Ultimate Nutrition App Tier List

After three years testing 20+ nutrition apps, we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ones that made us question our life choices. Here’s our no-nonsense tier list to help you find the best without wasting your time.

The Tiers

1. Fully Dialed in: This tier is reserved for the best of the best. Apps that fall into this category cover all possible needs a person might have to perform at an elite level. These apps have proven themselves to be highly useful and versatile thanks to their rich selection of relevant features, intuitive interface, and ability to adapt to users’ needs.
   
   
2. FeastGood Approved: Apps in this category are fantastic in almost all aspects: interface, food database, food logging, and progress tracking. However, while almost deserving of a spot in the top tier, there is room for improvement. That said, if you use any of these apps, it’s still money well spent.
   
   
3. Decent for Most: This is essentially the middle ground of nutrition apps. Apps in this tier are generally good and work as advertised. They might not max out in every category, but they are good in at least one or two major categories. Such apps offer some niche use cases, but there is plenty of room for refinement and general improvements.
   
   
4. Lightweight Tracking: This tier includes nutrition apps that work well in some ways, but also come with significant drawbacks that make them a poor choice for more advanced users. Apps in this tier are generally suitable for absolute beginners with basic needs.
   
   
5. Not Worth Your Calories: The bottom tier is reserved for the handful of low-quality nutrition apps I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Apps in this category lack essential features, often don’t work as advertised, and don’t offer enough to justify spending any time, energy, or money on them. To keep things positive, I’ve listed one good thing about each of these apps, but there are still apps that do a better overall job.

The Rankings

MacroFactor

Tier: Fully Dialed In

MacroFactor is a macro-tracking app with built-in coaching capabilities. To start, you go through a detailed survey, and the app uses that data to estimate your calorie and macronutrient needs.

As you log your meals, body weight, and body fat percentage, MacroFactor’s nutritional recommendations become increasingly accurate, helping guide you toward your goal––be it to build muscle or lose fat. The process feels like having a nutrition coach in your pocket.

Unlike some apps that try to guilt you into logging all of your meals or punish you for not being 100% consistent, MacroFactor is more intuitive and accepts the fact that we can’t always be on point. 

This means MacroFactor offers more flexibility than other apps and leads to a better overall experience. 

Part of this app’s flexibility comes from the freedom to choose your diet style (for example, low-fat or low-carb), preferred rate of progression (for instance, would you like to lose weight more slowly or aggressively), how you log each food or meal, and even what metrics you decide to add to your dashboard. 

MacroFactor also has something called a “calorie floor.” This is the lowest number of calories the app will ever recommend during fat loss to help keep your diet sustainable, prevent crash dieting, and help limit metabolic adaptation.

One of MacroFactor’s newest features is logging meals by taking photos. Snap what’s on your plate or in your bowl and let the app guess what you’re eating and calculate the nutritional value. It works surprisingly well and gets most foods right. Of course, you can also edit meals before saving them.

All of this works seamlessly, and the app calculates your calorie, macronutrient, and micronutrient intake effectively because of the rich and verified food library.

Read our full MacroFactor review here.

Enter code FEASTGOOD when signing up to get an extra week on your free trial (2 weeks total). Cancel any time before your trial ends without being charged.

Cronometer

Tier: Fully Dialed In

Cronometer is another fantastic app that’s earned its spot in the top tier thanks to its intuitive design and wide range of useful features. What’s perhaps most striking is that, while most apps slowly move features behind a paywall, Cronometer expands the options on its free version.

One thing you get with Cronometer’s free version is the ability to set specific macronutrient targets, something most other apps don’t offer. What’s more, you can even set specific vitamin and mineral targets. 

The free version also lets you track your exercise activity, water intake, and biometrics like body weight, body fat, circumference measurements, and sleep. You can supplement those with notes that allow you to record important details, such as subjective mood or energy levels.

That said, while the free plan is useful, the Gold plan provides the complete Cronometer experience. 

Custom reports are one of the app’s standout features. You can choose exactly what you want to see, like your daily meals, nutrient breakdowns, biometrics, and more—and generate a summary for any time period you choose.You can even export it as a PDF to share with your coach or healthcare provider.

