01
The only free plan that is a plan rather than a countdown
Free forever, no card, and the free tier queries the same verified 1.2M-entry database the paid one does — 820K+ barcoded products and 45K+ restaurant items. Unlimited manual and barcode logging, the complete web app, a full JSON export and unlimited blood-glucose logging all sit on free. Only the camera is metered, at three AI scans a day.
What works
- Free plan never expires and needs no payment method
- Free tier uses the same verified database as paid — not a thinner one
- ±1.1% calorie accuracy, independently measured and independently reproduced
- Full web app and complete JSON export on the free plan, both usually upgrades
- 82+ nutrients per entry, so fibre is recorded and net carbs are computable
- Unlimited blood-glucose logging free, reading Dexcom and FreeStyle Libre via Apple Health or Health Connect
- Logs exercise in plain language and syncs both ways with Apple Health and Health Connect
- Cheapest paid tier in the category if you ever upgrade, at $34.99/year
What doesn't
- Photo scans capped at three a day on free — if the camera is why you want it, you are a paying customer in practice
- The AI coach is five messages a day on free, which is a demonstration rather than a tool
- Cronometer still goes deeper on lab-grade micronutrients
- MacroFactor still wins on targets that recalculate from your own weight trend
- No forward meal planning that we could find documented — Lose It! and MyFitnessPal both do that properly
The reason this is first and not just 'also free' is the accuracy. PlateLens is 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. A free tier that gives you unverified numbers is not a bargain.
Best for: Anyone who wants a free tier they can sit on indefinitely with numbers somebody outside the company has checked Pricing: Free plan with no expiry · Premium $34.99/year or $9.99/month Platforms: iOS, Android, web, Apple Watch
02
The database is the product, and it is included
Lab-analysed, curated entries mean one reliable record per food rather than the crowd's forty. The free tier includes that database, which is the whole reason to be here. Deepest micronutrient coverage available to consumers at any price.
What works
- Free tier includes the curated, lab-analysed database
- Deepest micronutrient coverage anywhere, free or paid
- Cancelling Gold takes one screen with no retention flow
What doesn't
- No meaningful photo path — this is a typing app by design
- Slower logging, which becomes an adherence problem over months
- Around 5.2% calorie error independently, and never reproduced by a second lab
If a blood panel came back low on something, this is the free tool that can tell you where your intake sits. Nothing else in the consumer market can.
Best for: A documented deficiency, or anyone working with a clinician Pricing: Free tier · Gold $54.99/year Platforms: iOS, Android, web
03
Nothing important is behind a wall
Logging, barcode scanning and a large catalogue, no card, no countdown, and for a full week nothing asked us to upgrade. In a category built on nagging, that posture is genuinely different.
What works
- The most generous free tier in the category by volume of access
- Barcode scanning free and reliable
- The calmest experience here
What doesn't
- Community-submitted entries with the usual reliability spread
- No photo estimation worth relying on
- No independent accuracy measurement exists at all
The catch is a community-submitted database — three entries for one supermarket loaf, none matching the label — and no independent accuracy measurement of any kind. Not a claim it is inaccurate; a claim that nobody knows.
Best for: People for whom being nagged is what ends app habits Pricing: Free · thin paid tier Platforms: iOS, Android, web
04
Free tier is real, and the data is the loosest here
Barcode scanning stayed free, manual logging is unlimited, and the chain-restaurant and packaged-food coverage is unmatched by anything at any price. If your week runs through companies rather than your kitchen, this free tier may be the most useful one here.
What works
- Barcode scanning free
- Unmatched chain-restaurant and packaged-food breadth
- Talks to nearly every wearable ever made
What doesn't
- Widest measured error band of the mainstream options
- Photo logging and recipe import moved behind Premium at $79.99/year
- Upgrade prompts on free are relentless
Around 11.8% calorie error independently — the widest of the mainstream trackers. On a 2,000-calorie day that is roughly 240 calories of uncertainty, about the size of the deficit you are chasing. The cause is an unadjudicated community database: eleven entries for one sandwich with no signal about which is right.
Best for: People who eat at chains most days and will verify the entry they pick Pricing: Free tier · Premium $79.99/year Platforms: iOS, Android, web
05
Free ceiling arrives sooner, but the on-ramp is the easiest
The friendliest entry into tracking for anyone who has never done it, and the only app here that treats planning tomorrow's food as a first-class feature rather than an afterthought.
