay as you set them when your weight changes, until you adjust them. Premium also covers Snap It photo logging, which suggests matches from its database, and voice logging, both in English only, and barcode scanning, which Lose It! is moving to Premium. The list price is $79.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial for new users. The free app shows ads. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, Android and the web.

How to choose

• You want carbs counted from what is on your plate, without weighing or searching: PlateLens. Photograph the plate or describe it, and fix any portion in a sentence.
• You follow keto and want a program around it, with recipes, meal plans, ketone tracking and a course: Carb Manager, with most of that in Premium.
• You weigh your food and want curated, lab-analyzed entries: Cronometer. See PlateLens vs Cronometer.
• You log a lot of packaged and restaurant food and live in the US or Canada: MyFitnessPal, with net carbs in Premium. See PlateLens vs MyFitnessPal.
• You want a free keto and fasting app on your phone: Senza.
• Your main goal is a calorie budget for weight loss: Lose It!, with carb goals in Premium. See PlateLens vs Lose It!.

If you count carbs because of diabetes, set your carb targets with your doctor or diabetes care team: an app keeps the record, and treatment decisions stay with them. SNAQ is designed for people with diabetes, with continuous glucose monitor integration in its Premium plan, and PlateLens shows readings from Apple Health or Health Connect, continuous glucose monitors included, on one timeline with your meals and exercise as a record and context tool; see track blood glucose with meals and exercise.

Tracking protein and fat as closely as carbs? Compare the best macro tracker apps. Pairing keto with an eating window? See the best intermittent fasting apps.

Net carbs, total carbs and how low is low-carb

Total carbohydrate on a US Nutrition Facts label includes sugar, starch and fiber, as the American Diabetes Association explains, and the FDA’s Daily Value for it is 275 g on a 2,000-calorie diet, with 28 g for fiber and 50 g for added sugars. The National Academies set the Recommended Dietary Allowance for carbohydrate at 130 g a day for adults and children aged one and over, within an acceptable range of 45–65% of energy, and low-carb eating usually sits below that 130 g. A ketogenic diet goes further: the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health describes it as typically under 50 g of total carbohydrate a day, sometimes as low as 20 g.

Net carbs subtract the parts of carbohydrate considered indigestible, usually fiber and sugar alcohols, from the total, and the term has no regulatory definition: the American Diabetes Association notes that the FDA has not defined it and that the association does not recommend its use, and Harvard calls “net carbs” an unregulated term invented by food manufacturers whose calculations “are not an exact or reliable science”. Labels also differ by country. US labels include fiber in total carbohydrate, while EU, UK and Australian labels list carbohydrate without fiber, as Cronometer’s and Carb Manager’s help pages explain, so subtracting fiber again from those labels undercounts carbs. Whichever method you choose, use it every day and keep your target in the same terms.

For the net carbs in 46 common foods from USDA records, see the keto food list, and for the method step by step, how to track carbs.

PlateLens: carbs counted from the plate, not a guessed entry

On a keto day of 20 to 50 g, the portion decides the count: a database entry can be exact per 100 g and still miss your meal if the serving you pick or weigh is off. PlateLens logs the carbs from the plate itself: take a photo, or say “steak, a fried egg and half a cup of rice”, and it estimates each food and its portion and logs the carbs with protein, fat and calories against your target. If the rice was smaller, type “a quarter cup of rice” in Fix it and the meal is analyzed again. Its calorie estimates have outside measurement behind them: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study recorded ±1.1% mean calorie error across 180 weighed meals, the lowest of the six apps it tested, and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced the result on 231 meals. Both are calorie averages, not a per-meal or carb guarantee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where this comes from

Every page below was read on 16 October 2026. PlateLens is independent of every other app on this page.

• US App Store listings (country=us) for prices, in-app purchases and devices: Carb Manager, Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, Senza, Lose It!, SNAQ and PlateLens. Android availability from each app’s Google Play listing, including Senza on Google Play.
• Carb Manager: Basic and Premium; help pages on total, net or diabetes carbs, barcodes and pictures, voice logging, sources of food data, Premium and the mobile apps.
• Cronometer: Gold, free features, tracking carbohydrates, custom diet tracking, photo and voice logging and its update log.
• MyFitnessPal: Premium, net carbs, Free and Premium compared, barcode scanner and Premium features.
• Senza: senza.us, its FAQ and keto meal plans.
• Lose It!: help pages on net carbs, nutrient goals, macronutrient calculation, nutrition strategies, Snap It, logging food, the barcode scanner, membership tiers and pricing and Premium.
• Carbohydrate figures: FDA, Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts labels and how to understand and use the Nutrition Facts label; National Academies, Dietary Reference Intakes for macronutrients; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Nutrition Source on the ketogenic diet; American Diabetes Association, making sense of food labels.
• Calorie accuracy: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s six-app validation study (published 8 April 2026) and the Foodvision Bench leaderboard.