You also get customizable charts that allow you to track your intake of specific nutrients and compare it to your biometrics. For instance, you can track your sodium intake and see how it affects your blood pressure and heart rate (yes, you can track those in Cronometer). 

Or perhaps you’ve been having some bathroom irregularities? Set it up to track your bowel movement habits and how they correlate to your daily fiber intake.

Macro scheduler is another big one. This feature allows you to set specific macronutrient targets in advance. For example, if you know that Mondays and Thursdays are demanding work days or your toughest workouts occur on those days, you can allow yourself more carbs.

Read our full Cronometer review.

MyFitnessPal

Tier: FeastGood Approved

MyFitnessPal (MFP for short) is the oldest and arguably the most popular macro-tracker. It offers a free, but limited version that could be useful for complete beginners and those who don’t need all the bells and whistles.

The free version gives you access to the huge food database and meal logging options. You can also:

• Track calories and macronutrients (but you can only set percentage ratios like 25-25-50% instead of specific gram targets)
• Log exercise
• Create custom foods, meals, and recipes
• Log body weight and measurements
• Share your food diary with others (like, for example, your coach)

However, the app’s free version displays ads frequently, which can be annoying, especially when trying to log something quickly and continue with your day. Plus, if you want to access some of the more advanced features, you will need the paid version. 

For instance, MyFitnessPal’s barcode scanner was once free but was moved behind a paywall a few years ago. This led to some negative feedback from the community, but the situation eventually settled down. 

Also, unlike Cronometer, you need MyFitnessPal Premium to set specific macronutrient gram targets like 180 grams of protein, 60 grams of fat, and 220 grams of carbs. Premium also gives you access to a large and diverse recipe database. You can filter the results by diet type (say, low-carb) and meal (for example, breakfast).

Browse through hundreds of options, each with nutritional data, an ingredient list, and step-by-step instructions. You can save any recipe you like to try later.

Meal scan is another MFP feature worth mentioning. With it, you can take a photo of a food or meal, and the app will instantly determine the type and quantity to calculate the nutritional value. 

It does an okay job when the food items are separate (e.g., toast with two fried eggs), but the results become less accurate when scanning meals with mixed ingredients, such as an oatmeal bowl.

Premium also comes with the flexibility to customize your home screen (similar to MacroFactor) and display metrics that matter most to you. This could be calories, macronutrients, a specific vitamin or mineral, daily steps taken, and more.

MFP also comes with an intermittent fasting (IF) tracker. You can set your preferred fasting time, and the app will tell you when your eating window starts and ends. 

Read our full review here.

MyNetDiary

Tier: FeastGood Approved

Similar to MyFitnessPal, MyNetDiary (MND) offers a free and premium version, each with its unique benefits and drawbacks. 

To start, MND’s free version is a simple and dependable tracker. You can track your calories and macronutrients, but you can’t adjust your daily targets in any way, which is a big drawback. You need premium to do that.

A positive of MND is the simplicity of the interface. Unlike some more sophisticated apps, this one is simple to start using and figure out, making it ideal for beginners who want to get into macro-tracking. 

The home screen displays important information like your exercise activity, daily steps taken, and water consumption. 

Your calories and macronutrients are displayed inside a neat apple-shaped graph that’s colored in green when you’re within your daily calories and goes from yellow to red when you’re close to your daily nutritional targets or end up exceeding them.

This means all the critical metrics are on your home screen, and you don’t have to navigate to other areas of the app to get a quick update for the day. 

Additionally, MND comes with a rich and verified food database and a rating system that goes from A to D. The healthier the food, the closer to A it is; in contrast, unhealthy foods get a lower rating, helping you make better nutritional choices.

That said, while MND’s free version is cool, the fact that you can’t adjust your calories and macro targets is a huge downside. You can use the app as is for a while, but you will eventually need to upgrade to update your nutrition targets.