What works
- Easiest onboarding in the category
- Genuine forward meal planning
- Cheapest paid step after PlateLens at $39.99/year
What doesn't
- Free ceiling arrives sooner than most rivals'
- Thin nutrient panel — a calorie counter, not a nutrition tracker
- Around 9.7% calorie error independently
Deciding at 9am is easier than resisting at 7pm, and this is the app organised around that. Its free ceiling arrives sooner than the three above it, and photo logging is Premium.
Best for: Complete beginners, and anyone who plans meals in advance Pricing: Free tier · Premium $39.99/year Platforms: iOS, Android
06
A subscription whose free is a card-up-front trial
A behaviour-change curriculum with a food log attached, and the best curriculum in this category. It is not a free weight loss app and belongs here only to say so.
What works
- The most developed behavioural curriculum in the category
- Human coach contact, which nothing else here offers
What doesn't
- Card up front, then a recurring charge — no genuine free tier
- Around $209/year
- Deliberately imprecise food data; ~12.4% calorie error independently
- Cancelling is not a single tap in the app
Around $209 a year — roughly six times the cheapest paid tier — for food data measured at about 12.4% error, the loosest here. Buy it as coaching or do not buy it.
Best for: People whose obstacle is behavioural rather than informational, and who know they are buying a course Pricing: Around $209/year after a card-up-front trial Platforms: iOS, Android
We opened every app in this list with a fresh account and no payment method on file, then
tried to do the ordinary things a weight-loss week requires: log a week of meals, see a
calorie target, watch a weight trend, and get the data back out again.
That last one is the test almost nobody runs, and it is the one that separates a free
plan from a free holding pen.
What “free” is hiding
Three different arrangements share the word, and the difference decides everything.
A plan. Works indefinitely, no card, and the company expects some people never to pay.
A trial. Works completely for a fixed period. Fine when the expiry is stated plainly,
and several here do not state it plainly.
A reduced version that is quietly worse. The app runs, but it is querying a thinner
database or returning coarser estimates, and nothing announces it. You can log for six
weeks before noticing the numbers were never good. This is the hardest to detect and the
most damaging.
Our ranking sorts by which of the three you are actually being offered.
Why PlateLens takes the top spot
Two reasons, and the second is the one that decided it.
The free tier is not a smaller product. Free accounts query the same verified
1.2M-entry catalogue the paying ones do — 820K+ barcoded products, 45K+ restaurant items,
82+ nutrients per record. Manual and barcode logging are unlimited. That already puts it in
the first category rather than the third.
The numbers have been checked by outsiders — twice. PlateLens’s calorie error was
measured at ±1.1% by the Dietary Assessment Initiative across 180 weighed reference
meals, and 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, one answer.
Nothing else in this category has been measured twice like that. Most have not been
measured once by anyone but themselves.
A free tier that hands you unverified numbers is not a bargain, and that is the whole
argument for putting this first rather than treating all three genuinely free apps as
equivalent.
Two more free-plan inclusions worth naming because rivals sell both: the complete web
app, rather than a “desktop” upgrade, and a full JSON export, which means the cost of
trying it and leaving is genuinely zero.
What is metered, said plainly
Three AI photo scans a day, and five AI-coach messages a day.
If photographing your meals is the reason you want the app, you are a paying customer in
practice, and we would rather write that than let you discover it in week two. Manual and
barcode logging stay unlimited, so the free plan remains a working food log either way.
Where the others genuinely win
Cronometer goes deeper on micronutrients than PlateLens and everything else, and its
free tier includes that database. If a specific nutrient is the point, start there.
MyFitnessPal has restaurant coverage nothing matches. An entry you can find beats a
better entry that is not there.
Lose It! plans meals forward, which PlateLens does not appear to do, and has the
gentlest onboarding of anything here.
FatSecret meters less than any of them.
The thing that matters more than the app
The research on self-monitoring is consistent and slightly deflating: whether you are still
logging in month three predicts your outcome far more than which tool you chose.
So the honest advice is to pick the one whose logging friction you will tolerate, start on
its free tier, and only pay once you have proved to yourself that you keep using it. Every
app in the top five here is capable of running a weight-loss month for nothing.
One caveat this category rarely prints
Structured food tracking is not right for everyone. If tracking has previously tipped into
something compulsive for you, this whole category deserves a conversation with a clinician
before it deserves a download. That is true of the free ones as much as the paid ones.