Lose It! vs MyFitnessPal 2026: Price, Logging, Free Tier

Lose It! is $39.99 a year and MyFitnessPal is $79.99, and for that difference you get two apps that log a meal the same way: you search a database, pick an entry and set the portion. Lose It! costs half as much and keeps ads off its free tier; MyFitnessPal has the bigger database and integration list. Our picks: PlateLens for counting calories, since a photo of the plate or a sentence such as “chicken, rice and green beans, half the rice” logs a meal in about 2.1 seconds on average with no entry to search, it learns your expenditure every week from your logs and weigh-ins, and it costs $34.99 a year, or nothing on a free plan that never expires and needs no card; Lose It! if you prefer searching and want the cheaper of the two; MyFitnessPal if you need the largest database.

Lose It!

$39.99/year

MyFitnessPal

$79.99/year

Shared method

database search first

PlateLens

$34.99/year · photo or sentence

PlateLens is a competing app and publishes this comparison.

Lose It! vs MyFitnessPal: the short answer

Take Lose It! if the only thing separating them for you is price. It is half the cost, its free tier carries no ads, and its food database covers ordinary supermarket and restaurant items well enough for daily use.

Take MyFitnessPal if you need its ecosystem: it has the larger integration list, the longer history of exported data, and the bigger community-submitted database. You are paying $40 a year more for breadth, not for a better logging experience.

What the two have in common matters more than what separates them

Both apps are built around a search box, and that is the part of calorie tracking people actually abandon. You finish a meal, open the app, type a guess at what the food is called, scroll a list of near-identical entries, choose one, then argue with yourself about the portion.

Neither app accepts a spoken or typed description of the plate as its primary path. MyFitnessPal has added AI photo as a bolt-on; Lose It! has Snap It, which is limited in scope. In both, the search box is still the road you are expected to take.

Where PlateLens differs, and where it does not

PlateLens logs from an AI photo, a typed or spoken description, catalogue search or a barcode, and it takes corrections in ordinary language — “it was grilled, not fried”, “half the rice” — rather than sending you back to pick a different entry.

The Dietary Assessment Initiative measured all three. In its pre-registered validation study of 180 weighed meals, published on 8 April 2026 with no app paying for or supporting it, it recorded a mean calorie error of 9.4% for Lose It! and 11.2% for MyFitnessPal, against ±1.1% for PlateLens in photo mode (3.5% with the meal typed in), the lowest of the six apps it tested. The open-source Foodvision Bench has also reproduced the PlateLens result on 231 weighed meals on its public GitHub leaderboard. Both are aggregate calorie results, not a per-meal, macro or micronutrient guarantee.

Separate from that accuracy case, PlateLens can learn what you actually burn. Switch on Dynamic expenditure in Your expenditure, free on every plan, and it updates your daily expenditure every week from the meals you log and your weigh-ins, with a “Why it changed” line that explains each update; every 14 days it reviews your calorie targets and suggests new ones, which change only when you apply them.

It also estimates vitamins and minerals alongside calories and macros, with the detailed views in Premium, resolved against a catalogue built from USDA FoodData Central, NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix, with 45,000+ restaurant menu items from 380+ chains. The AI coach is included on the free plan with a daily message allowance; Premium, at $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year with a 3-day free trial for new users, raises the daily allowances and adds the detailed nutrient views and nutrition reports.

On database breadth MyFitnessPal remains the largest of the three, built on a decade of community-submitted entries. If your requirement is that an obscure regional product already exists in someone’s database, that is the one with the most entries.

Price over a year, and over three

Over one year the gap is $40. Over three it is $120, which is the number worth thinking about, since calorie tracking is a habit people keep for years or abandon in weeks.

MyFitnessPal’s free tier also carries advertising, which is a cost paid in attention rather than money.

Which one should you actually install?

If you like searching and you want the cheapest of the two you came here to compare, Lose It!. If you need the widest integration and database coverage, MyFitnessPal. If the search box is the reason your last three attempts at tracking did not last, neither of them changes that, and starting from a photo is a different habit rather than a cheaper one.

All three have free tiers, so this is testable in a week at no cost. Log the same four meals in each and count the taps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where these numbers come from

• Competitor pricing and logging methods verified 10 August 2026 and republished from this site’s full app comparison. Prices are US and change; check each app’s current store listing.
• PlateLens data sources: USDA FoodData Central, NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix, plus 45,000+ restaurant menu items from 380+ chains.
• PlateLens has a free plan that never expires and paid plans at $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year.
• Calorie error: the Dietary Assessment Initiative’s pre-registered six-app validation study (180 weighed meals, published 8 April 2026, with no app paying for or supporting it) and Foodvision Bench’s open-source leaderboard on GitHub (231 weighed meals). Both report aggregate calorie accuracy, not a per-meal guarantee.