Is there a better free app than MyFitnessPal? For barcode scanning, yes, and only two of the seven apps below qualify. Cronometer's free tier includes the scanner alongside up to 84 nutrients and compounds. MacroLog's free tier includes unlimited barcode scanning. Every other free tier here either charges for the scanner or has no free tier at all. If you are leaving MyFitnessPal for any other reason, the answer depends on which reason, and the table sorts that out.
MacroLog is one of the seven and we publish this page, which is a conflict worth holding in mind. There are no affiliate links here. Each rival row was read on 10 September 2026 from that company's own site or its US App Store listing, all linked at the end. Blank cells mean the company does not publish the fact on a page we could reach, and we left them blank instead of filling them from someone else's blog.
The free tiers, side by side
| App | Free tier includes | Free barcode scan | Cheapest paid (US) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MyFitnessPal | Calorie and macro logging, food search, exercise logging, community | No | Premium $79.99/yr |
| Cronometer | Food, exercise and biometric logging, up to 84 nutrients and compounds, custom macro and micronutrient targets, custom foods and recipes, 7-day reports, 1M+ item database | Yes | Gold $59.99/yr, or $10.99/mo |
| Lose It! | Calorie tracking, a weight-loss plan built from your body composition, friends and support groups | No | Lifetime unlock $49.99 or $59.99, once |
| Lifesum | Calorie and macronutrient goals you set yourself, a fasting timer, Life Score feedback | Not stated | Not stated on the page we read |
| MacroFactor | Nothing. "MacroFactor has a free trial, but does not offer a free subscription tier." 7 days. | No free tier | $59.99/yr, also listed at $71.99 |
| Cal AI | Nothing beyond a 3-day free trial | No free tier | In-app purchases listed from $2.99 to $29.99 |
| MacroLog | Manual search, unlimited barcode scanning, basic stats, local storage | Yes | Pro $5.99/mo or $49/yr, first week $2 |
US pricing, 10 September 2026. App Store listings enumerate every price a publisher has configured, so a listed range is wider than the offer any one person sees.
Why this search exists at all
MyFitnessPal announced in August 2022 that barcode scanning would need Premium from 1 October, and emailed free users to say so. Premium was $19.99 a month then; it is $79.99 a year now. The change stuck, and the current App Store description still sells Premium on "Faster nutrition, calorie & macro tracking with barcode scan, meal scan & voice logging".
Scanning a packet takes about two seconds. Finding the same product by name in a database anyone can add to takes closer to thirty, and you have to judge which of the four near-identical entries is right. That is the tax the free tier now charges, and it is why "alternative" and "price" are searched together.
Pick by the reason you are leaving
| You are leaving because | Go to | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| The scanner went paid | Cronometer or MacroLog | Both keep it in the free tier |
| You want micronutrients | Cronometer | Up to 84 nutrients free, against MyFitnessPal's calories and macros |
| Subscriptions annoy you on principle | Lose It! | A lifetime unlock at $49.99 or $59.99, the only one left here |
| You want targets managed for you | MacroFactor | Weekly recalculation from your own weight and intake, but no free tier |
| You want the cheapest full-feature year | MacroLog Pro at $49 | Cheapest annual in this table, and the shallowest feature set |
| You want photo-first logging above all | Cal AI | Photo scanning is the product; its own FAQ puts accuracy at about 80% |
| Nothing, really, you just want it free | Stay on MyFitnessPal free | Calories and macros still work without paying. Only the scanner left. |
Two apps here are not alternatives at all
MacroFactor and Cal AI both look like MyFitnessPal alternatives in a search result and are not, for the same reason: there is nothing to use for free. MacroFactor says so in its own App Store copy, and gives 7 days. Cal AI gives 3 days. Someone who left MyFitnessPal because a feature became paid will hit a paywall in under a week in either.
They are worth the money to different people. MacroFactor's algorithm revises your targets every week from your logged data, which does real work for someone logging daily through a cut or a bulk. Cal AI is a fast photo estimator for someone who will accept a wide error band, and it deserves credit for publishing a number at all: "CalAI is about 80% accurate."
