There is no single right answer, because these apps differ less in quality than in how much work they ask of you. If you are happy to search a food catalogue and weigh your portions, any of the large trackers with a big database will do — MyFitnessPal, FatSecret, MyNetDiary, Cronometer. If you already know the catalogue will wear you down by day three, look at the ones that let you photograph a plate or just say what you ate: Lifesum, Yazio, Calory, CalCash.
The second thing worth checking is what you actually get without paying, because the free tiers here are wildly different. Cronometer and MyNetDiary give you a real diary and a barcode scanner for nothing; MyFitnessPal keeps the barcode scanner and voice logging behind a subscription. Below, each app gets what its own website says as of 24 September 2026 — including the parts the website leaves out.
One by one
MyFitnessPal
Three ways to log, almost all of them paid
The best known name in the category. The site promises all three ways of logging at once: a barcode scanner for packaged food, Meal Scan, which points your camera at a plate and recognises what is on it, and voice logging for when talking beats typing. It never puts a number on the size of the food database, so neither do we.
The catch is that the free account is much smaller than it first looks. On the pricing page, the free column holds only food and weight tracking plus exercise tracking. The barcode scanner, Meal Scan, voice logging and custom macro targets all sit on the paid side.
Pros
- Food search by name works on a free account
- All three logging methods exist: barcode, photo of a plate, and voice
- Runs in a browser as well as on both phone systems
Cons
- Free gets you basic food and exercise tracking and little else
- Almost every logging shortcut — barcode, Meal Scan, voice — is behind the subscription
- Prices were shown to us in euros, so what you pay depends on where the site thinks you are
Checked on myfitnesspal.com and myfitnesspal.com/premium on 24 September 2026.
Lifesum
All three input methods
Of the large trackers, this is the one that puts every logging method on its front page at once: scan a barcode, snap a photo of your plate, or speak hands-free. It also pulls data from an Apple Watch and a Samsung Galaxy Watch.
What the site is remarkably quiet about is money and platforms. There is no price, no description of what the free tier includes, and no plain statement of which systems the app runs on. There is a big number — "60+ million users" — but that is the company's own word for it, with nothing behind it we can check from outside.
Pros
- Barcode, photo and voice logging are all promised up front, which few competitors do
- Syncs with Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch
Cons
- No price anywhere on the site, and no description of the free tier
- The front page never states which platforms the app actually runs on
- The user-count claims are unverifiable from outside
Checked on lifesum.com on 24 September 2026.
Yazio
Food plus intermittent fasting
Yazio presents itself as a food, fitness and fasting tracker rather than a plain diary. On logging it is direct: you can get calories and nutrition from a photo, or enter food by hand, or scan a barcode.
We could not find a price. The usual pricing addresses return an error, so whatever the subscription costs, you only learn it inside the app. Voice logging is not mentioned, and the only platforms named are iPhone and Android — there is no sign of a browser version.
Pros
- Photo logging is promised on the front page, alongside manual entry and barcodes
- Handles intermittent fasting too, so you do not need a second app for it
Cons
- The price is not obtainable from the website at all
- Nothing on the site explains what the free version includes
- No mention of voice logging, and no browser version in sight
Checked on yazio.com/en on 24 September 2026.
Cronometer
Micronutrients in obsessive detail
This is the app for people who care about more than calories. The free tier tracks 84 nutrients and compounds — the same 84 the paid tier does — includes the barcode scanner, lets you build custom foods and recipes, and draws on a database of over a million verified foods, which the site says it lab-analyses and checks itself.
The trade-off is that the two fastest ways to log are the ones you pay for. Photo logging and voice logging both sit in Gold, along with recipe importing and custom charts, and the free tier's reports only look back seven days. Gold is $10.99 a month, or $59.99 a year, which the site frames as $4.99 a month.
Pros
- A free tier that keeps the substance: all 84 nutrients, barcode scanner and custom recipes at no cost
- Publishes clear prices on its own site — only MyFitnessPal does the same here
- Runs on the web as well as both phone systems
Cons
- Photo and voice logging are both paid, so free users are typing or scanning
- Free reports only cover a seven-day window
- The depth of detail is genuinely overkill if all you want is a calorie number
Checked on cronometer.com and cronometer.com/gold on 24 September 2026.
CalCash
Food and money in one chat
This one is ours, so take the praise with salt and read the drawbacks closely — they are written as plainly as everyone else's. CalCash lives inside Telegram: send a photo of your plate, a voice message, or a few words of text, and it works out the food, the calories and the macros and writes them into a diary. Calorie values are checked against the USDA FoodData Central database. It also tracks spending and payment reminders, if you want both in one place.
What sets it apart from everything else in this list is that there is no paid version at all. Not free for three days — simply free, with no subscription and no daily limit on entries. The only ceiling is anti-spam: 30 messages a minute and 200 an hour, which normal use never reaches. And the honest limitation: there is no app. Not in the App Store, not on Google Play, not in a browser. No Telegram, no CalCash.
Pros
- Free with no subscription and no daily cap on entries
- Log by photo, by voice or by text — whichever suits the moment, not whichever the interface prefers
- Nothing to install: if you already have Telegram, the bot opens like any other chat
- Calories and spending in one place instead of two separate apps
Cons
- No web version and no apps in the App Store or Google Play — Telegram only
- No food catalogue you can browse the way MyFitnessPal or FatSecret let you: calorie values come from USDA FoodData Central, but there is no familiar find-the-food, pick-a-portion list
- No barcode scanner, no fitness tracker sync, no Apple Health
- No community, no recipes, no meal plans
- Photo logging is an estimate, not a measurement: it will never match a kitchen scale
This is our own product. The facts come from the bot itself and were confirmed on 24 September 2026.
