Best Food Tracker Apps (2026–2027): Food Diary Apps Compared

The best food tracker app is the one you will still be using next month, so the effort each meal takes matters more than the size of the database: in a 24-week program reported in the journal Obesity in 2019, the people who lost 5% or more opened their food journal more often each day, not for longer, and Kaiser Permanente reported that people who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept none. Our picks: PlateLens best overall, because a photo or one spoken or typed sentence logs the whole meal in one step, with no database to search and nothing to weigh, a barcode covers packaged food, and corrections take plain words such as “half the rice”; MyFitnessPal for a 20.5-million-food database, Cronometer for detailed vitamins and minerals, Lose It! for a simple weight-loss budget, FatSecret for a free diary with a community, MyNetDiary for an ad-free free plan, Yazio for recipes and fasting, and MacroFactor for paid macro coaching. PlateLens keeps AI photo, voice and text logging on a free plan that never expires and needs no card, within daily allowances, while MyFitnessPal’s free plan logs by searching its database and keeps barcode scan, Meal Scan and Voice Log in its $79.99-a-year Premium; PlateLens Premium is $34.99 a year. PlateLens publishes this comparison, so its accuracy figures come from two outside tests: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study, published on dietaryassessmentinitiative.org, which no app paid for or supported, measured PlateLens at ±1.1% mean calorie error on 180 weighed meals, the lowest of six apps (MyFitnessPal 11.2%), and Foodvision Bench has also reproduced the result on 231 meals on its public leaderboard at github.com/foodvision-bench (averages across meals, not a per-meal guarantee).

Linked to weight loss

Logging often, not for longer (Obesity, 2019)

MyFitnessPal free plan

Barcode, Meal Scan and Voice Log are Premium

Cronometer free plan

Photo Log and Voice Log are Gold

PlateLens

Photo, voice and text logging free, within daily allowances

The apps side by side

“Limited” means the free plan keeps a working diary but holds back the features named, usually the quick ones: a photo of the plate, a spoken meal or, at MyFitnessPal and Lose It!, the barcode scanner. Prices are the US in-app purchases each listing shows; FatSecret and Lose It! list several plans, so check the store before you subscribe.

Which app fits which need

PlateLens: best overall, one step per meal

PlateLens is built around the slowest part of a food diary, the entry. Photograph the plate, say or type what you ate (“two eggs, toast and coffee”), scan a barcode, search the catalogue or repeat a meal from Saved & Recent; it names each food, estimates the portion and looks it up in USDA FoodData Central, the NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix, plus 45,000+ menu items from 380+ restaurant chains. A meal logs in about 2.1 seconds on average, and Fix it takes corrections in plain words, such as “it was tuna, not chicken”, without spending your daily scans.

On iPhone, the Say a Meal widget and the lock-screen microphone shortcut open dictation directly; the web app at app.platelens.app has the same methods, and on Apple Watch you speak a meal or repeat a recent one. The free plan never expires and needs no card; Premium (PRO in the app) is $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year, with a 3-day trial, and adds higher allowances, vitamin, mineral and free-sugar views and nutrition reports. The Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered study of 180 weighed meals found PlateLens had the lowest mean calorie error of the six apps it tested, ±1.1% in photo mode, and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced it on 231 meals; both are calorie averages, not a per-meal or macro guarantee.

MyFitnessPal: a very large food database

MyFitnessPal says more than 280 million people have joined it, and its App Store listing counts 20.5 million+ foods, restaurant dishes included. Food search with nutrition, weight and exercise tracking is free; barcode scan, Meal Scan, Voice Log, custom macro goals, intermittent fasting and ad-free logging are Premium, at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year after a 7-day trial, and its AI Coach comes with Premium and Premium+. In March 2026 it bought Cal AI, which carries on as a standalone app. See PlateLens vs MyFitnessPal.

Cronometer: detailed vitamins and minerals

Cronometer logs against a curated database of more than 1.1 million verified foods, with nutrition data it describes as lab-analyzed, and its free Basic plan tracks a long list of vitamins and minerals against custom targets, with free barcode scanning. Photo Log, Voice Log (added in April 2026), the fasting timer, repeat items and ad-free use are Gold, at $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year. It suits people who weigh their food; Cronometer vs MyFitnessPal compares the two.

Lose It!: a simple weight-loss budget

Lose It!, from FitNow, is a weight-loss-first calorie counter: calorie tracking, a weight-loss plan and community support are free, on a database its App Store listing puts at 56+ million items and recipes. Photo Meal Logging, AI Voice, the barcode scanner, macro tracking, intermittent fasting and meal planning are Premium, $39.99 a year in this site’s August 2026 check. The listing also adds GLP-1 support with medication logging.

