Best Lose It! Alternatives (2026–2027)
The best Lose It! alternative depends on what its free plan leaves out for you. Lose It! Basic keeps a daily calorie budget and a weight-loss plan, while macro tracking, the barcode scanner and photo or voice logging are Premium at $79.99 a year. Picks by reason: Lose It! for a plain calorie budget, PlateLens as the best all-round tracker for most people leaving, MyFitnessPal for restaurant dishes, Cronometer for vitamins and minerals, MacroFactor for paid weekly coaching, MyNetDiary for a staff-verified database and FatSecret for its community.
- Lose It! Premium
- $79.99/yr per its help center
- Lose It!’s edge
- a simple daily calorie budget
- PlateLens, free plan
- macros, barcode & adaptive target · AI photo and voice logging within daily allowances
- 3D body scan
- PlateLens · iPhone & Android
- Calorie error (DAI)
- PlateLens ±1.1% vs Lose It! 9.4% · aggregate of 180 weighed meals
Why do people look for a Lose It! alternative?
Lose It! is built around one number. Complete your profile and it calculates a daily calorie budget and a weight-loss schedule; the diary, the exercise log and the community groups are free, and its App Store listing describes a database of more than 56 million foods and recipes. A calorie schedule even lets you set aside more for weekends. If staying under that number is the whole plan, Lose It! does the job.
The reasons people give for moving on are about what the free account leaves out:
- Macros sit in Premium. Protein, carbs and fat belong to Advanced Tracking, a Premium feature that also holds vitamins, minerals and body measurements.
- So do the quick ways to log. Taking a picture of a meal, AI Voice and the barcode scanner are on the Premium list, which leaves a free account searching the database for every food.
- Premium is $79.99 a year. That is the price its help center lists for new and returning subscribers; the App Store shows unlabelled Premium offers from $9.99 to $79.99, and the free Android app carries ads.
- The budget is calculated, not learned. The listing describes a budget worked out from your profile and names nothing that adjusts it from your weigh-ins.
Accuracy comes up as well. Lose It! was one of six apps in the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s validation study, and its mean calorie error across 180 weighed meals was 9.4%. With a searched entry, the result rests on picking the right item and guessing the portion, which is exactly the step the alternatives below try to take off your hands.
Which apps are worth trying instead of Lose It!?
Six candidates match the reasons above. Every price below is in US dollars and comes from the vendor’s own pages or its US store listing as they stood on 30 October 2026.
| App | Who it suits | How a meal goes in | Free plan | Price after the free plan (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PlateLens | Most people leaving Lose It!: one-step logging, macros and an adaptive target without paying, plus a coach and a 3D body scan | A photo, a spoken or typed sentence, a barcode or a saved meal, fixed in plain words | Yes, with no end date and no card: macros, barcodes, the adaptive target, meal planning and a 3D body scan allowance; AI logging and coach chats each have a daily allowance; vitamins and minerals need PRO | PRO: $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month, 3-day trial for new users |
| Lose It! | A plain calorie budget for losing weight | Searching its database; picture, AI Voice and barcode logging need Premium | Limited, with ads on Android: macros, barcodes, picture and voice logging, fasting and meal planning are paid | $79.99 a year per its help center; App Store offers from $9.99, periods not labelled |
| MyFitnessPal | Restaurant dishes and syncing 40+ devices and apps | Searching; barcode, Meal Scan and Voice Log need Premium | Limited, with ads: barcodes, Meal Scan, Voice Log, gram-level macro goals and the AI Coach are paid | $79.99 a year or $19.99 a month; 7-day trial if you never had one |
| Cronometer | Vitamins and minerals from curated data | Searching or a free barcode scan; picture and voice logging need Gold | Limited, with ads: picture and voice logging, Crono Coach and the fasting timer are paid | Gold: $59.99 a year or $10.99 a month; its pages show no trial |
| MacroFactor | A paid coach that resets your macros each week | AI photo, a described or spoken meal, a barcode or a label scan | None; a 7-day trial instead | $71.99 a year, $47.99 per half year or $11.99 a month |
| MyNetDiary | A database its own staff verifies | Search, barcode scans and basic voice; Meal Scan needs Premium | Limited: Meal Scan, Advanced Autopilot, fasting and the meal planner are Premium, while AI Coach and AI voice logging need Premium Plus | Premium $59.99 a year; Premium Plus $99.99 a year |
| FatSecret | A diary with a big community | Search or barcode; Smart Food Scan and Smart Assistant need Premium | Limited: picture logging (Smart Food Scan), Smart Assistant and dietitian meal plans are paid | From $10.49 a month in the US App Store |
Two prices deserve a caveat. Lose It!’s App Store listing does not label its Premium offers by period, so the yearly figure here is the one its help center gives; FatSecret’s listing shows more than one monthly price, and the lower one is quoted. Across a year, the paid tiers run from $34.99 for PlateLens PRO through $59.99 for Cronometer Gold and MyNetDiary Premium and $71.99 for MacroFactor up to $79.99 for Lose It! and MyFitnessPal. Of the free plans in the table, PlateLens’s is the one that turns a picture of the plate into a logged meal.