MyNetDiary
Free tier without the strings
The quiet one that gives away more than it advertises. The free tier includes barcode scanning, macro tracking, water tracking and a food diary with the full nutrient breakdown, with no adverts and, by the site's own account, no account required to start. The database is described as over two million staff-verified foods.
Photo logging, where the camera identifies the food and estimates portions, and voice logging both belong to the Premium Plus tier. What that tier costs we cannot tell you: the pricing pages we tried came back as errors, so the number is not in the open.
Pros
- Barcode scanning and a full nutrient diary are free, with no adverts
- Two million staff-verified foods, by the site's own description, with up to 108 nutrients per entry
- There is a browser sign-in as well as the two phone apps, though the site itself only promotes the apps
Cons
- No price published where we could find it
- Both photo and voice logging sit in the top paid tier
- The site also points you to a separate app under a different name, so working out what you are actually signing up for takes a minute
Checked on mynetdiary.com and its browser sign-in page on 24 September 2026.
FatSecret
The eighteen-year veteran
Eighteen years in the business, by its own account, which in a category where apps appear and vanish is worth something. The pitch is the database — 1.9 million verified foods — plus a community where people follow each other's progress. Apps exist for iPhone and Android, and there is a web version.
Beyond that the website tells you very little. There is no price, no mention of photo recognition, and no mention of voice logging anywhere on the page we could reach. To find out whether the app does those things, you have to sign up first.
Pros
- A claimed 1.9 million verified foods, one of the largest databases in the category
- Works in a browser as well as on a phone
- Has survived eighteen years, which most calorie apps do not
Cons
- No price anywhere on the site — you cannot find out what it costs before signing up
- The site says nothing about photo or voice logging either
- The Russian-language address, fatsecret.ru, would not open for us at all on 24 September 2026: its security certificate has expired
Checked on foods.fatsecret.com on 24 September 2026.
Calory
Built around Apple devices
The smallest independent app in this list, and the one that leans hardest into the Apple ecosystem: it runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, and there is an Android version too. Voice logging works through Siri Shortcuts, so you can log a meal without opening the app at all, and barcode scanning appears in the screenshots.
On camera logging the site is narrower than it first sounds. What it actually describes is pointing the camera at a menu — "Don't see any nutrition facts on the menu? No problem, just scan it" — and it invites you to "start tracking your calories with a picture". Recognising a plate of food is never spelled out, so we are not going to claim it does that.
Money is the other gap. The site mentions monthly, yearly and lifetime paid options but never says what any of them cost. A free version exists; the only limits it names are that water tracking and macro tracking are paid. A lifetime option is a genuinely rare thing in this category, which makes the missing number more frustrating than usual.
Pros
- Voice logging through Siri, so a meal can be logged without opening anything
- Covers Apple Watch and Mac, not just the phone
- A one-off lifetime option exists, which almost nobody else here offers
Cons
- None of the paid options have a published price
- The site never describes recognising food on a plate — what it shows is scanning a menu
- Beyond water and macro tracking being paid, the site never says where the free version stops
- A small independent app, so there is no guarantee of the staying power the big names have
Checked on calory.app on 24 September 2026.
What actually matters
Nearly every food diary works the same way underneath: you tell it what you ate, it looks the calories up in a database, and it adds the day together. The difference is not the arithmetic. It is how hard the first step is — telling it what you ate. People abandon calorie counting because every meal turns into a small chore, not because the app was bad.
So the first question is how long one entry takes. A searchable catalogue and a kitchen scale give you the most accurate numbers and cost you a minute and some discipline every time. Barcodes are fast but only work on packaging, and a bowl of homemade soup has no barcode. Photo and voice take seconds but give you an estimate rather than a measurement.
The second question is what the free tier really contains, and this needs a close look. Almost everything here calls itself free, but free covers a wide range: Cronometer and MyNetDiary hand you a working diary and a barcode scanner, while MyFitnessPal keeps the scanner behind a subscription. The third question is simply where you will use it. An app needs room on your phone and the habit of opening it; a bot in a messenger needs neither, but it also only ever lives in that one messenger.
How we picked and checked
We started from what search actually returns for calorie counting queries and kept the ones that run a website of their own. Then we opened each of those websites on 24 September 2026 and wrote down exactly what they said: platforms, price, free tier, whether photo and voice logging exist.
Not a single number here comes from another review, from memory, or from reasoning about what something usually costs. Prices are written in the currency the site used, with no conversion and no rounding. Where a site has no price, the table says so — and that is real information, not a gap. An app that will not tell you the price until you have signed up is telling you something about itself.
- Lose It! is missing for an honest reason: we could not open its site on 24 September 2026, and we do not link to sites we have not opened ourselves
- App store ratings and user counts are not in the table: neither can be verified from outside
- Where a company states a number about itself, we say so — those are its words, not our measurement
What this page deliberately leaves out
There are no rankings and no medals here. Nothing says which one is first or best, because someone counting calories for peace of mind and someone prepping for a competition need different things, and we have no idea which one you are.
There are also no accuracy figures. Comparing recognition accuracy honestly would mean cooking identical meals, weighing them, and running every one of them through all eight services. We have not done that, so we are not going to publish numbers about it.
And there is not one sentence here about which app will help you lose weight. Apps do not do that; a calorie deficit does, and a food diary is just a way of seeing whether you have one. If you have a health condition or take medication, your calorie target is a conversation for a doctor, not for an app and certainly not for this page.