Is MyFitnessPal Premium Worth It? I Tried It So You Don’t Have To

Quick story: I started using the free version of MyFitnessPal in 2015 and then spent 3 years, from 2018 to 2021, paying for the premium version.  

Then, in 2021, I got obsessed with trying to find the best nutrition-tracking app, and I’ve since tested and reviewed 24 other apps, all of which I’ve documented on the FeastGood.com YouTube channel.  

However, despite all this time talking about other calorie and macro apps, people still ask whether MyFitnessPal premium is worth paying for.  

So today, I want to answer that question, and to do so effectively, I’ve just finished spending the last two months re-acquainting myself with MyFitnessPal premium.   

Much has changed since 2021, so I now have a fresh perspective as of the current publish date on this article, not only as it relates to MyFitnessPal, but also how the premium version of MyFitnessPal compares to other paid apps.  

The TLDR: While the premium version of MyFitnessPal is a drastic improvement from the free version, and many improvements have been made since I last paid for it in 2021, there are still other calorie-tracking apps on the market that are less costly and offer more (and better) features. That said, some people may still choose to upgrade to MyFitnessPal Premium, and I’ll cover that specific use case below. 

Why Consider MyFitnessPal Premium, Anyway?

For so long, MyFitnessPal was the dominant calorie-counting app on the market and was the go-to tool for many fitness enthusiasts and athletes. 

However, over the past few years, many of the app’s useful features were put behind a paywall and are only available if you upgrade your membership to premium.

For example, one of the most common complaints amongst users who use the free version was the removal of the barcode scanner in 2022. 

This feature is one example of how MyFitnessPal made logging your food faster and easier, but it was only available if you were paying for the app’s premium version.

These changes have made many longtime MyFitnessPal users feel the free version is much more tedious and less user-friendly. 

Despite the inconvenience, these users may be hesitant to switch to another app and lose all of their data and pre-logged meals that they’ve built up over the years.

Not only that, but ads are now a prominent disturbance if you are logging your food in the free version of MyFitnessPal, and the only way you can get away from those ads is by paying a monthly fee for the premium version.

For $19.99 USD a month or $79.99 USD a year, the premium version of MyFitnessPal unlocks various features I will discuss shortly.

What Do You Get With The Free Version of MyFitnessPal?

Customizable Calorie and Macro Goals (by percentage, NOT grams)

When you originally sign up for MyFitnessPal, it will assign you a calorie and macronutrient intake based on the stats you input into the app such as gender, height, weight, age, activity level, and fitness goals.

However, as a nutrition coach, I like to have the ability to manipulate these numbers for myself and my clients, as I am not always satisfied with what the app recommends.

Thankfully, the free app version allows you to adjust your calorie and macro intake. However, you can only shift your macronutrient breakdown based on overall percentage and not by grams.

This is pretty annoying when you are trying to hit specific grams of macros but can only adjust the percentages.

Not only that, but the free version will only display your calorie count on your home screen, making it not as user-friendly if you are more focused on macro tracking.

Customizable Meals, Recipes, and Foods

This feature allows you to create and save your own meals and recipes that you commonly consume in the app for easy and quick-adding access. This makes calorie and macro tracking easier if you meal prep the same foods each week.

In addition, if the MyFitnessPal database doesn’t have the food you are looking for, or you can’t find an accurate food item in the database for what you are eating, you have the ability to manually add this food and its calories using the “Quick Add” feature. 

However, there is a pretty giant flaw with the “Quick Add” feature. 

The free version of MyFitnessPal only allows you to add the calories of food in the Quick Add feature, not the macronutrients. 

This means at the end of the day, your calorie count in the app could be accurate, but your protein, carbs, and fat numbers will be off. This is extremely confusing, especially for beginners.

For example, if you wanted to log a cookie from a local bakery that is advertised as 220 calories, 3 grams of protein, 29 grams of carbs, and 11 grams of fat, it is unlikely that you will find this exact cookie in the MyFitnessPal database and would need to add it manually.

With the Quick Add feature in the free version, you can add the calorie count of the cookie (220 calories), but the app does not account for the macronutrients. Therefore, at the end of the day, your macronutrient count would be off by 3 grams of protein, 29 grams of carbs, and 11 grams of fat.

If you are using the app to keep track of your macros, this renders the Quick Add feature in the free version of MyFitnessPal useless and unusable.

Recipes

The free version of MyFitnessPal offers various recipes under categories such as gluten-free, low-carb, meal prep, under 300 calories, low-calorie, paleo, and so on. You have the ability to log these recipes straight into your day of eating.