Premium allows you to:

• Manually adjust your calorie and macro targets
• Customize your dashboard (choose everything you want to see on your homescreen)
• Set up calorie and macro cycling (for example, have high- and low-carb days)
• Access an expanded recipe database and freely save any you like to your profile
• Follow any of the meal plans; they come with grocery lists to help with meal prepping
• Upload progress photos, log body metrics, and record body weight and fat

Lastly, Autopilot automatically updates your calories and macros as your weight, body fat, exercise habits, and other factors change.

Read our full review of the app.

RPDiet

Tier: FeastGood Approved

The RPDiet app comes from the team behind Renaissance Periodization, led by Dr. Mike Israetel, a competitive bodybuilder with a Ph.D. in exercise science. 

This app landed in the ‘FeastGood Approved’ tier because it doesn’t quite fit with the lighter, more limited tools, but it’s also not bad enough to be in the bottom tier. It’s a solid middle ground that earns our stamp of approval.

The sentence that best describes RPDiet is this:

The app is expensive but effective for people who value pure macro tracking and have serious bodybuilding aspirations. 

What’s perhaps most striking is that this app doesn’t allow you to track calories; it only tracks your macronutrients. Similar to MacroFactor, it adjusts your nutritional targets based on your progress, essentially working like a nutrition coach in your pocket. 

However, this app is geared more toward hardcore lifters because it’s less flexible and considers more factors to determine the best nutritional approach for you. Speaking of that, RPDiet looks at things like:

• Workout timing
• How difficult/demanding your workouts are
• How well you’re sleeping
• What’s your preferred meal frequency

It then provides specific nutritional targets for each meal, which is more rigid than most other apps. Additionally, the app takes meal adherence very seriously. At each meal, you’re prompted to select whether you’ve hit your macros or gone below or above the targets. 

It will calculate a rating to let you know how well you’re doing and will only update your nutritional targets if you score high adherence and accuracy.

What’s cool about RPDiet is that it labels specific meals as pre- and post-workout, helping you fuel well for optimal performance and recovery.

Read our full RPDiet app review.

Try The RP Diet App For 14-Days Free. This link also gives you 33% off your monthly subscription for 6 months if you decide to continue.

LifeSum

Tier: Decent for Most

As a nutrition-tracking app, LifeSum asks you a bunch of questions about your goals, experience, current weight, and more. It uses the information to estimate your calorie and macro needs and provides an actionable plan to help you achieve your goals.

LifeSum allows you to select your preferred rate of progression and automatically adjusts your daily calories. So, if you want to lose weight more quickly, it will recommend more aggressive calorie restriction; in contrast, if you want to gain weight faster, it will recommend a higher calorie intake. Of course, those recommendations are within reason.

The app has a rich library of pre-made meal plans you can browse and follow. These options include plans for various calorie intakes, as well as those suitable for specific dietary styles. 

Let’s say you want to lose weight and should eat 2,200 calories daily. LifeSum can create a meal plan for that goal and even make it diet-specific, such as keto. 

One drawback is that the initial calorie and macro targets tend to be inaccurate because LifeSum doesn’t ask about your activity level. This means you’re likely to be recommended lower nutritional targets than you need.

The good news is that you can adjust your calories and macros, which means the app is suitable if you have experience doing that. Otherwise, it would be better to go with another app from our list.

Another thing worth mentioning is that LifeSum has a rich food database with numerous verified options. Users can also add entries to the database, so we recommend only logging the entries with a checkmark. 

You can also browse the app’s rich recipe database. Each entry includes nutritional information, an ingredient list, and step-by-step preparation instructions.

Read our full review here.

*This link gets you 50% off the annual plan. No code is required.

Noom

Tier: Lightweight Tracking

Noom sets itself apart from most food apps by combining nutritional guidance with psychology and an emphasis on behavioral changes to help people lose weight in a sustainable and healthy way for good. 

Unlike a traditional food logger that asks a few questions, provides nutritional targets, and leaves you to figure out everything else, Noom has a more structured and holistic approach. 

The app helps educate you on proper nutrition, emphasizes the benefits of losing weight in a sustainable manner, and assists you in developing better habits and becoming more mindful of your food choices. 

