MyFitnessPal vs CalorieScan AI: an honest comparison

MyFitnessPal has been the default calorie tracking app for over a decade. It has a 19-million-food database, every barcode you can scan, and a deep moat of historical data for users who have been on it for years.

We make a competing app. We have no incentive to be neutral. We will try to be fair anyway, because the only thing more annoying than a dishonest competitor comparison is one that pretends to be objective.

Where MyFitnessPal wins

Database depth. When you scan a barcode, MFP has it. Always. We're growing fast but we won't catch them on this in any reasonable timeframe.

Web app. MFP has a real desktop interface. We're iOS-only by design, but if you want to log from your laptop at work, MFP has us beat there.

Recipe importer. Paste a URL, get a logged recipe. We have a similar feature in beta but MFP's is more polished.

Years of historical data. If you've been logging on MFP since 2014, that's a real switching cost. We can't move your history. Nobody can.

Where CalorieScan AI wins

Photo logging. Our entire product is built around the camera. MFP added a photo feature in 2023 and it works for some packaged products, but it's an add-on, not the core experience. For home-cooked meals, it's not even close — we win cleanly because we trained on real plates instead of stock product shots.

Natural language. Type "two eggs, sourdough toast, flat white" and we log it as three items. MFP makes you search, find, click, set portion, save, then repeat for each one.

Speed. Average log time on our app is under 3 seconds. Average log time on MFP, per their own old blog posts, was over 30 seconds per item. This is the entire ballgame for adherence.

No ads. MFP is free with ads, or premium ad-free for ~$80/year. We're free for the basics and $9.99/month for everything, no ads at any tier.

No diet culture nudges. MFP's notifications and weekly summaries lean into "you went over your goal!" framing. We deliberately don't.

Where it depends

Restaurant menus. MFP often has better data on big chains because of crowd-sourced entries (some accurate, some not). We have curated data on the top 200 chains, more accurate per entry, but with less coverage on regional spots.

Macro tracking. Both apps do macros. Our UI is cleaner, MFP's is denser. Personal preference.

Community. MFP has forums, friends, leaderboards. We don't, on purpose. If you like the social layer, MFP wins by default.

Who should use what

Use MyFitnessPal if: you live on packaged food, you want to log on a laptop, you've been on it for years and your data lives there, or you actively like the social/leaderboard side of fitness apps.

Use CalorieScan AI if: you eat a lot of home-cooked, restaurant, or otherwise un-barcodeable food, you've tried MFP and quit because logging was tedious, or you just want the camera to be the primary input.

A real answer that we suspect a lot of people land on: use both for a week. Use whichever one you're still opening on day eight.

The price comparison

• MFP Free: ad-supported, full database, basic macros.
• MFP Premium: ~$79.99/year ($6.66/mo).
• CalorieScan Free: ad-free, photo logging limited to 5/day, full database.
• CalorieScan Premium: $9.99/month, unlimited photo logging, weekly review, Apple Health two-way sync.

We are slightly more expensive on premium. We think the photo feature is worth it. You may not. That's fine.

A note on switching

If you want to switch from MFP, you can export your full history as a CSV from the MFP web app. We don't have an importer yet, but we have a "this is my baseline" wizard that asks you for your usual breakfast, lunch and dinner and seeds your common-meals list in about five minutes.

The bottom line

MFP is a great product that's been built for a decade. We're a younger, more focused product built around a specific bet: that the camera should do the work, not the user. Both bets can be right. Pick the one that fits how you actually want to track.