For example, the “Under 300 calorie” recipe section was super handy when looking for a lighter meal or snack ideas that wouldn’t put me over my calories. 

One day, I chose to try a “Chia Pudding” recipe that the app offered. 

The recipe served 4, but I could log a single serving in my food diary. One serving of the Chia Pudding was 272 calories, 32.8g of carbs, 17.5g of protein, and 9.8g of fat. So, I liked how the recipes accounted for either a single or multiple servings.  

Just a side note: there is a “Meal Prep” section, separate from the other recipe categories, meant for bigger portion sizes, but it wasn’t really that different from the other recipes since all of the other recipes were for at least 4-6 servings anyway. 

Regardless, I found these recipes were great for giving me ideas on what to cook, and I could very easily log the calories and macros into my food diary.  This was a big win for the free version.

Workouts

The free version of MyFitnessPal gives you access to a handful of workouts, which has evolved over the years. 

You can choose from various options, such as home workouts, weight training circuits, and yoga classes.

As someone who has only ever used the app for food tracking purposes, this feature is not a big concern for me, but it could be useful to those who like to use one app for fitness and nutrition.

Upon further testing the workouts, I found that most workout videos were geared toward home workouts, bodyweight/ minimal equipment circuits, HIIT circuits, and recovery/ stretches. Most of the workouts were under 30 minutes, with quite a few being as short as 5-10 minutes in length. 

These types of workout videos would work well for beginners looking to increase their activity levels at home but likely wouldn’t cut it for the experienced person.

While I think it’s a win for the free version of the app to now include workouts, users will quickly outgrow these types of workouts, and it’s my belief generally that nutrition apps should not try to be workout apps.   

So, What Do You Get With The Premium Version?

Barcode Scanner and Scan a Meal

The barcode is a handy tool, particularly when you are on the go and want to track packaged food quickly. This feature alone reduced my food logging time by at least 50%.

With that said, I did find that a handful of times, the barcode scanner would just refuse to work. Over the course of a week of tracking my food, there were four occasions out of 15 when the camera for the barcode just wouldn’t pick up the barcode I was trying to scan.

In addition to that, a couple of times when I would scan an item, it would bring up nutrition information to a completely unrelated food item, which I found to be an irritating bug in their system.

For example, on one occasion, I tried to scan an oatmeal package, and the app brought up the nutrition information for an entirely different kind of cereal.

I looked into this and found out that this can happen occasionally because manufacturers will reuse barcodes, so there are times when the barcode scanner will bring up an entirely different food item from what you are actually scanning. 

When reading about this MyFitnessPal glitch, I learned that other users had had similar experiences; for example, one user had scanned a can of tuna, and the app provided nutrition information for canned chicken soup!

Regardless of the glitch, I really don’t know how someone can use a food-tracking app without a barcode scanner.  Most other apps have this feature on the free version, though.

Having to log packaged food manually or search through the food database and hoping you can find your specific food is tedious and time-consuming.  

For this reason alone, I don’t think I could use the free version of MyFitnessPal anymore, and getting access to the barcode scanner on the premium version is the #1 reason to upgrade. 

MyFitnessPal premium also has a cool feature called “Scan a Meal.” This feature allows you to take a photo of your meal, and the app will bring up the ingredients it sees in your photo for you to quickly log. I actually found this feature to be quite handy.

However, there are definitely flaws with the “Scan a Meal” feature. I found it worked the best with whole food, simple ingredient meals (such as chicken, broccoli, and rice), and did not work at ALL on packaged foods (such as protein bars or protein powder).

To be fair to MyFitnessPal, though, other apps have this feature, too, and no app has perfected it‒all are pretty flawed. 

Ability to Customize Macronutrients and View Macros Per Meal

One of the best upgrades in MyFitnessPal premium is that you can set your own customized macros by the gram rather than based on a percentage of your calories. 

To me, this is another “must-have” feature in any food tracking app.  Most apps put this feature behind a paywall, so it’s not unique to MyFitnessPal.  

In the premium version, you can view the macros in each individual meal by percentage OR grams, which I found to be super handy. 

Overall, I found that the premium version of MyFitnessPal is much more focused on macronutrient tracking than calorie tracking alone, which I prefer.  If you only value calorie tracking, the free version will be enough, but if you’re serious about your nutrition goals, there are limitations to not tracking your macronutrient targets on the free version. 

For example, if you aim to gain muscle, it’s important that you hit a specific protein goal each day, as next to calories, protein is the critical macronutrient to track to achieve your goals.  If you only track calories, you can’t be certain the weight you gain is fat or muscle.

In addition to macros, MyFitnessPal premium also allows you to view your intake of certain nutrients like sodium or cholesterol, which is important if you are aiming for a heart-healthy diet. 