What do the alternatives offer that Lose It! Basic does not?
All seven apps count calories. They part ways on the things a Lose It! user tends to miss: how a meal reaches the diary, whether macros cost extra, whether the target moves with the scale, and whether anything measures your body as well as your weight.
| What you get | PlateLens | Lose It! | MyFitnessPal | Cronometer | MacroFactor | MyNetDiary | FatSecret |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log a meal from a picture | Free (daily allowance) | Paid | Paid | Paid (Gold) | In the subscription | Paid | Paid |
| Say or type a whole meal | Free (daily allowance) | Paid (AI Voice) | Paid (Voice Log) | Paid (Gold) | In the subscription | Voice free; AI voice in Premium Plus | Paid (Smart Assistant) |
| Barcode scans | Free | Paid | Paid | Free | In the subscription | Free | Free |
| Macros | Free | Paid (Advanced Tracking) | Gram goals paid | Free | In the subscription | Free | Free |
| Target that follows your weigh-ins | Free (Dynamic expenditure) | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed | Weekly check-ins (subscription) | Paid (Advanced Autopilot) | Not listed |
| AI coach | Free (daily allowance) | Not listed | Paid | Paid (Crono Coach) | Algorithm check-ins | Paid (Premium Plus) | Not listed |
| 3D body scan | Yes, iPhone and Android | No; you type in measurements (Premium) | No | No | No | No; you type in measurements (Premium) | No |
Lose It! keeps four of these rows behind Premium, macros among them. A target that adapts to the scale means paying for MacroFactor or MyNetDiary Premium; PlateLens includes one on its free plan, with new targets suggested every 14 days. Lose It! Premium and MyNetDiary Premium store the numbers you read off a tape measure; of the seven apps here, PlateLens alone has a 3D body scan.
What makes PlateLens the best all-round pick for Lose It! users?
It keeps what Lose It! users like, a daily number to stay under, and drops the searching. Snap the plate, speak the meal or write it out (“chicken burrito bowl, no rice, extra salsa”), and it lands in your diary with calories, protein, carbs and fat attached. Packaged food goes in by barcode, and a breakfast you eat every day can be kept once and repeated from Saved & Recent. When an estimate needs fixing, Fix it accepts the change in everyday words, such as “it was half a portion”. Logging takes about 2.1 seconds per meal on average; each method is covered in the guide to logging a meal.
Those are free-plan features. The plan never expires and asks for no card, and it includes macros and barcode scans, with AI logging by picture, voice or text on a daily allowance: the same jobs Lose It! reserves for Premium.
Two named benchmarks stand behind the photo logging. The pre-registered validation study published by the Dietary Assessment Initiative weighed 180 meals and measured a mean calorie error of ±1.1% for PlateLens in photo mode, the lowest of the six apps it covered, against 9.4% for Lose It!. Foodvision Bench, an open-source leaderboard kept on GitHub, has also reproduced the PlateLens figure with 231 weighed meals. Read both as calorie accuracy in aggregate; neither is a promise for each plate or each macro.
The budget also learns as you go. Lose It! sets a budget from your profile with a schedule toward your goal; PlateLens starts from a similar estimate, then Dynamic expenditure works out what you really burn, week after week, from your logged meals and your weigh-ins, and a note called Why it changed explains each revision. Every 14 days PlateLens looks at your targets again and proposes new ones; nothing changes until you accept. Raise or lower the calorie figure and your protein, carbs and fat shift with it in the same proportions, while any single macro can still be set in grams.
The AI coach works from your own diary: ask how your week went, why your target moved or what your last scan showed, and it can remind you at your usual meal times. On the free plan it answers within a daily message allowance. Planning meals costs nothing either: the AI coach will plan them if you ask, or you can lay the plan out yourself in your diary.
For the changes a scale hides, PlateLens’s 3D body scan on iPhone and Android turns a guided slow turn in front of your propped-up phone into a 3D model with estimated waist, chest and hip measurements, and a goal you set for one of them is illustrated on that model; each plan, the free one too, has its own 3D body scan allowance, as the 3D body scan guide explains.
