What changed with MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is still the default answer to “which calorie app?” — and still the one people most often leave. The turning point was October 2022, when the barcode scanner moved behind the Premium paywall. Scanning had been the free tier’s best feature; overnight it became a subscription pitch. As of mid-2026, Premium runs $19.99/month or $79.99/year in the US, with a pricier Premium+ tier above it, and the free tier carries ads.

None of that makes MFP a bad product. It does make “just use MyFitnessPal” outdated advice. Here’s the landscape as we see it — including where we fit and where we honestly don’t.

The landscape in June 2026

Calsheet (us)

Completely free: no ads, no subscriptions, no locked features.
No account required — the diary lives on your device and works fully offline. Optional sign-in adds cross-device sync, nothing else.
Barcode scanning and Open Food Facts search, free. Custom foods, recipes with cooked-weight math, a TDEE goal wizard, 30-day stats, weight journal.
AI logging by chatting with Claude (via a claude.ai connector; needs a Claude account).
JSON export of everything, anytime. English and Russian.
What we don’t do: micronutrients — Calsheet tracks calories, protein, fat, and carbs, full stop. No exercise logging, no step-counter or health-platform integrations, no meal photos, no community. Product data comes from Open Food Facts, a community database — vast, but quality varies by region.

MyFitnessPal

The biggest food database and the biggest community; restaurant coverage nobody else matches.
Free tier (as of 2026): ads, no barcode scanner, no macros-by-gram goals.
Premium at $19.99/month or $79.99/year — fine value if you actually use the coaching, intermittent-fasting tools, and integrations.

Cronometer

The accuracy pick. Curated, verified nutrition data and tracking of dozens of micronutrients — the only mainstream app where “am I getting enough iron?” has a real answer.
Barcode scanning stays in the free tier (as of 2026). Gold is about $50/year.
The flip side: more clinical, more data entry, and the strict-verification database is smaller than MFP’s crowdsourced one.

Lose It!

The friendly middle ground: polished, quick onboarding, barcode scanning still free (as of 2026, a deliberate contrast they’ve kept since MFP’s 2022 move).
Premium around $40/year adds meal planning, integrations, and macro goals by gram.
US-centric database; weaker outside English-speaking markets.

MacroFactor

The serious-lifter pick: no free tier (subscription around $72/year as of 2026), but its adaptive algorithm re-estimates your real TDEE from your logged intake and weight trend every week — genuinely the best goal engine on the market.
You pay for that engine; if you just want a diary, it’s overkill.

FatSecret

Fully free with ads, barcode scanner included; decent international coverage.
The trade-off is the ad-supported model itself and a dated interface.

How to choose

You want free, private, and offline: Calsheet or FatSecret. We’re the no-ads option of the two.
You track micronutrients or eat to medical targets: Cronometer, no contest.
You want the biggest database and don’t mind paying: MyFitnessPal Premium.
You want free scanning with a polished mainstream app: Lose It!
You lift seriously and want adaptive coaching: MacroFactor.

And a general rule that outlasts any listicle: the best tracker is the one you’ll still be opening in three months. Feature checklists lose to friction every time — more on that in why calorie counting fails.

Migrating from MyFitnessPal

Getting your data out of MFP is its own small project — the full CSV export is a Premium feature, but there are free paths. We wrote a step-by-step guide: how to export your data from MyFitnessPal.

Starting fresh in Calsheet takes about ten minutes: open the web app (no sign-up), run the goal wizard, save your ten most-eaten foods, and log from there.

Updated as prices change

Subscription prices and free-tier limits in this post were last verified on 2026-06-18. If you spot something outdated, tell us — kirill@kirillin.tech.