What switching actually costs you
Your history, mostly. There is no clean migration path between these apps. Apple Health does not carry a food diary between them: MyFitnessPal writes meal summaries out and never reads food back in, and summaries cannot be rebuilt into meals. Export your data before you cancel, and note that on MyFitnessPal downloadable progress reports are a Premium feature, so exporting after the subscription lapses is harder than exporting while it is live.
Expect a fortnight of friction whichever app you choose. Your custom foods, saved meals and recipes do not travel, and rebuilding the fifteen things you actually eat is the real cost of switching. Do it during a maintenance week rather than in the first week of a diet.
MacroLog, without the sales voice
Free: manual search, unlimited barcode scanning, basic stats, local storage. Pro is $5.99 a month or $49 a year in the US, and the first week costs $2 rather than being free, which makes it a paid trial and we say so rather than calling it free. Pro adds AI photo logging, voice logging, 12 micronutrients and CSV/JSON export. Barcode data comes from OpenFoodFacts and USDA FoodData Central, with FatSecret as a fallback.
What we do not have: a meal planner, a recipe library, a coaching algorithm, a community, a web app, or working multi-device sync, sync is planned, not shipped. Cronometer tracks 84 nutrients where we track 12. OpenFoodFacts is user-submitted, so a scanned barcode can return a wrong number; the app rejects entries reporting zero calories and cannot catch the rest. Photo and voice logging run on Gemini, need a network, and flag low-confidence items for you to check.
Questions
What is the best free alternative to MyFitnessPal?
Cronometer, if you want depth: free barcode scanning, up to 84 nutrients, custom targets and a lab-analyzed database. MacroLog, if you want the scanner and a simpler screen. Those are the two free tiers here that include scanning.
Is Cronometer really free?
There is a $0 tier with the features listed above. Gold at $59.99 a year removes ads and adds unlimited history, Photo Log, Voice Log and a fasting timer.
Can I import my MyFitnessPal data?
Not through Apple Health, which carries summaries rather than diaries. Use MyFitnessPal's own export, a Premium feature, and check what the receiving app accepts before you cancel.
Is a free app good enough to lose weight?
The feature that matters most is the one that makes you keep logging, and that is usually speed of entry rather than database size. A free tier with a scanner beats a paid tier you stop opening.
Which alternative has the largest food database?
None of them beats MyFitnessPal. Fifteen years of user submissions is not something a competitor rebuilds, which is the honest reason to stay.
What this is based on
- cronometer.com/gold, read 10 September 2026. Source for the whole Cronometer row, including the free barcode scanner and 84 nutrients.
- myfitnesspal.com/premium and its US App Store listing, read 10 September 2026, for pricing and the quoted Premium description.
- Lose It! on the US App Store, read 10 September 2026, for the free feature list and the lifetime prices.
- MacroFactor on the US App Store, read 10 September 2026, for the quoted "does not offer a free subscription tier", the 7-day trial and the prices.
- calai.app, its FAQ and its App Store listing, read 10 September 2026, for the 3-day trial, the 80% quote and the price range.
- lifesum.com: Lifesum Standard, read 10 September 2026. Source for the free features listed; it does not state prices or say which tier owns the barcode scanner, which is why those cells are blank.
- Droid Life, 24 August 2022, read 10 September 2026, non-vendor record of the barcode paywall and the 1 October 2022 date.
What this table will not do for you
It will not tell you which app logs your dinner correctly. None of these seven publishes a measured accuracy test against a known set of foods, and neither do we, so no row here can claim to be more accurate than another. It covers US prices only. Lifesum's row has two blanks because the company does not publish those facts where we could read them, and Lose It!'s website refuses automated requests, so its row rests on one App Store listing. And the switch itself has a cost this table hides: custom foods and saved meals do not move, so week one in a new app is slower than week fifty-two in the old one.
Next
If the decision is between two named apps, the head-to-head pages carry the detail: Cronometer vs MyFitnessPal, MyFitnessPal vs Lose It! and MacroFactor vs MyFitnessPal. If price alone is the trigger, read what MyFitnessPal costs and how to cancel first.