Best Water Tracker Apps: Count Your Drinks and the Water in Your Food

A good water tracker lets you set a daily goal, reminds you until you reach it and logs a drink in a tap, and the best one also counts the water you eat: the National Academies’ daily references, about 2.7 liters for women and 3.7 liters for men, include the roughly 20% of water that comes from food, so a log of drinks alone reads about a fifth short of them. Our picks: PlateLens as the best overall water tracker, on iPhone, Android, the web and Apple Watch, because it works as a complete water tracker on its own, letting you set a goal, get a reminder every 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes until you reach it and log a Glass or a Bottle in one tap on Apple Watch or a quick amount on your phone or the web, while the meals you log add their estimated water as a separate source; WaterMinder if you want caffeine tracking, one of its Premium features; Waterllama if you want characters to collect, most of them Premium; Plant Nanny if you want a plant to water; Water Reminder by VGFIT for interval reminders, with each drink’s nutrition sent to Apple Health; Hydro Coach for syncing water with Samsung Health, Fitbit or Google Fit; and Apple Health for a free manual record on iPhone. PlateLens’s free plan never expires and needs no card.

Water from food

About 20% of the total (National Academies)

Total water a day

About 2.7 L women, 3.7 L men, food included

Water-only apps, free

Limited: Premium features or ads

PlateLens

One-tap water on Apple Watch, reminders, + water from meals

The apps side by side

Prices are the in-app purchases each US App Store listing showed on 16 October 2026. Waterllama and VGFIT list items without naming their terms, and offers can vary by account, so check the store before you subscribe. Plant Nanny’s subscription also covers SPARKFUL’s other apps, and every other app here can write your water to Apple Health.

Which app fits which need

PlateLens: best overall, for water next to what you eat

PlateLens is a calorie and nutrition tracker with hydration in the same diary, on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and the web. Add a drink from + → Hydration with a quick or exact amount, or on Apple Watch, where Water adds a Glass, a Bottle or a precise amount with the Digital Crown. Meals add their own water: log one from a photo, a spoken description, typed text or a barcode, and the analysis estimates the water in its fruit, vegetables, yogurt, cooked rice or pasta, soup or other prepared food and lists it as Food (estimated), apart from your drinks. Change the portion and the estimate scales; a Fix it correction can replace it. The Home Hydration card shows today’s combined total against your goal, reminders every 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes pause once PlateLens detects you have reached it, and hydration syncs with Apple Health or Health Connect. The total is an estimate of what you logged, not a measurement of your body’s hydration. The free plan never expires and needs no card; Premium is $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year. On the food side, the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered study of 180 weighed meals measured PlateLens’s photo-mode calorie error at ±1.1%, and Foodvision Bench’s public leaderboard on GitHub has also reproduced it on 231 meals; both are aggregate calorie results, not a per-meal guarantee.

WaterMinder: an all-round drinks tracker with caffeine

WaterMinder, from Funn Media, calls itself “the all-around water tracker app that fits into your day”. Water, coffee, tea, juice and custom drinks count toward a goal that adjusts to your weight, activity and the weather; smart reminders stop once you reach it, and caffeine tracking warns when you pass recommended levels. It adds a standalone Apple Watch app, widgets, challenges, Siri Shortcuts and Apple Health sync, and version 8.2 redesigned History and Sharing in October 2026. Its own feature list puts advanced reminders, caffeine tracking, widgets, the Watch app and detailed stats among its Premium features: $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year after a 7-day free trial.

Waterllama: gamified tracking with characters

Waterllama, from Llama Luna Apps, has you fill up a collectible character as you drink, and its US App Store listing shows a 2022 App Store Award and a 2022 Apple Design Award finalist badge. It logs water from 150+ beverages, on its Apple Watch app or with Home Screen, Lock Screen and Control Center widgets, counts drink calories and caffeine, and calculates a goal from your body measurements, sex, activity and the weather. Water logging, smart reminders and the Watch app are free; 150+ beverages, custom drinks, most characters and challenges, and history editing are Premium, sold monthly, yearly or as a one-time purchase.

Plant Nanny: grow a plant as you drink

Plant Nanny, from SPARKFUL, waters a virtual plant with each glass you log, and a forgotten plant wilts rather than dies. It suggests a goal from your body data and exercise habits, charts your days, weeks and months, and syncs with Apple Health. The free version shows ads; the SPARKFUL subscription, $7.99 a month or $69.99 a year and shared with SPARKFUL’s other apps, adds schedule-based reminders, an advanced water log, a custom daily goal and more plants.