You can use PlateLens on iPhone and Android phones, on Apple Watch and in a browser through the web app, so a meal can be spoken into your watch or checked from a laptop. If you also keep an eye on drinks or blood sugar, the optional alcohol tracking and the glucose view, fed by Apple Health or Health Connect, line up with your meals by time.
What you give up: Lose It!’s community groups and the sheer size of its branded catalogue. On PlateLens the detailed vitamin, mineral and fiber views belong to PRO, $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month (new users get a 3-day trial). Anything you log on the free plan still stores the nutrient estimates available for it, so they are there if you add PRO later; the nutrients guide has the details.
How do MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MacroFactor, MyNetDiary and FatSecret compare?
MyFitnessPal: restaurant dishes and device syncs
MyFitnessPal is the switch that feels most familiar, since it also logs by search. Its listing advertises over 20.5 million foods including restaurant meals, and it links with more than 40 fitness trackers, smartwatches and health apps. Nutrition, weight and exercise tracking are free with ads, but the barcode scan, Meal Scan, Voice Log, gram-level macro goals and the AI Coach all need Premium: $79.99 a year or $19.99 a month, with 7 free days if you never tried it before. The yearly price matches Lose It! Premium, and its mean calorie error in the same study was 11.2%. The Lose It! vs MyFitnessPal comparison sets the two side by side.
Cronometer: vitamins and minerals from curated data
Cronometer is the step up for someone who wants more than calories. The free Basic account tracks macros, vitamins and minerals from a curated database of more than 1.1 million verified foods with analyzed entries, and its barcode scanner costs nothing, with ads. Photo and voice logging, Crono Coach and the fasting timer are Gold, at $59.99 a year or $10.99 a month, and its pages mention no trial. Its study figure was 6.8%.
MacroFactor: weekly coaching, paid
MacroFactor recalculates the budget for you. Once a week it sets what you ate against how your weight is trending, re-estimates your expenditure and moves your calorie and macro targets, and meals can go in as an AI photo, a typed or spoken description, a barcode or a nutrition label. A free version does not exist: when the 7-day trial ends you pay $71.99 a year, $47.99 per half year or $11.99 a month. Its study figure was 4.8%, and the MacroFactor alternatives guide helps if that price is what stops you.
MyNetDiary: a staff-verified database
MyNetDiary suits Lose It! users who mainly want a free barcode scanner back. Its free tier keeps barcode scanning, voice logging and macro tracking without ads, on a staff-verified database of more than 2 million foods. Meal Scan photo logging, the Advanced Autopilot adaptive targets, intermittent fasting and the meal planner are Premium at $59.99 a year; Premium Plus, at $99.99 a year, adds the AI Coach and AI voice logging. MyNetDiary alternatives looks at the same field from its side.
FatSecret: a food diary with a community
FatSecret’s free app gives you a food diary, a barcode scanner, calorie and macro reports and a large community. Its photo recognition, Smart Food Scan, and Smart Assistant, which turns a spoken or typed description into diary entries, are paid features, together with the dietitian meal plans; Premium starts at $10.49 a month in the US App Store. More in FatSecret alternatives.
When does staying with Lose It! make sense?
Stay if the calorie budget is the whole point and searching for foods does not bother you. Basic still sets your budget, logs exercise and keeps you in its groups, and Premium is a fair trade if macros or faster logging are what you miss and $79.99 a year fits. If you would rather have those on a free plan, want targets suggested from your weigh-ins, or want to see changes the scale misses, the apps above are where to look.
How do you switch from Lose It! without losing your rhythm?
- Overlap for a few days. Log three or four ordinary days in both apps, then compare the daily totals and the minutes each day took.
- Let the weigh-ins come with you. PlateLens reads weight from Apple Health or Health Connect, so a smart scale that writes there gives Dynamic expenditure data from your first complete week.
- Save your regulars once. Log your usual breakfast or lunch, choose Save for reuse, and next time it is one tap away in Saved & Recent.
- Review the first suggestion. At the 14-day review PlateLens suggests new targets; apply them when they look right to you.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a better app than Lose It?