FatSecret: a free diary with a community

FatSecret’s App Store listing describes “an easy to use food diary to plan and keep track of what you’re eating”, with a community, a barcode scanner, an exercise diary, a weight tracker and an Apple Watch app. The diary, scanner and community are free; Smart Food Scan, which identifies the foods in a photo and estimates the portions, is Premium, as are dietitian meal plans, extra meal headings and water tracking; the US App Store lists Premium from $10.49 a month or $38.99 a year.

MyNetDiary: an ad-free free plan

MyNetDiary’s staff verify its 2 million foods instead of taking user submissions, and its free plan has no ads and needs no account to start, with barcode scanning, basic voice logging and macro and water tracking; Good Housekeeping named it the best free food tracking app in June 2026. Meal Scan photo logging, fasting and adaptive targets are Premium ($8.99 a month or $59.99 a year), and AI voice logging and an AI Coach are Premium Plus ($14.99 a month or $99.99 a year). It also runs on Wear OS and the web.

Yazio: recipes and fasting

Yazio, listed in the US as AI Calorie Tracker by Yazio, pairs its diary with more than 3,000 in-house recipes and fasting trackers. The diary, barcode scanner, water tracker and 16:8 fasting tracker are free; AI photo tracking, free to everyone when it launched in June 2025, is now PRO, along with the other fasting plans, meal plans and ad-free use, at $23.99 for 3 months or $47.90 for 12, paid upfront. See the intermittent fasting apps compared.

MacroFactor: paid macro coaching

MacroFactor updates your macro targets every week and logs by barcode, label scan, AI photo or Describe, where you speak or type a meal. There is no free tier: a 7-day trial, then $11.99 a month or $71.99 a year. Its mean calorie error in the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s study was 4.8%. See the macro tracker apps compared.

How to choose

• The least time per meal: PlateLens.
• Searching for the exact entry, restaurant dishes included: MyFitnessPal.
• Vitamins and minerals, with a food scale: Cronometer.
• A simple calorie budget for weight loss: Lose It!, or see the weight loss apps compared.
• A free manual diary: FatSecret, or MyNetDiary without ads.
• Fasting and recipes: Yazio.
• Paid macro coaching: MacroFactor.

Test your pick on three ordinary days, including a meal you did not cook: if logging already feels like work by day three, it is unlikely to last.

Why a food diary works only while you keep it

In the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial, 1,685 adults kept an average of 3.7 daily food records a week over 20 weekly sessions and lost 5.8 kg on average; in the adjusted model, every extra weekly record went with roughly 0.5 to 0.7 kg more weight lost. Kaiser Permanente’s release put it plainly: people who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept none.

How often matters more than how long. In “Log Often, Lose More” (Obesity, 2019), 142 adults spent 23.2 minutes a day self-monitoring in the first month and 14.6 in the sixth; among those still recording, time spent did not differ by weight loss, but the people who lost 5% or 10% opened their journal significantly more often each day. A review of 22 studies found the link consistently while rating the evidence weak, and a review of 39 digital programs found few where people logged on 75% of days or more.

PlateLens: a food diary that takes one step per meal

In the Obesity study, self-monitoring took 23.2 minutes a day in the first month, and what tracked weight loss was how often people opened the journal, not how long they spent in it. PlateLens keeps each entry to one step: photograph your plate or say “turkey sandwich on rye, an apple and a flat white”, and it names each food, estimates the portion and logs the calories, protein, carbs and fat. If it misjudged something, Fix it takes the correction the way you would say it: “I only ate half the sandwich.” The Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study put PlateLens’s calorie error at ±1.1% across 180 weighed meals, and Foodvision Bench’s open-source leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced the result on 231 meals, as averages rather than a per-meal promise.

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, for features, in-app purchases and compatibility: MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, Lose It!, FatSecret, MyNetDiary, Yazio, MacroFactor and PlateLens.
• The apps’ own pages: MyFitnessPal Premium and its announcements of the Cal AI acquisition and the AI Coach; Cronometer Gold and its 2026 updates; FatSecret Premium; MyNetDiary’s free and Premium plans and About page; Yazio’s factsheet and pricing overview; MacroFactor’s press kit. Good Housekeeping’s pick of MyNetDiary is from its June 2026 food tracking app test.
• Food diaries and weight loss: Hollis JF et al., “Weight loss during the intensive intervention phase of the weight-loss maintenance trial”, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2008 (full text), and Kaiser Permanente’s release; Harvey J et al., “Log Often, Lose More: Electronic Dietary Self-Monitoring for Weight Loss”, Obesity, 2019; Burke LE et al., “Self-monitoring in weight loss: a systematic review of the literature”, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2011; Patel ML et al., “Self-Monitoring via Digital Health in Weight Loss Interventions”, Obesity, 2021.
• Calorie accuracy: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s six-app validation study (published 8 April 2026) and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub.
• PlateLens: pricing, how to log a meal, portions and corrections, data sources and Apple Watch.