One way Noom helps with this is by having you complete regular quizzes to learn about nutrition, exercise, and other aspects of healthy weight loss. 

Another unique aspect of Noom is that it recommends a calorie range rather than a specific target, which is more flexible. For example, you can have slightly more calories one day, and fewer on another. Not being bound to a strict target is liberating.

Like many other nutrition apps, Noom foods come with a food grade and an in-depth nutritional breakdown to help you choose the healthier options. That said, there is some controversy surrounding the food ratings in this app. 

Sometimes, seemingly similar foods (say, dairy, low-fat, similar calorie content) would get different ratings for no apparent reason. This can be confusing, particularly for beginners, and may lead some people to believe that certain foods are less healthy than others, despite being quite similar in nutritional value.

Read our full Noom review here.

Lose It

Tier: Decent for Most

Lose It resembles MyFitnessPal in a couple of key ways. First, it comes with a free but limited version. Second, it has an extensive food database – more on that in a moment.

The app’s free version is okay for basic tracking and can work for people who solely care about the essentials. It allows you to track your calorie intake and macronutrient ratio, which is a good start for any beginner.

However, the app’s premium version allows you to monitor a lot more, including each macronutrient separately, saturated fats, sodium, cholesterol, fiber, sugar, and water intake. A neat bar at the top displays your daily intake of a given nutrient and how close you are to the goal.

You can select a handful of nutrients to show up on your dashboard for easy monitoring. 

One neat feature in the app is the ability to tap on any nutrient and see a list of foods that contribute the most. For example, if you tap on protein, you will see a list of the protein sources you’ve most commonly consumed. 

Speaking of that, Lose It has a rich food database with many verified and unverified entries. We recommend using only verified entries, as they are more accurate and will lead to better calorie and macronutrient tracking.

Next, the app allows you to set various health and fitness goals. You can set goals for daily calorie and macro intake, micronutrients, water intake, exercise (for example, a daily step target), and even sleep. You can also set goals for body weight, body fat, and circumference measurements.

Lastly, Lose It can connect to a wide range of wearable devices like Apple Watch, Garmin, and Fitbit. It also integrates with popular apps such as Strava, RunKeeper, and MapMyFitness. 

Integrations are mostly straightforward. All you need to do is follow the on-screen instructions. By connecting the app to an external device or another app, you can track additional metrics, such as sleep quality and duration, calories burned, steps taken, and more.

Read our full Lose It app review.

Carbon Diet Coach

Tier: FeastGood Approved

Carbon Diet Coach (CDC) is an app created by Dr. Layne Norton––a well-known figure in the fitness industry. Layne holds a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences and is a two-time IPF World Champion. 

CDC is often compared to MacroFactor because of several similarities, including the built-in coaching capabilities and detailed questionnaire during sign-up.

To start, CDC asks a bunch of questions to get to know you and provides initial calorie and macro targets. It then monitors your progress and adherence to determine when and how to adjust those nutritional targets. 

Like most apps, you can select losing, gaining, or maintaining weight as goals, but there is another option not found in most other apps: doing a reverse diet. This can be a good option after a fat loss phase when you want to increase your calorie intake without gaining excessive body fat. 

CDC does a weekly check-in to see how you’re doing and if you’ve consistently stuck to your meals and nutritional targets. If you have, the app will determine whether it should update your calorie and macro targets based on your progress. If you haven’t, it will maintain the status quo for another week.

The app has a big and verified food database. Each entry comes with an in-depth breakdown, and you can even find some foods from specific brands to help with food logging. 

That said, while great overall, CDC comes with a couple of drawbacks. First, there is no free version or free trial. So, if you want to use it, you will need to pay. 

Second, while consistency matters, CDC only updates your nutritional targets if you’ve been close to perfect with your adherence. This means you don’t have much flexibility and might end up feeling stressed for not sticking to all of your meals throughout the week.

Read our full review here.

MyMacros+

Tier: Lightweight Tracking

MyMacros+ is specifically created for the ‘if it fits my macros’ crowd. Unlike some apps that try to balance food tracking with education and healthy nutrition, MyMacros+ prioritizes tracking protein, carbs, and fats.