No Ads

This premium feature is more about what you DON’T get: pesky and annoying ads. 

This made my dashboard so much nicer to look at, and I wasn’t constantly clicking useless ads by accident while trying to log my food.

This was another feature that I really didn’t realize how much I liked until I had it, and it made logging my food to be much less of a headache.

My screen and dashboard looked “cleaner” and less cluttered, which I loved, and I could log my food and stats in less time because I wasn’t always waiting to click out on ads I was not interested in.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to make the food logging process fast. The last thing you want is to feel like tracking your food is taking too long because it might cause you not to want to track it. 

For this reason, it’s another premium feature that’s worth it simply because you’ll want to use the app long-term. 

Intermittent Fasting Guidance and Timer

While intermittent fasting isn’t really my thing, this feature might be handy for anyone who is practicing time-restricted eating in their diet. 

This feature gives you different fasting window options to choose from, such as 12:12 (easiest), 14:10 (moderate), and 16:8 (most challenging).

Ultimately, though, there wasn’t much more to this feature, and to me, this was just a fancy timer that is conveniently in your tracking app. 

I haven’t looked much into it, but there might be a free intermittent fasting app that does this single feature for free, so tough to know if having it in the premium MyFitnessPal is worth it.

More workouts (85+ workout routines)

The premium version of MyFitnessPal offered a wider variety of workout videos than the free version. 

With that said, these videos were all still geared toward home workouts, body weight, and HIIT circuits, and stretching routines.

However, the premium version DOES allow you to create your own workout routines, which was much more up my alley. 

I decided to try making my own workout routines within the app. For example, I was able to design a workout called “Gym Leg Day” where I added exercises such as barbell squats, lying hamstring curls,  and deadlifts. 

The database seemed to have almost every exercise I searched, and I could include the weight I lifted, along with the number of reps and sets.

With that said, I did not find this feature to be user-friendly at all. 

This is because after I designed the workout, I only had the option to log it “as is” every time, versus having the ability to change the amount of weight I was lifting or the number of sets or reps I was doing.

As someone who frequently uses the Trainerize app to design and log workouts for myself and my clients, I would never switch to logging my workouts on MyFitnessPal, and it would not be a feature I would use for my clients or recommend. 

Final Verdict: Is It Worth Upgrading To MyFitnessPal Premium?

Having used MyFitnessPal for years before 2021 and now having just tested it again for the past couple of months, here are some thoughts.  

I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed the features like the meal scanner, seeing my macronutrient breakdown in grams, and the lack of ads.

However, I did find there to be a few bugs in the system causing inaccurate data. This happened enough times for it to be a concern for me. And, keep in mind, I’m an experienced macro tracker. This would be an even bigger concern for a beginner. 

I found that the premium version of MyFitnessPal still contained an insane amount of unverified food items when I searched for food. 

This is because MyFitnessPal utilizes user-contributed food entries, meaning anyone who manually logs a food item will have that food saved in the database. This leaves room for a ton of error (for example, someone could log 1 Tbsp of almond butter as 10 calories instead of 100 calories).

This makes food logging pretty tedious, as you have to sift through unverified and inaccurate food items to find the correct one. It can also easily result in very inaccurate food logs for an inexperienced food tracker, negatively affecting their progress and reaching their goals.

Lastly, despite the added features included in the premium version, I did find the charge of $19.99/ month to be a bit on the pricey side for my budget.  Mostly because there are other apps on the market now that do what MyFitnessPal premium does for cheaper (and better!)  

If you are someone who takes tracking your food seriously and hates the idea of switching over to a whole new app, then upgrading to the Premium version of MyFitnessPal will probably be worth it for you.

However, if you are a dedicated food tracker, are annoyed by the same things I’ve discussed, and want to save some money, I can confidently say that it’s not worth upgrading, and you should consider switching to a different app entirely.

For example, I just published a video called The Best Calorie & Macro Trackers, which is my full review of all the apps I’ve tested.  

MacroFactor was my top pick, costing $11.99/month compared to MyFitnessPal’s 19.99/month.

At a reduced cost, MacroFactor actually offers a built-in nutrition coach that will help you with recommendations based on your weekly data. This differs greatly from MyFitnessPal, which offers no recommendations or support after the initial onboarding process.

MacroFactor also has a very large food database, and while this is something MyFitnessPal has as well, the quality of MacroFactor’s database is far superior. 

If you want to learn more about Macrofactor, you watch my full review of Macrofactor here to see all of the added features you get above and beyond MyFitnessPal or you can enter code FEASTGOOD when signing up to get 2-weeks free to play around.