MacroFactor vs Lifesum

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After using MacroFactor for over a year and testing Lifesum for the last two months, I’ve turned my hands-on experience into a practical comparison to help you decide which app is the best fit for you.

 Key Takeaways

• MacroFactor gathers information through a detailed survey and continually updates its nutritional recommendations based on weight and body fat trends. In comparison, Lifesum has a far more basic onboarding process; the initial targets tend to be lower, and it doesn’t update calories or macros over time.

• MacroFactor is ideal for active people who want to maximize muscle growth and fat loss through seamless nutrition logging and tracking. It prioritizes accurate calorie and macro targets and gives users the flexibility to select their preferred progression rate, calorie distribution, protein intake, and diet style.

• Lifesum has a broader scope and is more useful for people who want to log their nutrition and access a rich recipe library but also want to educate themselves on eating better to improve their health. It has built-in programs users can follow and provides a weekly Life Score based on the user’s answers to 41 questions.

What is MacroFactor?

MacroFactor is a calorie and macronutrient tracking app with built-in coaching capabilities. It can update your nutritional targets based on your preferred rate of progression and the results you’ve gotten so far.

The app gathers as much information as possible about the user to offer relevant and accurate nutritional targets. During onboarding, you’re asked to answer many questions:

• Age
• Gender
• Height
• Weight
• Body fat percentage (with visuals to help you estimate)
• How often you exercise
• How active you are
• How experienced you are with cardio and weight training

MacroFactor then provides initial calorie and macronutrient targets, which you can accept or modify. You also get some basic nutritional tips and lessons, which provide clarity and help you get the most out of the app.

Next, you can choose a goal and set a preferred rate of progression. You can stick with the app’s default recommendation or choose for yourself.

Unlike other apps, MacroFactor also asks about your preferred dieting style (normal, low-carb, low-fat, or keto), if you want to cycle calories (having high and low days), and if you have a preferred protein intake.

You’re also advised to have a calorie floor––the lowest your calories can ever go based on your size and activity level.

MacroFactor then continues relying on user input to refine the weekly targets. So, the more consistently you log meals, weight, and body fat, the more accurate nutritional targets you will get. 

You can log meals by searching MacroFactor’s extensive and verified food database, add foods or recipes from your library (which you can expand over time), and use the barcode and nutrition label scanners for quick input. 

Coupled with the ability to save and use existing recipes as ingredients for other recipes (like a recipe within a recipe), nutrition logging with MacroFactor is intuitive and precise.

Pros

• Log your meals in multiple ways
• Continually updates your nutritional targets
• You can customize your goals, progression rate, diet style, and even the dashboard
• Pick from three coaching styles (more on them below)
• Log weight, body fat, and body measurements and upload progress photos

Cons

• There’s no free version, only a one-week trial (add a second week to your trial with code FEASTGOOD)

What is Lifesum?

Lifesum is a nutrition-tracking app designed to help you reach your fitness goals. It’s advertised as a health app that will guide you on your journey by providing personalized nutritional recommendations.

The app gathers relevant information about you and generates calorie and macro targets. It asks about:

• Your goal (lose, maintain, or gain weight)
• Additional goals (like living longer or optimizing athletic performance)
• Gender
• Age
• Height
• Weight
• Goal weight
• Preferred weekly weight loss rate (use a slider)

You then receive your daily calorie and macronutrient recommendations, along with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack calorie targets. There’s also an option to easily log your water intake, which is a nice touch.

In the profile tab, you can set food preferences (none, vegetarian, vegan, or pescetarian) and save specific food allergies, such as gluten or lactose intolerance.

The way Lifesum is set up makes it effortless to log meals because you can search for food items in the app’s library, use the barcode scanner, log recently tracked foods and meals, add foods to your list of favorites and easily log them in future meals, as well as describe meals in text or voice and have the app figure out the calories and macronutrients.

Like many nutrition-tracking apps, Lifesum allows you to log your daily weight and displays your progress on a graph. It also shows a daily exercise goal with an option to choose an activity from their extensive list and log it as the day’s activity.

When you log an exercise activity, the app adds the calories burned to your daily total. For example, if your daily calorie target is 2,100 calories and you log a 30-minute run that burns 500 calories, your target goes up to 2,600. 

