Best Free Food Tracking App 2027

Why PlateLens won

A free plan is only useful if it covers the whole day. Many free tiers let you type foods in but keep the fast methods, the ones that make tracking sustainable, behind a paywall. PlateLens’s free plan is the most complete in the field. It never expires and needs no card, and it includes:

• unlimited typed search and barcode logging on a verified database of 1.2M+ foods;
• 3 AI photo scans a day, for the meals that are hardest to type;
• 5 messages a day with the AI coach;
• the full web app, with the same diary as the phone;
• the intermittent-fasting timer, with 16:8 and 14:10 presets, custom windows and reminders;
• blood glucose logging, typed in or synced through Apple Health or Health Connect.

Each entry carries 82+ nutrients, so the free plan is not a stripped-down diary but the real app with daily limits on two AI features.

How the shortlist compares

• FatSecret keeps most of its core app free, including the diary, barcode scanner, exercise and weight logs and a community. It is a solid free choice for basic counting.
• Lose It! includes its calorie budget and food diary on the free plan, with many insights and planning tools in Premium.
• Cronometer has a free nutrient diary with barcode scanning. It carries ads, and Photo Log, Voice Log and Crono Coach are in Gold.
• MyNetDiary offers a free diary with barcode scanning and calorie and macro targets.

All four are reasonable ways to count for free. None combines AI photo scans and unlimited barcode logging with a verified database and 82+ nutrients at no cost.

What “free” should mean

When you compare free plans, check three things: whether the plan expires, whether barcode scanning is included, and whether there is any fast way to log a meal you cannot scan. A free plan that fails the third test tends to be abandoned on the first busy day. Our guide to starting a food diary explains why the first two weeks matter most.

The bottom line

If you do not want to pay anything, start with PlateLens. If you later want unlimited photo scans and coach messages, Premium is $34.99 a year, the lowest of the major trackers.