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Calorie tracking apps compared

What each one gives you free, what you pay for, and which fits how you train. · 3 min read · Updated October 16, 2026

How we made this guide: we built it from the research below and checked every number against it: MyFitnessPal Premium page; Cronometer Gold page; MacroFactor App Store listing; Subar et al., the OPEN study (2003); Shcherbina et al., wrist-worn device accuracy (2017).

This guide is for people who train and want to log food without it taking over their day, and are choosing an app. We make one of these apps, so we kept to facts each company publishes about its own app, checked on October 16, 2026, and we say where ours is the weaker pick.

The four, side by side

Prices and features as listed by each company on October 16, 2026. They change; check before you buy. MyFitnessPal, Cronometer and MacroFactor are trademarks of their owners; we aren’t affiliated with them.

Which one fits how you use it

• You want a free tracker with the most nutrient detail: Cronometer’s free plan includes barcode scanning and tracks 84 nutrients from its 1M+ food database (Cronometer).
• You want targets that adjust themselves: MacroFactor makes weekly changes to your macro plan, based on what you log (App Store listing). There’s no free tier after the trial.
• You already use MyFitnessPal and log by search: its free plan covers food, weight and exercise logging; scanning barcodes needs Premium (MyFitnessPal).
• You train for something and logging is what you drop: that’s the one we built My Track Record for. Logging by voice is free: you say the meal or the workout in one sentence, and we log it. Your workouts, weight and sleep can come in from Apple Health. The Fast Track adds targets we nudge to keep you on track toward your goal, and a check on whether you’re eating enough for how hard you train.

Where we’re the weaker pick

• Nutrient depth: if you want dozens of vitamins and minerals per meal, Cronometer is built for that.
• Calories with no training goal: our app is built around training toward something, like a race or a lift. If you only want a daily calorie count, My Track Record is more than you need.
• Exact brand numbers: we estimate a meal from what you say. For an exact packaged food, scan its barcode, which is free in our app too.

No app makes your log exact

Whatever you use, the numbers are estimates. In the OPEN study, adults’ 24-hour food recalls came in 12–14% (men) and 16–20% (women) below the energy they actually used, measured with doubly labeled water (Subar et al., 2003). The burn side is rough too: in a test of seven wrist-worn devices, none estimated calorie burn within 20% of the lab measurement (Shcherbina et al., 2017).

So treat your totals as a trend, not a precise count. A few habits we suggest:

• Weigh foods you eat often a couple of times, so your estimates for them get better.
• Check packaged foods against the label.
• Judge progress over weeks, not days.

A week-one test before you commit

The best app is the one you’ll still be using in a month. Our suggested test for any app in your first week:

• Log a full meal in under 30 seconds.
• Fix yesterday’s entry without hunting for it.
• Do your normal day on the free plan, so you know what you’d be paying for.
• Read it outside in bright light, with your normal text size.

If an app fails one of these, it may be the reason you stop.

Try ours

We built My Track Record so logging a meal or a workout is one spoken sentence, free. When you want to know whether your training and eating are working, with the Fast Track, we read your log for you.

By Andrew, founder of My Track Record. Andrew has been active all of his life across a variety of sports and continues to stay active through climbing, swimming, weight training, golfing, snowboarding, and more. He built My Track Record so logging food and training takes one spoken sentence and can support any activity. He puts these guides together from published sports science research cited on each page. About Andrew

Sources

• MyFitnessPal. Premium: features and pricing (official page, checked October 16, 2026). Source
• Cronometer. Gold: features and pricing (official page, checked October 16, 2026). Source
• MacroFactor. App Store listing: trial, subscriptions and coaching (checked October 16, 2026). Source
• Subar AF, et al. Using intake biomarkers to evaluate the extent of dietary misreporting in a large sample of adults: the OPEN study. Am J Epidemiol. 2003;158(1):1–13. Source
• Shcherbina A, et al. Accuracy in wrist-worn, sensor-based measurements of heart rate and energy expenditure in a diverse cohort. J Pers Med. 2017;7(2):3. Source

General information for healthy adult athletes, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or have a history of disordered eating, talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before changing how you eat.

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