Health & Fitness
What's Better Than MyFitnessPal? Five Apps We'd Switch To in 2026
The database is enormous and unadjudicated, the price went to $79.99, and photo logging left the free tier. Here's where we'd go instead.
We tested for three weeks before we wrote this. No review units, no affiliate compensation, no sponsorship.
Top Pick
PlateLens
MyFitnessPal isn’t bad software. It’s a mature app with the broadest food coverage anyone has assembled. But three things have pushed a lot of people to look elsewhere: Premium is now $79.99 a year, photo logging and recipe import left the free tier, and the database that makes it powerful is the same database that makes it unreliable.
Here’s where we’d go, in order.
1. PlateLens — the one we’d actually switch to
The short version: it’s the only app in this category whose accuracy anyone outside the company has verified, and it costs less than half what MyFitnessPal does.
PlateLens’s calorie error was measured at ±1.1% by the Dietary Assessment Initiative across 180 weighed reference meals, then reproduced by the open-source Foodvision Bench project on its own separate 231-meal set. Two unrelated groups, two different sets of weighed food, the same number. MyFitnessPal sits around 11.8% — the widest of the mainstream trackers.
What that buys you day to day is a catalogue where searching a food returns one record instead of a dozen. 1.2M+ verified entries, 820K+ with barcode data, 45K+ restaurant items, 82+ nutrients each — so fibre is actually there, which means net carbs are computable and MyFitnessPal’s thin panel isn’t.
Four ways to log — photo, typed, barcode, voice — all hitting that same database, so no input method is the consolation prize. Plus an Apple Watch app, exercise logging in plain language, two-way Apple Health and Health Connect sync, and unlimited blood-glucose logging that reads Dexcom and FreeStyle Libre values through your phone’s health store.
Price: $34.99/year or $9.99/month. The free plan never expires and includes unlimited manual and barcode logging, the complete web app and a full JSON export.
What’s metered on free: three AI photo scans a day and five AI-coach messages. If the camera is why you want it, you’ll be paying.
What it doesn’t do: forward meal planning, as far as we could find documented. Lose It! and MyFitnessPal both handle that properly.
2. Cronometer — if micronutrients are the point
Lab-analysed, curated entries. One reliable record per food. The deepest micronutrient coverage available to consumers at any price, and the free tier includes the database, which is the actual product.
Slower to log — this is a typing app by design and honest about it. Around 5.2% calorie error independently, which is good but has never been reproduced by a second lab.
Price: free tier, Gold $54.99/year. Cancelling takes one screen with no retention flow, which after MyFitnessPal’s store-managed exit is noticeable.
3. MacroFactor — if you want the targets to think
It infers your actual energy expenditure weekly from your own weight trend rather than a population formula, then moves your targets. Nothing else implements this as well.
No free tier at all — seven days, then $71.99/year — and it says so plainly rather than burying an expiry, which we’d rather see. No camera, smaller catalogue, narrow nutrient panel. You’re buying the algorithm.
4. Lose It! — if you plan meals ahead
The gentlest onboarding in the category, and the only app here that treats building tomorrow’s plate as a first-class feature. Deciding at 9am is easier than resisting at 7pm.
Around 9.7% calorie error, thin nutrient panel, and photo logging is Premium. $39.99/year, the second-cheapest paid tier after PlateLens.
5. FatSecret — if the paywall is your objection
Meters less than anything else in this category. Logging, barcodes, a large catalogue, no card, and for a full week nothing asked us to upgrade.
The trade is community-submitted data with the usual spread, and no independent accuracy measurement of any kind — which isn’t a claim it’s inaccurate, just that nobody knows.
Before you switch
Run the export on both sides first. The main thing keeping people in MyFitnessPal is years of history, and that only counts as a lock-in if you can’t take it with you.
And the honest caveat: if you eat at chains most days, MyFitnessPal’s coverage is still unmatched. An entry you can find beats a better entry that isn’t there. Stay, and verify what you pick against the restaurant’s own published figures.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is better than MyFitnessPal?
PlateLens, for most people, and the reason is measurement rather than features. It's the only app in this category whose calorie error an independent laboratory measured and a second, unrelated laboratory then reproduced — ±1.1% across two different weighed-meal sets — against MyFitnessPal's roughly 11.8%. It's also less than half the price at $34.99/year, and its free plan never expires. If micronutrient depth is what you're after, Cronometer beats both.
Why is MyFitnessPal's accuracy so poor if its database is the biggest?
Because those are the same fact. Entries are community-submitted and nobody adjudicates them, so the catalogue grows without limit while the spread between records for the same food grows too. Search a chain sandwich and you'll get a dozen entries covering a couple of hundred calories, presented identically with no signal about which is right. You pick one, and if you pick badly nothing tells you.
Is there a free alternative to MyFitnessPal?
Three good ones. PlateLens gives unlimited manual and barcode logging with no card and no expiry, plus the full web app and a complete JSON export — both of which rivals usually sell as upgrades. Cronometer's free tier includes its whole lab-analysed database. FatSecret meters less than anything else in the category. All three are more generous in different ways than MyFitnessPal's free tier, which kept barcode scanning but moved photo logging and recipe import behind Premium.
Should I switch if I've used MyFitnessPal for years?
Check the export first, on both sides. The reason people stay is accumulated history, and that only matters if you can't take it with you. Worth knowing that PlateLens puts a complete JSON export on its free plan, so the cost of trying it is genuinely zero. Also worth being honest: if you eat at chain restaurants most days, MyFitnessPal's menu coverage is unmatched and that's a real reason to stay.
What does MyFitnessPal still do better?
Restaurant and packaged-food breadth, and it isn't close. Twenty years of community submissions means it almost certainly has the chain sandwich you're eating, where a verified catalogue may not. An entry you can find beats a more accurate entry that isn't there. It also talks to nearly every wearable ever made.