Best Macro Tracker Apps (2026–2027): Free and Paid, Compared

A macro tracker is only as accurate as the portions it logs, because protein, carbs and fat all scale with the same grams of food: log 150 g of cooked rice as 100 g and its carbs, protein and calories all come out a third low. Past that, three things separate the apps: whether gram targets for each macro are free, how fast a meal goes in, and whether your targets keep up with your weigh-ins. Outside testers have measured how close tracking apps’ calories land on weighed meals: in the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study of 180 of them, which no app paid for or supported, PlateLens had the lowest mean calorie error of six apps, ±1.1% from a photo, and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced the result; both are aggregate calorie measures, not a per-meal or macro guarantee. Our picks: PlateLens is best overall, with an adaptive calorie target and protein, carbs and fat logged from a photo or a sentence within daily allowances, on a free plan that never expires; MacroFactor is best for paid weekly macro coaching, Cronometer for tracking vitamins and minerals in detail, MyFitnessPal for searching a very large food database, Carb Manager for keto and net carbs, MacrosFirst for free per-meal macro goals and Lose It! for a simple calorie budget.

Calories per gram

Protein 4, carbs 4, fat 9

Protein if you train

1.4–2.0 g per kg a day (ISSN)

Weekly macro coaching

MacroFactor: $71.99 a year, no free plan

PlateLens

Macros from a photo; adaptive target free forever

The apps side by side

“Free plan” is what you keep without paying. Trials: MacroFactor 7 days, MyFitnessPal 7 days for first-time Premium subscribers and PlateLens 3 days for new users; Cronometer and Carb Manager publish none on their pricing pages, and Lose It! and MacrosFirst mention one without its length. Yearly, PlateLens PRO costs $34.99, Carb Manager and Lose It! $39.99, Cronometer Gold $59.99, MacroFactor $71.99 and MyFitnessPal Premium $79.99; MacrosFirst lists $6.67 a month billed annually. Store prices vary by country and promotion, so check before you subscribe.

Which app fits which need

PlateLens: best overall, macros from the finished plate

PlateLens starts where most macro errors start, at the portion. Photograph the plate, say what you ate or type it, such as “two chicken thighs, a cup of rice and broccoli roasted in olive oil”, or scan a barcode, and it estimates each food and its grams before logging protein, carbs and fat. Fix it takes corrections in ordinary words (“half the rice”), and a weight you measured rescales the whole meal, macros included. Food data comes from USDA FoodData Central, NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix, plus 45,000+ restaurant menu items from 380+ chains, and a meal logs in about 2.1 seconds on average.

In Daily Targets, changing your calories adjusts protein, carbs and fat together in about the same proportions, and you can still set any macro in grams. With Add burned calories to goal and Adjust carbs and fat for activity turned on, a training day’s burned calories go to carbs and fat while protein stays fixed; the activity-adjusted targets guide explains the modes. On the free plan, PlateLens also learns your expenditure every week from your meals and weigh-ins, says why it changed, and every 14 days suggests new targets that you choose to apply. PRO, at $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month with a 3-day trial for new users, raises the daily AI allowances and adds detailed nutrient views, such as vitamins, minerals, net carbs and fiber, plus nutrition reports. It runs on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and the web.

Why it ranks first: in the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered study of 180 weighed meals, PlateLens had the lowest mean calorie error of six apps, ±1.1% in photo mode and 3.5% with the meal typed in, and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced the result on 231 meals. Those are aggregate calorie results, not a per-meal or macro guarantee, but the portion that sets the calories also sets the protein, carbs and fat.

MacroFactor: paid weekly macro coaching

MacroFactor calls itself “a smart macro tracker and nutrition coach”. Its macro programs run in coached, collaborative or manual mode with dynamic weekly adjustments drawn from your intake and weight changes, with low-carb, keto, carb-focused and balanced plans. You log by AI photo or description, speech-to-text, label or barcode scanner, or a recipe imported from a URL. MacroFactor says there isn’t, and will never be, a free version: after a 7-day trial it costs $11.99 a month, $47.99 for six months or $71.99 a year, or $89.99 a year with MacroFactor Workouts, the lifting app it launched in January 2026. It runs on iPhone and Android, and a web version is planned. Best for lifters who want an algorithm to move their macros every week and are happy to pay. Its mean calorie error in the Dietary Assessment Initiative study was 4.8%.