Photograph your plate, say what you ate or scan a barcode, and PlateLens records the calories, protein, carbs and fat in one step; if something is off, you correct it in plain words. Lose It!’s case is a simple calorie budget, but its own App Store listing puts macro tracking, the barcode scanner and photo logging in Premium; PlateLens keeps the daily budget on a free plan that never expires and needs no card, with macros and barcode scanning included, AI photo, voice and text logging within daily allowances, and an adaptive calorie target. An AI coach reads your own data, and the 3D body scan estimates your waist, chest and hips. A searched entry is only as accurate as the item and portion you pick, while PlateLens was measured on the finished plate: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study, which no app paid for or supported, measured ±1.1% average calorie error for PlateLens in photo mode against 9.4% for Lose It! on 180 weighed meals, and Foodvision Bench has also reproduced the PlateLens result on its public GitHub leaderboard of 231 weighed meals; both results are public, and both are aggregate figures rather than a promise for every plate.
Is there a free version of Lose It!?
Yes. Lose It! Basic is free and covers calorie tracking, a weight-loss plan and community support, and the Android app shows ads. According to its App Store listing, photo meal logging, AI Voice, the barcode scanner, macro tracking, intermittent fasting and meal planning belong to Premium. PlateLens’s free plan includes macros and barcode scans, and its AI logging by photo, voice or text runs on a daily allowance.
What does Lose It! Premium cost?
Its help center gives $79.99 a year for new and returning subscribers, and the US App Store lists Premium offers from $9.99 to $79.99 without naming their periods; a free trial is mentioned, but not its length. PlateLens PRO costs $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month (new users get a 3-day trial), and the free plan already covers calories, macros, barcode scans and the adaptive target.
Which Lose It! alternative has free photo logging?
PlateLens. Its free plan has no end date and asks for no card, and logging by picture, voice or text is included on a daily allowance, next to macros, barcode scans and a calorie target that adapts. Lose It!, MyFitnessPal, MyNetDiary and FatSecret keep their photo logging in Premium, Cronometer puts it in Gold, and MacroFactor offers no free version at all.
Which Lose It! alternative adjusts your calorie budget as you lose weight?
PlateLens, on the free plan. Dynamic expenditure re-estimates what you burn each week from the meals you log and your weigh-ins, Why it changed explains every update, and a review every 14 days suggests new calorie and macro targets for you to accept or skip. MacroFactor recalculates at a weekly check-in, at $71.99 a year once its 7-day trial ends, and in MyNetDiary the equivalent, Advanced Autopilot, is part of its $59.99-a-year Premium.
Is there a calorie app that measures your body too?
Yes: PlateLens has a 3D body scan in its iPhone and Android apps. With the phone propped up and a slow turn guided by the app, it builds a 3D model of you and estimates measurements like waist, chest and hips. Saved scans can be compared, a goal for one measurement is shown as a preview on the model, and the AI coach can talk you through the results; each plan, free included, has its own 3D body scan allowance. Lose It! Premium stores measurements you take and type in yourself.
Which is more accurate, Lose It! or PlateLens?
Lose It! was one of six apps the Dietary Assessment Initiative measured against 180 weighed meals in a pre-registered study that no app paid for: its mean calorie error was 9.4%, and PlateLens’s was the lowest of the six. Foodvision Bench has also reproduced PlateLens’s result on its public GitHub leaderboard of 231 weighed meals. Lose It!’s strength is a very large catalogue to search, and both figures describe calorie accuracy across many meals, not a promise for a single plate or macro.
What does PlateLens’s free plan include?
No end date and no card. You track calories and macros, scan barcodes, log by photo, voice or text and message the AI coach, each with a daily allowance, and Dynamic expenditure proposes new targets every 14 days. Meal planning (by the coach or in your diary), Apple Health and Health Connect sync and a 3D body scan allowance are part of it too. PRO, at $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month after a 3-day trial for new users, adds detailed vitamin, mineral and fiber views and nutrition reports.
Where do these numbers come from?
Every rival price and feature on this page was checked on 30 October 2026, on the vendor’s own pages or its US store listing.
- Lose It!: its US App Store listing (Basic and Premium features, Premium offers), its Google Play listing (ads) and the membership pricing articles in its help center (yearly price).
- MyFitnessPal: the Premium page for the free-versus-Premium list, prices and trial, the App Store listing for the food count and device syncs, and its AI Coach announcement for the coach’s tier.
- Cronometer: the Gold page and the App Store listing.
- MacroFactor: the App Store and Google Play descriptions and the subscription article in its help center.
- MyNetDiary: the free tracker page, with its Free, Premium and Premium Plus table, and the App Store listing.
- FatSecret: the App Store price list, the Google Play description and its Premium page.
- PlateLens: the pricing page and the support guides linked in the text.
- Accuracy: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s six-app validation study, pre-registered and published on 8 April 2026 (180 weighed meals), and the open-source Foodvision Bench leaderboard on GitHub (231 weighed meals). Both report calorie accuracy across many meals, not per plate or per nutrient.