MyFitnessPal alternatives in 2026: what you actually lose, and what each one costs

The main MyFitnessPal alternatives are Cronometer, MacroFactor, Lose It, Lifesum and BryksBuilt. Cronometer is the closest swap, because its free plan still includes the barcode scanner that MyFitnessPal moved behind Premium.

That scanner is the change most people notice first. The food database was never the problem. This page is about what you actually get back, for what.

Every price here was read on the company's own page on September 14, 2026, and every one says which currency it was in. That last part matters more than you would think, and there is a section on it below.

Why is barcode scanning not free on MyFitnessPal any more?

MyFitnessPal's own site now describes scanning a barcode as something Premium members can do. The free account is described as a simple food search from the home screen. Look at the pricing page and there is no free column at all: it compares Premium against Premium Plus and nothing else.

So the honest framing is not that MyFitnessPal got worse. It is that the free tier got narrower, and the one feature that made food logging survivable on a Tuesday night is now the thing you are being asked to pay for.

Why do MyFitnessPal prices look different for everyone?

These apps price by country, and most articles about them do not say so.

Reading MyFitnessPal's own pricing page from a Canadian connection returns Canadian dollars, every figure. Lifesum did exactly the same. Cronometer and MacroFactor both print the letters USD on the page, which is why their numbers are the only ones here you can take at face value wherever you are.

MyFitnessPal's page also opens on the annual toggle, on the more expensive Premium Plus tier, with a Save 68 percent badge. The number your eye lands on first is therefore the annual equivalent monthly rate of the pricier plan. It is not a lie, but it is not what you will pay monthly either.

So: check your own App Store before you commit. That is the number that will actually come out of your account.

Which MyFitnessPal alternative has free barcode scanning?

The cleanest swap, and it is not close.

Cronometer's free plan includes the barcode scanner. It also tracks up to 84 nutrients rather than just the big three, plus custom foods, recipes and device sync. The feature MyFitnessPal put behind a paywall is the feature Cronometer gives away.

Gold is 10.99 US dollars a month billed monthly, or 4.99 a month billed annually at 59.99, and the page prints USD beside both. Gold buys the ad free experience and the deeper reporting, not the scanner. You do not have to pay to keep scanning.

It is rated 4.8 with 98 thousand ratings on the US App Store.

Who it is for: anyone who wants the old MyFitnessPal experience back for nothing, and anyone who actually cares about micronutrients. It is the most data dense of the five and that is either the appeal or the problem.

Is MacroFactor worth paying for?

MacroFactor does something none of the others do: it watches your weight trend against what you logged and adjusts your targets for you, rather than making you guess when to drop calories.

It has no free tier and it is refreshingly blunt about that. Its own site says there is not and never will be a free version. You get a 7 day trial, then it is 11.99 US dollars a month, 47.99 for half a year, or 71.99 a year, on a page that states all prices are in USD.

In fairness, MacroFactor leads with the same annual equivalent framing we just criticised MyFitnessPal for: the headline on its product page is 5.99 a month, which is the 71.99 annual divided by twelve. Everybody in this category does it. Read the monthly number.

Rated 4.8 with 22 thousand ratings.

Who it is for: people who have dieted before, know the drill, and want the arithmetic handled. It is the priciest of the ones that print a USD price, and the one most likely to be worth it if you were going to pay a human to do exactly this.

Lose It, and an honest gap

Lose It is the friendliest of the food trackers and the one most people find easiest to stick with. Its own site says 3.4 million monthly active users.

Here is the problem for a page like this one: Lose It does not publish a subscription price on its website. The premium page redirects to a features page with no figure on it anywhere. We are not going to print a number from a review site and pretend we read it, so there is no price in this section. Open it in your own App Store and you will see yours in about ten seconds.

Rated 4.8 with 777 thousand ratings, the largest rating count of the alternatives here.

Who it is for: people who bounced off Cronometer for being too clinical. Just budget for finding the price yourself.

Lifesum, briefly

Lifesum is the design led one, with meal plans layered on top of tracking. From a Canadian connection its page advertises Premium from 5.58 Canadian dollars a month, which is an annual equivalent rate, and it did not offer a US figure. It is rated 4.6 with 151 thousand ratings.

It is a reasonable app. It is in this list for completeness rather than because it solves the barcode problem better than Cronometer does.

Where BryksBuilt fits, honestly

We build BryksBuilt, so read this section with that in mind.

BryksBuilt is not a food tracker. It is the workouts, the meal plans, the recipes, the grocery list and the tracking in one app, which is a different job.

Barcode scanning is free in our app, because a tracker you cannot use in the supermarket aisle is not a tracker. So is logging a workout, the exercise library and tracking food by hand. Photo logging is not free, and neither is the AI coach, the meal plan generator or the grocery list. Those are Pro, because every one of them is an AI call we pay for the moment you tap it. We are not going to run a page about somebody else's paywall and be vague about our own.

If all you want is a calorie diary, Cronometer is the better answer and we would rather tell you that than sell you something bigger than you need. If you are tracking food because you are training, and you are currently running one app for lifts and another for meals and reconciling them yourself, that is the thing we built.

The five side by side

App	Barcode scan on the free plan	Price	Currency shown	App Store rating
MyFitnessPal Premium	No, it is the Premium feature	CA$114.99 a year, CA$9.58 a month equivalent	CAD from Canada	4.7, 2.4M ratings
MyFitnessPal Premium Plus	No	CA$36.99 a month, or CA$144.99 a year	CAD from Canada	as above
Cronometer	Yes, free	$10.99 a month, $59.99 a year	USD stated on page	4.8, 98K ratings
MacroFactor	No free plan at all	$11.99 a month, $71.99 a year	USD stated on page	4.8, 22K ratings
Lose It	Not published	No price published on the site	n/a	4.8, 777K ratings
Lifesum	Not published	From C$5.58 a month, annual rate	CAD from Canada	4.6, 151K ratings
BryksBuilt	Yes, free	Free to download	n/a	See the App Store

Both MyFitnessPal tiers are shown because quoting only the expensive one would be the same trick this page just warned you about. Compare like for like: MyFitnessPal Premium at CA$9.58 a month on annual billing against Cronometer Gold at 4.99 US dollars a month on annual billing.

Ratings were read on the US App Store on September 14, 2026. Three of them display 4.8, which is as precise as Apple publishes, so treat that as a three way tie rather than a ranking.

Before you switch, do this

1. Export your data from MyFitnessPal first. It is in the web settings, not the app. Do it before you cancel, not after.
2. Write down your ten regular meals. Custom recipes and saved meals almost never survive a move between apps. Rebuilding them by hand takes about twenty minutes and it is the single biggest reason people abandon a switch on day three.
3. Check the price in your own App Store. Not in an article, including this one.
4. Give it two weeks before you judge it. Every food app feels worse than the one you know for about ten days, because you have not taught it your foods yet.

So which one should you actually pick?

If barcode scanning is why you are here, Cronometer, and it costs you nothing.

If you want your targets adjusted for you and you will actually pay for that, MacroFactor.

If you want the gentlest one and you do not mind looking the price up yourself, Lose It.

If you are logging food because you are training, and the second app you keep forgetting to open is the workout one, that is what we built BryksBuilt for.