Cronometer: micronutrient detail on a curated database

Cronometer’s free Basic plan logs food, exercise and biometrics, sets custom macro and micronutrient targets, scans barcodes and charts a 7-day window, all on what it calls “a database of over 1M lab-analyzed or verified foods”. Gold, at $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year, adds the Macro Scheduler (“Set different macro targets for each day of the week”), Photo Log and Voice Log, a fasting timer, charts over any time frame, the AI Crono Coach and ad-free tracking; a 2026 update has photo logging suggest easy-to-miss extras such as “oil used in cooking”. It runs on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and the web. Best for people who weigh their food and want vitamins and minerals in detail. Its mean calorie error in the study was 6.8%.

MyFitnessPal: a very large food database, custom macros in Premium

MyFitnessPal’s homepage counts 20.5 million foods, which free members search from the app’s home screen. Premium, at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year with a 7-day trial for first-time subscribers, adds Macro Tracking with Custom Goals, in grams or percentages and different for each day of the week, plus Barcode Scan and Meal Scan, Voice Log, Net Carbs Mode, intermittent fasting and ad-free logging; its AI Coach, announced in June 2026, comes with Premium and Premium+. In March 2026 MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI, which still runs as a separate app. It is on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and Wear OS. Best for people who search for most of what they eat; Is MyFitnessPal free? details its free plan. Its mean calorie error in the study was 11.2%.

Carb Manager: keto, low-carb and net carbs

Carb Manager bills itself as “The #1 Low-Carb and Keto Diet App”. Its free version is, in its own words, a “full-featured macros tracker (including net carbs!), with macros goals”, and barcode scanning and net-carb tracking stay free. Premium, at $8.49 a month or $39.99 a year, adds carb and macro cycling, a fasting timer, photo and voice logging, more than 360,000 recipes with meal plans, and sync with Apple Health, Google Health Connect, Garmin, Fitbit and Keto Mojo. It runs on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and the web. Best for keto and low-carb eaters who count net carbs; the carb counter app comparison goes deeper.

MacrosFirst: free per-meal macro goals

MacrosFirst (“Macro tracking. Simplified.”) keeps custom daily macro goals in grams, calorie and macro goals for each meal, meal-by-meal totals and barcode scanning free. Premium, at $6.67 a month billed annually, adds goals for specific days, AI search by voice, text or a photo of your plate, net carbs, trend charts, custom micronutrient targets, recipe import, notes and meal-history export. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Android. Best for people who plan protein, carbs and fat meal by meal and want that for free.

Lose It!: a simple calorie budget

Per its US App Store listing, Lose It! keeps calorie tracking for meals and exercise, a weight-loss plan and community support free. Premium, at $39.99 a year, adds Advanced Tracking of protein, carbs, fat and sugar, meal targets, the barcode scanner, photo meal logging, AI voice logging, intermittent fasting and fitness-app syncs. The listing covers iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac. Best for a daily calorie budget for weight loss, with macros added when you upgrade; the weight loss app comparison looks at that goal. Its mean calorie error in the study was 9.4%.

How to choose

• You want protein, carbs and fat from what is actually on your plate, without weighing every meal or paying: PlateLens.
• You lift and want more carbs and fat on training days: PlateLens adds a training day’s burned calories to carbs and fat while protein stays fixed; Cronometer Gold and MyFitnessPal Premium let you set a different macro target for each weekday instead.
• You want an algorithm to rewrite your macros every week and you will pay for it: MacroFactor.
• You weigh everything and track vitamins and minerals closely: Cronometer.
• Most of what you eat comes in packages you search by name: MyFitnessPal, with Premium for custom macro goals.
• You eat keto or low-carb: Carb Manager.
• You plan each meal’s macros in grams: MacrosFirst.
• You want a calorie budget first and macros later: Lose It!

