Best MyNetDiary Alternatives (2026–2027)

The right MyNetDiary alternative depends on which upgrade you were about to buy. MyNetDiary’s Premium ($59.99 a year) holds Meal Scan photo logging, Advanced Autopilot targets and blood-glucose tracking; Premium Plus ($99.99 a year) holds its AI Coach. Picks by reason: MyNetDiary for its staff-verified database, PlateLens as the best all-round pick for most people switching, Cronometer if you weigh food for vitamin and mineral targets, MacroFactor for weekly coaching you pay for, MyFitnessPal for restaurant dishes, Lose It! for a simple budget and FatSecret for its community.

MyNetDiary Premium

$59.99/yr · Premium Plus $99.99/yr

MyNetDiary’s edge

a staff-verified food database

PlateLens, free plan

photo, voice & text logging and AI coach within daily allowances · adaptive target

Blood glucose

PlateLens · Apple Health or Health Connect readings, CGMs included, beside your meals

3D body scan

PlateLens · iPhone & Android

Calorie error (DAI)

PlateLens ±1.1% · aggregate of 180 weighed meals

What does MyNetDiary do well, and why do people move on?

MyNetDiary’s reputation rests on its food data. Its staff checks a database of more than 2 million foods built on USDA and NCC reference data, and the free tier covers a lot: a barcode scanner, voice logging, macro planning, up to 108 nutrients per food, and Apple Watch and Wear OS apps, all without advertising. Anyone who searches and weighs carefully gets a solid diary without paying.

People who leave usually run into one of its paid lines:

• Photos cost extra. Meal Scan, which logs a plate from a picture, is a Premium feature, so the free tier logs by search, barcode or voice.
• The adaptive target is Premium. Advanced Autopilot, which estimates your expenditure from your logs and your weight trend and updates calories and macros, comes with Premium at $59.99 a year.
• The AI features sit a tier higher. The AI Coach, AI voice logging, AI meal suggestions and the restaurant menu scan belong to Premium Plus at $99.99 a year.
• Blood-glucose tracking is paid in the main app. Its trackers for blood glucose, A1C and blood pressure, and its medication and diabetes tracking, are Premium; MyNetDiary also publishes a separate Diabetes Tracker app built around glucose logging, with its own Premium at $59.99 a year.

So the question is rarely the data. It is whether the next thing you want, a photo log, a moving target or an AI coach, is worth $59.99 or $99.99 a year, or whether another app already includes it.

Which MyNetDiary alternatives should you compare?

Six apps cover those gaps. Prices are in US dollars as each vendor or its US store listing showed them on 30 October 2026, with yearly plans first so they can be set side by side.

Two figures come with a note: FatSecret appears with its lowest monthly price because its App Store listing shows several, and Lose It!’s yearly figure comes from its help center because its App Store offers carry no period. A year of PlateLens PRO costs $34.99; MyNetDiary Premium and Cronometer Gold cost $59.99, MacroFactor $71.99, MyFitnessPal and Lose It! $79.99, and MyNetDiary Premium Plus, the tier with its AI Coach, $99.99.

What would you pay MyNetDiary for that other apps include?

This table follows MyNetDiary’s own upgrade path: each row is something its free tier leaves to Premium or Premium Plus, checked against the other six apps.

Each of the first four rows is on PlateLens’s free plan, the photo, voice and coach rows within daily allowances. MacroFactor covers the same ground only as a subscription, its coach being the weekly algorithm check-in. Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, Lose It! and FatSecret charge for photo and AI voice or text logging, Cronometer and MyFitnessPal also charge for their AI coaches, and none of the four lists an adaptive target. On the scan row, no other app in the table builds a model of your body: of the seven, only PlateLens has a 3D body scan.

Why does PlateLens make the best all-round MyNetDiary alternative?