I’m not the biggest fan of this because it teaches people to eat back the calories they burn through exercise, which can affect a person’s relationship with food.

For example, someone might reward themselves with a huge meal after working out because they feel like they’ve earned it. 

Plus, research shows that while fitness trackers are getting better over time, they can overestimate caloric expenditure. As a result, you might think you’ve burned more calories than you have, which could lead you to overeat and sabotage your weight loss efforts.

I’m also not a big fan of the initial calorie and protein target for weight loss. I currently weigh 198 lbs and set a goal to lose 22 lbs at a rate of 1.3 lbs per week. 

My experience and online TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculators tell me my diet should start at around 2,700 calories/day and that I should aim for at least 144 grams of protein (approximately 0.73 g/lb/day). However, Lifesum has given me a target of 2,175 calories and 132 grams of protein, both of which are low for me.

I can change my calorie and macro targets, but the option is only available with a paid subscription.

Pros

• There is a free version available
• There are built-in fasting protocols
• Lifesum integrates with Apple Health and allows sleep tracking and syncing
• I can follow different programs with built-in recipes and tips
• There is a rich recipe library with step-by-step instructions and nutritional info

Cons

• Calorie and protein recommendations are too low
• Most of the useful features are hidden behind a paywall
• The existing meal plans are detailed but restrictive

MacroFactor vs. Lifesum: Head to Head Comparison

To highlight both apps’ pros and cons, I’ve compared them in 10 key categories:

1. Food Database

MacroFactor

MacroFactor has a rich and verified database with a wide range of foods and drinks. All entries come with an in-depth nutritional breakdown. You can even check which proteins have all the essential building blocks your body needs.

Lifesum

Lifesum has an extensive food database with plenty of verified entries (the ones with a blue checkmark). You can save the ones you like to your favorites list for easy access. Each food in the database comes with nutritional information, such as the standard serving size and the calories, carbs, fats, and proteins per serving.

2. Tracking Capabilities

MacroFactor

MacroFactor allows you to monitor your calories, macronutrients, micronutrients, and water intake. You can also record your weight, circumference measurements, body fat, and physical activity and upload progress photos.

Lifesum

Lifesum tracks your calories, macronutrients, and water intake. You can also log your daily exercise, weight, body fat, a handful of body measurements, and sleep data. 

3. Calorie Recommendations

MacroFactor

MacroFactor gets you to complete a detailed questionnaire to get as much relevant information as possible and provide accurate initial targets for calories and macronutrients.

I found the initial calorie and macro targets to be entirely accurate, given my size, activity level, and goals.

The app accounts for goals, preferred rate of progression, diet style, and even your desired protein intake. Additionally, it updates its initial nutritional targets based on your body weight and body fat percentage. 

Lifesum

Lifesum also presented a questionnaire to gather important information. However, the process was not as detailed as with MacroFactor, and the calorie and protein targets were way too low for my needs and goals. 

I knew that my initial targets were inaccurate, so I changed them in the settings. However, a beginner wouldn’t know the difference and might end up under eating by a lot. 

Plus, Lifesum doesn’t update nutritional targets like MacroFactor.

4. Level of Customization

MacroFactor

MacroFactor is highly customizable. It allows you to add up to eight metrics to see in the dashboard, as well as:

• Your calories and macronutrients
• Preferred rate of weight loss or gain
• Calorie and macro distribution (even or cyclical––eating more on some days/less on others)
• Dieting style (e.g., keto or low-fat)
• Preferred protein intake
• “Calorie floor” – set a limit to how low your calories can go during fat loss

Lifesum

Lifesum allows you to customize your calories and macronutrients, change your weight loss or gain goal, change your dietary preferences and allergies, and adjust your water intake goals.

5. Educational Opportunities

MacroFactor

MacroFactor’s most significant educational contribution is that it teaches users how their nutritional targets should change as they get closer to their goals. 

Additionally, users learn about the nutritional profile of each food––the calories and macronutrients as well as details like the amino acid profiles of different protein sources.

Small tip sections inside the app also teach users the pros and cons of different weight loss rates, the recommended protein intake, why calories should not go below a certain point, and more.

Lifesum

Like MacroFactor, Lifesum teaches people about the nutritional value of each food. The app also has a scoring system for each verified food entry, ranging from unhealthy to excellent.