New to all of this? The macro tracking guide for beginners starts from zero, and tracking macros without measuring shows how far a photo or a sentence gets you.

Grams, calories and protein: the numbers behind a macro target

Each macro converts to energy at a fixed rate. US nutrition labels use 4 calories per gram for protein, 4 for carbohydrate and 9 for fat, the same factors behind PlateLens’s macro check. For adults, the National Academies’ Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges put carbohydrate at 45–65% of energy, fat at 20–35% and protein at 10–35%.

Protein is the macro lifters usually set first. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, give a protein target of 1.2–1.6 g per kilogram of body weight a day, and the International Society of Sports Nutrition’s position stand calls 1.4–2.0 g/kg a day sufficient for most people who exercise, with about 0.25 g/kg, or 20–40 g, per meal. For an 80 kg lifter at 1.6 g/kg, that is 128 g of protein, or 512 kcal. On a 2,600 kcal day with fat at 25% (650 kcal, about 72 g), carbs get the remaining 1,438 kcal, about 360 g: roughly 20% protein, 25% fat and 55% carbs, inside all three ranges. How many grams of protein a day has a table by body weight.

Labels carry slack as well. US rules let a label’s protein run up to 20% below the stated value and its calories and fat up to 20% above it before the label is out of compliance, so even a scanned, weighed meal is an estimate. The bigger swing is usually the portion, because the same grams decide calories, protein, carbs and fat at once.

PlateLens: macros that follow the plate and your calories

Log 150 g of rice as 100 g and its carbs, protein and calories all come out a third low, and a label can sit 20% off before it breaks the rules. PlateLens works from the plate itself: a photo, or a sentence such as “two eggs, 150 g of Greek yogurt and a banana”, becomes protein, carbs and fat counted against gram targets that move with your calorie goal, and a correction in plain words, “the yogurt was 250 g”, updates them through Fix it. On training days, Adjust carbs and fat for activity adds the burned calories to carbs and fat while protein holds steady. How close those estimates land has been measured outside the app: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered validation study recorded a ±1.1% mean calorie error across 180 weighed meals, and the open-source Foodvision Bench has also reproduced the result on 231 meals on its public GitHub leaderboard; that is aggregate calorie accuracy, not a per-meal or macro 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.

• MacroFactor: product page and FAQ, press kit, prices, subscriptions and bundles, AI food logging, 2026 annual report and January 2026 update.
• Cronometer: Gold and Basic, free nutrition tracking app and changelog.
• MyFitnessPal: Premium, homepage, the AI Coach announcement (10 June 2026) and the Cal AI acquisition (2 March 2026).
• Carb Manager: homepage, Premium, Subscribe to Carb Manager Premium (updated 10 July 2026) and its comparison page for prices.
• MacrosFirst: homepage, What is MacrosFirst Premium? and its 2025 year in review.
• US App Store listings: MacroFactor, Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, Carb Manager, Lose It! (the source of every Lose It! fact on this page) and MacrosFirst.
• PlateLens: pricing, activity-adjusted targets, how we calculate your expenditure and portions and corrections.
• Accuracy: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s six-app validation study (published 8 April 2026) and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub.
• Nutrition: 4, 4 and 9 calories per gram and label tolerances, 21 CFR 101.9; Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges, National Academies, Rethinking the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range for the 21st Century (2024), Table 3-1; protein target, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030; protein and exercise, Jäger et al., International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand (2017).
• The examples are computed: 100 ÷ 150 = two thirds, so a third low; 80 kg × 1.6 g/kg = 128 g; 128 × 4 = 512 kcal; 25% of 2,600 = 650 kcal, ÷ 9 = 72 g of fat; 2,600 − 512 − 650 = 1,438 kcal, ÷ 4 = 360 g of carbs.