The Best Calorie Tracking Apps of 2026, From Free to Fancy
What you get for nothing, for about $35 a year, and for $70-plus, and why one app wins at every price.
Tracking calories is not the same as counting them. Counting is today’s total; tracking is what happens when you stack those totals against your weight for a month and adjust. Every app on this list can count. The differences show up in tracking, and in what each one charges for it.
So we sorted them by budget. Prices are US list prices: PlateLens recorded on August 10, 2026, Cronometer on September 20, 2026, Lose It! from its App Store page.
If you pay nothing
Winner: PlateLens. The free plan is the most generous we found among the major apps, and it is a plan, not a trial: no card, no countdown. Scanning and search never run out, and three photo scans a day take care of the meals you’d rather not type. Your weight entries become a trend line, your calorie and macro goals are drafted from your profile, and the whole diary opens in a browser at platelens.app/web. Also free: a fasting clock, a log for glucose readings and a JSON download of your whole history.
Also good: FatSecret. Free for years: diary, scanner, workout and weigh-in records, and a chatty forum. Fewer modern logging methods and less detail per food.
Free, with a catch: Cronometer’s free version scans barcodes and shows ads, and it is excellent for nutrients. MyFitnessPal’s free version runs on its huge catalogue but lists barcode scanning as a Premium benefit. Lose It! is free to start, though its pages are vague about which logging tools free users keep.
If you pay about $35 to $40 a year
Winner: PlateLens Premium, $34.99 a year (or $9.99 a month). It lifts the caps on AI photo scans and AI-coach messages, so you can photograph every meal and ask the coach as many questions as you like. Everything else you were already using stays the same, which is the point.
Alternative: Lose It! Premium, $39.99 a year. A simple calorie budget with more insights and planning tools. Lose It! shows fewer nutrients per food than PlateLens.
If you pay $60 to $80 a year
Cronometer Gold, $59.99 a year. For trackers who want vitamins and minerals in detail; the company’s own figure is up to 95 nutrients and compounds a food. Gold brings photo and voice entry plus Crono Coach, and drops the adverts.
MacroFactor, $71.99 a year (also $47.99 for six months or $11.99 a month). The most algorithm-driven app here: its weekly check-in recomputes what you burn from your diary and the scale and hands back new targets. Paid only, phone only, and it needs a few weeks of steady data.
MyFitnessPal Premium, $79.99 a year. The priciest. You get the broadest crowd-sourced catalogue, with excellent chain-restaurant coverage, plus Meal Scan, voice logging and barcode scanning. Expect duplicate entries.
Why PlateLens wins the tracking part
At the top of the price range you are paying for specialisms: nutrient depth, weekly coaching or catalogue size. For everyday tracking, PlateLens already brings a learning target into a general tracker: adaptive TDEE lines up your intake against your weight curve, works out your real daily burn and nudges the calorie goal. The rest of the kit (drink logging, meal plans that become grocery lists, a camera-based body scan, an Apple Watch app and two-way health-app sync) is there when you want it. Upgrading costs less than any rival’s paid tier.
The short version
Start on PlateLens’s free plan. Upgrade to Premium for $34.99 a year only if you want unlimited photo logging. Choose Cronometer Gold for nutrient detail, MacroFactor for weekly coaching, and MyFitnessPal if chain restaurants rule your week. For the method itself, see our guide to tracking what you eat.
Your questions, answered
- Which calorie tracker has the best free version?
- PlateLens. Free users get uncapped scanning and search, a daily trio of photo scans, drafted calorie and macro goals, a weight trend line and a browser version, all without a card or an end date. FatSecret is the best free alternative if you like a community.
- Is a paid calorie tracker worth it?
- Only if a paid feature saves you time every day. For many people that is unlimited photo logging. PlateLens Premium adds it for $34.99 a year, the lowest yearly price among the big trackers.
- Which calorie tracker is best for lifters?
- MacroFactor if you want an algorithm to reset your targets every week and are happy to pay $71.99 a year from the start. PlateLens covers similar ground with adaptive TDEE, more ways to log and a free plan.
- How much does MyFitnessPal Premium cost?
- $79.99 for a year or $19.99 for a month, which is what unlocks the scanner, Meal Scan and voice entry.
Sources
General information, not medical advice. If a food decision depends on your health, talk to a doctor or registered dietitian.
Jonah writes the Is It Healthy? series and the app guides, and has a soft spot for anything that comes in a jar.
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