Aside from that, users can complete a ‘Life Score’ test, where they answer 41 diet and exercise questions, such as “How often did you have fish or seafood last week?” The app gives you a score from 0 to 150 based on the answers.

What’s cool is that Lifesum’s nutritionists provide actionable tips to improve this score––for example, eat berries twice a week or get at least two servings of fatty fish this week. 

This is a great way to build healthier habits and learn to eat a healthier, more balanced diet.

6. Coaching

MacroFactor

MacroFactor has built-in coaching capabilities, with users having to pick from three options:

• Coached – it calculates your nutritional targets for you
• Collaborative – it calculates for you, but you can override the recommendations
• Manual – you do the calculations and adjustments yourself

Lifesum

Lifesum doesn’t adjust your nutritional targets beyond the initial recommendations. It’s up to you to track your progress and decide when and how to adjust your calories and macronutrients.

That said, Lifesum offers multiple programs to pick from. You can also complete a seven-question survey for the app to determine the best plan. The assigned plan comes with some dos and don’ts, but you’re still free to adjust the nutritional targets if they seem off.

7. Recipe Database

MacroFactor

MacroFactor allows users to create, store, and share recipes with others. However, there isn’t a library section.

Lifesum

Lifesum has a dedicated recipes section with a search field at the top and multiple popular categories you can browse: what’s hot, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack.

Each recipe comes with nutritional information per serving and instructions. You can save the recipes you like to your profile to use anytime.

8. Exercise Calories

MacroFactor

MacroFactors accounts for your activity level and exercise habits when calculating your nutritional targets. It can also sync with Fitbit devices that calculate your total energy expenditure. 

However, the app doesn’t use that data to change your nutritional targets, especially when you do a one-off activity that burns more calories than usual––say, going on a hiking trip over the weekend.

Lifesum

Lifesum gives you the option to log a daily exercise session by picking one from their list. The estimated calories burned from the activity are automatically added to your daily total.

For instance, if your calories are set at 2,100 and you burn 250 calories from daily activity, the target increases to 2,350.

9. Price

MacroFactor

MacroFactor comes with a seven-day trial (extend it to two weeks with code FEASTGOOD at checkout) and gives you unlimited access to all features. 

The subscription options are:

• $11.99 per month
• $47.99 for half a year (comes out at $7.99 per month)
• $71.99 for a year (comes out at $5.99 per month)

Lifesum

Lifesum has a free but limited version. It doesn’t allow you to change your calorie or macro targets, save and use recipes, adjust the calories burned through exercise, get recommendations to boost your Life Score, follow a program (like high-protein muscle-building), or even record all the available body measurements. 

Check this page for a complete list of what you can and can’t do on the free version.

The app’s pricing varies based on region and the platform, so it’s best to open the app and see how much a subscription would cost. The subscription options available for me were $11.99 monthly, $29.99 quarterly, or $59.99 annually.

However, I saw multiple pricing options online, ranging from:

• $21.99-39.99/quarter
• $29.99-69.99/half year
• $59.99-119.99/year

10. Reviews

MacroFactor

MacroFactor has a respectable 4.6-star rating on Google Play with 7,000+ reviews and 4.8 stars with 7,000+ reviews on the App Store.

Lifesum

Lifesum has been around for far longer and has more impressive ratings. It has 4,6 stars on Google Play with 356,000+ reviews and 4.7 stars on the App Store with 141,000+ reviews.

MacroFactor vs. Lifesum: Quick Overview

References

Germini F, Noronha N, Borg Debono V, Abraham Philip B, Pete D, Navarro T, Keepanasseril A, Parpia S, de Wit K, Iorio A. Accuracy and Acceptability of Wrist-Wearable Activity-Tracking Devices: Systematic Review of the Literature. J Med Internet Res. 2022 Jan 21;24(1):e30791. doi: 10.2196/30791. PMID: 35060915; PMCID: PMC8817215.

Stokes T, Hector AJ, Morton RW, McGlory C, Phillips SM. Recent Perspectives Regarding the Role of Dietary Protein for the Promotion of Muscle Hypertrophy with Resistance Exercise Training. Nutrients. 2018 Feb 7;10(2):180. doi: 10.3390/nu10020180. PMID: 29414855; PMCID: PMC5852756.