Water Reminder by VGFIT: simple scheduled reminders

Water Reminder – Daily Tracker, from VGFIT, works out your daily need and reminds you at an interval set from your wake and sleep times, with custom drink sizes in fl oz or ml and a day, week and month history. Each drink goes to the Nutrition section of Apple Health with its water, caffeine, protein, calories, fat, carbs and sugars. The free version shows ads; a 1-month or 1-year Premium unlocks all drinks, the widget and Apple Watch support. VGFIT also lists it on Google Play.

Hydro Coach: water synced to Android health apps

Hydro Coach, from Codium App Ideas, syncs water with Health Connect, Samsung Health, Fitbit, Google Fit and Apple Health. It sends smart and interval reminders around your wake and sleep times, gives each vessel a hydration factor, and adds a 7-day dashboard, achievements and an Apple Watch companion that adds, tracks and deletes drinks. Water logging and reminders are free with ads; PRO, at $2.99 a month, $19.99 a year or a lifetime price, adds all drinks, custom hydration factors, diary history, CSV export and ad-free use.

Apple Health: a free record on iPhone

Apple Health, built into iPhone and iPad, keeps water as one of its nutrition data types. Apps write to it, or you add an entry yourself: on the Browse tab, choose a category and subcategory, tap Add Data and enter the date, time and amount. Health gives priority to manual entries, then to iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch data, then to apps. Because every other app here can write its water to Health, it works as a free, shared record of all of them.

How to choose

• You also log meals: PlateLens, which adds the water in what you eat as its own source.
• A dedicated drinks tracker with caffeine, on iPhone or Android: WaterMinder.
• A game keeps you going: Waterllama for characters, Plant Nanny for a plant that grows as you drink.
• Plain interval reminders, with each drink’s nutrition sent to Apple Health: Water Reminder by VGFIT.
• Android with Samsung Health, Fitbit, Google Fit or Health Connect: Hydro Coach.
• Just a free record on iPhone: Apple Health, fed by any app above.

How much water you need, and how much comes from food

There is no single number. The National Academies set adequate intakes of about 2.7 liters (91 fl oz) of total water a day for women and 3.7 liters (125 fl oz) for men, “from all beverages and foods”, and offer no glasses-a-day rule: most healthy people meet their needs by letting thirst guide them. EFSA’s European references are 2.0 and 2.5 liters, also counting food, at moderate temperature and activity, and the CDC notes that needs vary with age, sex, pregnancy, breastfeeding and activity. Our water intake calculator shows these references side by side.

About 20% of total water comes from food, the National Academies found, and Harvard’s Nutrition Source gives the same fifth, naming leafy greens, cucumbers, bell peppers, celery, berries and melons; at the National Academies’ references, that is about 0.5 liters (18 fl oz) a day for women and 0.7 liters (25 fl oz) for men. Plain water is a smaller share than many expect: 30% of total water for US men and 34% for women in CDC data for 2009–2012. Coffee and tea count too: the National Academies found that caffeinated drinks can contribute as much as non-caffeinated ones.

PlateLens: your drinks and the water in your food, kept apart

A drinks log covers about four-fifths of the water you take in; the rest, about 0.5 to 0.7 liters a day at the National Academies’ references, arrives with food. In PlateLens’s own example, a soup with 280 ml of water in its broth and 60 ml in its solids counts once, as 340 ml of food water. PlateLens estimates that water when you log the meal from a photo or a sentence such as “a big bowl of minestrone and a slice of watermelon”, and shows it as Food (estimated) next to the drinks you log on the phone, the web or Apple Watch; tell it “I only had half the bowl” with Fix it and the water follows. The hydration guide has the details. The meal analysis has been checked by outsiders, for calories: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s published validation study put PlateLens’s photo-mode error at ±1.1% across 180 weighed meals, and Foodvision Bench, an open-source benchmark, has also reproduced it on 231 meals on its public leaderboard on GitHub. Both are calorie averages, not a per-meal or water 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, for features, in-app purchases and compatibility: WaterMinder, Waterllama, Plant Nanny, Water Reminder – Daily Tracker and Hydro Coach. Android availability from each developer’s page or Google Play listing.
• The apps’ own pages: WaterMinder and its feature list; Waterllama; SPARKFUL’s Plant Nanny and subscription pages; Hydro Coach. Apple: adding data to Health and HealthKit’s water data type.
• Water references: the National Academies (2004); EFSA (2010); the CDC’s About Water and Healthier Drinks and NCHS Data Brief No. 242; Harvard’s The Nutrition Source: Water.
• PlateLens: the hydration guide, the Apple Watch guide and pricing. Computed: 20% × 2.7 L = 0.54 L (18 fl oz) and 20% × 3.7 L = 0.74 L (25 fl oz).