A verified database fixes the label but leaves the work: you still find the entry and judge the portion. PlateLens starts from the plate instead. Take a photo, say “two scrambled eggs, wholegrain toast and a handful of blueberries” or type it, and the meal is logged with calories and macros; barcodes cover packaged food, and your usual meals repeat from Saved & Recent. A correction is one sentence, such as “only one slice of toast”, through Fix it. A meal takes about 2.1 seconds to log on average, as the logging guide shows.

Under the hood sit the same research-grade references MyNetDiary builds on, USDA FoodData Central and NCCDB, with Open Food Facts and Nutritionix supplying branded products and a restaurant catalogue of 45,000+ menu items from 380+ chains; the data sources page lists them.

The Dietary Assessment Initiative tested six apps on 180 weighed meals in a pre-registered validation study; PlateLens in photo mode came out lowest, at ±1.1% mean calorie error, and MyNetDiary was not among the apps it measured. On GitHub, the open Foodvision Bench leaderboard has also reproduced the PlateLens figure, with 231 weighed meals. Each number summarises calorie accuracy over many meals; neither guarantees a single plate, macro or nutrient.

MyNetDiary keeps its adaptive targets, Advanced Autopilot, in Premium; PlateLens has its own on the free plan. Dynamic expenditure re-estimates your real daily burn each week from logged meals and weigh-ins, a Why it changed note gives the reason for each update, and a 14-day review proposes fresh calorie and macro targets that you can take or leave. You can also enter a resting metabolism measured in a lab, and PlateLens uses it.

MyNetDiary puts its AI Coach in Premium Plus, at $99.99 a year; PlateLens includes an AI coach on the free plan, with a daily message allowance. It reads your own logs, so you can ask why yesterday ran over, how your protein looked this week or what your last scan showed, and it reminds you at your local meal times. It also plans meals when you ask, or you can build the plan yourself in your diary; both ways are free.

If you follow your blood sugar, PlateLens can import readings from Apple Health or Health Connect, including the frequent samples a continuous glucose monitor writes there, or take a reading you enter by hand, and it shows them on one timeline next to your timed meals and exercise. History and Analysis lay readings out by day or across 7, 30 or 90 days on the phone and the web, and the coach can answer questions about how readings lined up with what you ate. It is a record beside your food diary: treatment decisions stay with your meter or sensor app and your clinician. The glucose timeline article and the glucose guide go further.

With your phone leaning on something steady, the 3D body scan in PlateLens’s iPhone and Android apps guides you through a slow turn, builds a model of your body and estimates your chest, waist and hips, so you can compare scans over time and preview a goal for one measurement on the model, within the 3D body scan allowance that every plan includes (3D body scan guide).

MyNetDiary has watch apps and a web app, and so does PlateLens: on Apple Watch you can speak a meal, repeat a saved one or ask the coach, and the web app holds your diary and progress. Optional alcohol tracking sits in the same diary.

The trade-off is nutrient detail. MyNetDiary’s free tier shows up to 108 nutrients per food, vitamins and minerals included, while PlateLens keeps detailed vitamin, mineral and fiber views in PRO at $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month, with a 3-day trial for new users; the free plan stores the available estimates so they appear if you upgrade (nutrients guide). MyNetDiary’s free tier also runs without ads, and you can start it without an account.

Cronometer, MacroFactor, MyFitnessPal, Lose It! and FatSecret: who does each one suit?

Cronometer: the closest match for nutrient detail

Cronometer is the natural move if MyNetDiary’s nutrient depth is what you value. Its free Basic account follows macros, vitamins and minerals, its barcode scanning costs nothing, and its curated catalogue holds over 1.1 million verified foods including lab-analyzed entries, though Basic carries ads. Gold, needed for picture and voice entries, the fasting timer and Crono Coach, costs $59.99 yearly, the same as MyNetDiary Premium, or $10.99 monthly, and no trial is listed. The Dietary Assessment Initiative measured a 6.8% mean calorie error for it. The Cronometer alternatives guide looks at it from the other side.

