Ainonymity Calorie Counter · Compare

Calorie counter comparison: seven apps, side by side.

Published 26 September 2026

Every app here is a good app, and some are excellent. This is a list of facts rather than a verdict — each one read off the company’s own App Store listing and pricing page, so you can check any of it in a minute.

Comparison of seven calorie counter apps by whether they have a free version, what the paid plan costs, whether AI photo scanning, barcode scanning and macro tracking are free or paid, advertising, tracking disclosure, and the personal details each company says it collects.
App	Free version	Paid plan	AI photo scan	Barcode	Macros	Ad-free	Declares tracking	Personal details
Ainonymity Calorie Counter	All but AI scans	None · pay per AI scan	Pay per scan	Free	Free	Always	No	None
MyFitnessPal	Yes	$79.99/yr	Premium	Premium	Premium	Paid feature	Yes	Name, email, date of birth
Lose It!	Yes	$9.99–$79.99 *	Premium	Premium	Premium	—	Yes	Name, email
Cronometer	Yes	$59.99/yr	Premium	Free	Free	Paid feature	Yes	Name, email, phone
MyNetDiary	Yes	$8.99–$59.99 *	Premium	Free	Free	Always	No	Name, email, date of birth
Cal AI	3-day trial	$2.99–$29.99 *	Included	Included	Included	—	Yes	Name, email, date of birth
MacroFactor	7-day trial	$71.99/yr	—	Included	Included	Always	No	Email

Sources. Each cell is read from that app’s US App Store listing, the Apple Privacy Label its developer files, its published privacy policy, and its own pricing page for what the free version includes. Checked 23 September 2026 — prices and feature tiers change, and the listing is the current answer.

The Ainonymity row is read from our published privacy policy: the app has yet to be submitted and therefore carries no Apple Privacy Label.

In AI photo scan, Barcode and Macros: Free means the feature is in the free version, Premium that it needs the paid plan, and Included that the app has no free version and the feature comes with the subscription. Tier names differ between apps; Premium stands for whichever paid tier that app sells.

Declares tracking — the label’s “Data Used to Track You” section. Personal details — what that company’s privacy policy states it collects at registration. Ad-free — whether removing ads requires payment.

* Apple lists these prices with no billing period, so the range of listed prices is shown. — Absent from that app’s listing.

Pay per scan, not per month

One feature in this app costs money: the AI photo analysis. It is charged per scan, so what you spend follows what you use — and a handful of scans are included at the start, so you can find out whether the camera is worth it to you before you spend anything. Credits sit there until you use them: put the app down for three months and it costs you nothing, because there is nothing recurring to forget about.

Everything that saves you a scan is free. The barcode scanner holds 453,750 packaged foods on the device; six government food composition tables — 30,948 foods — are bundled with it.

So is everything that reads the log back. Calories and macros, the guideline ranges they are measured against, the trend charts and the PDF reports: all free, and all working with no signal.

The biggest saving is your own history. People eat the same meals on a loop, and one you have logged before comes back in a single swipe — from the Meal Log, from Favorites, or from the analysis you already paid for — which reuses the original result and spends nothing. Photograph every meal if that is how you log: what you pay for is food you have never logged, rather than the same lunch again next Tuesday. The app’s own page sets out what each free path replaces.

What is actually different

Honestly, no single row. Several apps in this table beat us on something individually. Four of the six have a free version; two of those charge for neither macro tracking nor barcode scanning, and two declare no cross-app tracking at all.

The difference is the combination. No app we examined has all five of: no account, no subscription, no ads, no cross-app tracking, and full offline operation. That is the claim, and it is the only one of its kind we are willing to make.

The cost follows from it: with no subscription, a scan on the day you take one is the only thing there is to pay for.

How accurate is AI photo calorie estimation?

Some apps in this category advertise a percentage. As far as we can tell, those figures come from the companies themselves.

Ours has not been measured, and the app’s Terms of Use say so. That is the whole of our position: not that our estimate is better, but that we tell you it is an estimate.

There is a reason we have not put a percentage next to it, and it is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. AI photo analysis improves quickly. A figure measured against the AI model running today would not describe the one running a few months from now, and we intend to move to better AI models as they arrive rather than freeze on one so a number stays true. Measuring it properly would mean measuring it again every time we did that.

So we have taken the trade knowingly: we would rather give you the best estimate available at the time than a tested figure that is quietly out of date. What we owe you in exchange is to keep saying plainly that it is an estimate, and to make the portion weight the easiest thing in the app to correct when it looks wrong.

Why do the targets in these apps differ in the first place? See why calorie apps give different numbers, and where this app’s food data comes from.