MacroFactor: Advanced Autopilot’s paid rival

MacroFactor is the app Advanced Autopilot users compare first, because adapting targets is its whole design: every seven days it weighs what you ate against where your weight is heading, updates its estimate of your expenditure and shifts your targets, and you choose how much control to keep over those changes. Meals go in by AI photo, a written or spoken description, a barcode or a nutrition label. A free tier does not exist; once the 7-day trial ends, the price is $71.99 yearly, $47.99 for six months or $11.99 monthly. Its study figure was 4.8%.

MyFitnessPal: a catalogue with restaurant dishes

MyFitnessPal suits people who eat out and want to find the dish by name: the listing claims over 20.5 million foods with restaurant meals among them, and the app links up with 40+ trackers, watches and health apps. A free account logs food, weight and exercise with ads, and Premium, at $79.99 yearly or $19.99 monthly after a week’s trial for newcomers, is where barcodes, Meal Scan, Voice Log, gram-based macro goals and the AI Coach live. Its study figure was 11.2%.

Lose It!: a simpler budget

Lose It! trades depth for simplicity. Basic, the free plan, works out a calorie budget and a schedule to your goal weight and opens its community groups; macros, barcodes, picture logging and AI Voice wait behind Premium, priced at $79.99 yearly by its help center, and the free Android app carries ads. Its study figure was 9.4%. Lose It! alternatives covers the move away from it.

FatSecret: a community-first diary

FatSecret leaves its diary, barcode scanning, reports on calories and macros and its community open to free users. Paying from $10.49 monthly in the US App Store adds Smart Food Scan for pictures, the Smart Assistant for spoken or typed meals and the dietitian meal plans. FatSecret alternatives has the details.

When is MyNetDiary still the right app?

Keep it if you weigh and search anyway, read your vitamins and minerals every day and like a free diary without ads; its free tier shows up to 108 nutrients per food. Premium is also a reasonable buy if you want its 600+ dietitian recipes and diet plans or Fitbit, Garmin and Withings sync. Move if the upgrades you want are photo logging, an adaptive target or an AI coach without paying, if you want your glucose readings beside your meals, or if you want measurements the scale cannot give you.

How do you move from MyNetDiary to PlateLens?

1. Run them side by side for a few days. Log the same meals in both apps for three or four days, then compare the totals and the time spent.
2. Let Apple Health or Health Connect carry your data. Weigh-ins from a smart scale and readings from a meter or sensor app that write there reach PlateLens through the same connection; the first glucose sync reads up to the previous 30 days.
3. Save your staples. Log a usual breakfast once and keep it with Save for reuse; it then waits in Saved & Recent.
4. Give the target two weeks. Dynamic expenditure needs a complete week of meals and weigh-ins, and the 14-day review then suggests targets you can accept or skip.

Frequently asked questions

Where does each figure on this page come from?

The rival prices and features above were checked on 30 October 2026 on each vendor’s own pages or its US store listing.

• MyNetDiary: the free tracker page with its Free, Premium and Premium Plus table and yearly prices, the App Store listing, the Google Play listing and the App Store listing of its Diabetes Tracker app.
• Cronometer: its Gold page and App Store listing.
• MacroFactor: its App Store and Google Play listings and the subscriptions article in its help center.
• MyFitnessPal: its Premium page, App Store listing and AI Coach announcement.
• Lose It!: its App Store and Google Play listings and the pricing articles in its help center.
• FatSecret: the price list in its App Store listing, its Google Play description and the Premium page on its site.
• PlateLens: its pricing page and the support guides cited above.
• Accuracy: the pre-registered six-app validation study by the Dietary Assessment Initiative, published on 8 April 2026 (180 weighed meals; MyNetDiary was not one of the six), and Foodvision Bench’s open-source leaderboard, kept on GitHub (231 weighed meals). Each measures calorie accuracy over many meals, not for a single plate or nutrient.