That said, MyMacros+ also displays your daily calorie target, calorie intake, and the calorie content of foods and meals.

The app doesn’t have a free version, but its monthly subscription is significantly cheaper than most other apps and provides almost full access to the app’s features. You can access the food database, log meals in multiple ways, scan barcodes and nutritional labels, and adjust your macro targets.

MyMacros+ offers a premium tier ($9.99/month) that includes a 14-day free trial. With it, you get access to Macro Coach––a feature that helps you calculate your macronutrient targets based on your current stats, activity level, and goals. It can also adjust your calories and macros every week based on your progress.

What’s cool about MyMacros+ is that your macronutrients are shown clearly on the homescreen, as well as for any foods you browse in the library or meals you log for the day.

You’re also free to create as many meals as you want instead of being restricted to the three meals plus one snack schedule that’s been standardized in so many nutritional trackers. 

That said, one drawback of MyMacros+ is that the food database is not as rich (despite the claim of over five million entries).

Read our full review here.

SnapCalorie

Tier: Not Worth Your Calories

SnapCalorie is a nutrition app that revolves around one key feature: logging your meals by taking a photo. We see this feature in many apps these days, including MacroFactor and MyFitnessPal. 

The problem with this feature on SnapCalorie is that it isn’t accurate enough. It frequently misidentifies foods and inaccurately judges serving sizes, leading to poor estimates that you need to correct before logging each meal. 

So, while good on paper, this feature ends up wasting your time because you need to take a photo, review the estimates, and edit details about it. 

That said, SnapCalorie offers alternative options for logging meals, including scanning a barcode or label and manually describing the meal. Describing each meal is quite helpful because the app lets you select foods one by one and adjust the serving size. 

One interesting feature about SnapCalorie is Snappy, a chatbot powered by ChatGPT. It’s useful because it can accurately answer nutrition-related questions and help you make better choices.

Overall, SnapCalorie is not terrible and does show promise. However, given how limited it currently is and how its main selling point, logging meals by taking photos, is not nearly as refined as advertised, we’ve determined that the app can’t be positioned higher than the ‘Not Worth Your Calories’ tier.

Read our full review here.

Fooducate

Tier: Lightweight Tracking

Fooducate is not among the popular nutritional trackers, but it’s a good option for beginners who are okay with basic functionality and don’t want to pay a monthly fee. The free option can be enough to get started.

Despite its name, Fooducate doesn’t offer much in the way of health or nutrition education, apart from some articles you could access in the app. It also lacks meal plans and recipes.

So, if you care about these, look at another option on our list. 

That said, while not off to a great start, Fooducate is good for what it’s meant to do: allow you to track your calories and macronutrients (to an extent). You can also export your diary, which is neat if you want to send updates to your coach.

Additionally, the app provides a daily grade based on your food choices. This can help you become more mindful of what you eat and strive to make healthier choices.

Also, unlike most nutritional apps, Fooducate has a community aspect. You can follow others, see updates, add comments, and leave likes. This is a cool way to support one another and add a layer of accountability.

That said, a few negatives worth mentioning include:

• Calories burned through exercise are automatically added to your daily total; there’s no option to turn this off
• Initial calorie and macro targets are not accurate
• Adjusting your macronutrient targets doesn’t update your calories, which it should
• The food library includes user entries (those without a food grade); try to steer clear of those when logging

Read our full review.

FatSecret

Tier: Decent for Most

FatSecret has a comprehensive list of features, although its interface feels somewhat cluttered and can be overwhelming when first installed. That said, it can be straightforward to figure out if you want to use it as a basic nutrition tracker and don’t care about all the features.

Speaking of that, you have your main meals and a snack, as well as options to create custom meals. You can also log your water intake, physical activity, and sleep. 

FatSecret also allows you to select a specific diet style, such as vegetarian or keto. You can also set up a fasting protocol if you’re a fan of time-restricted feeding. There’s an album feature that allows you to take photos of your meals and store them in a gallery. 

The calendar feature allows you to set specific macro and calorie targets for each day of the week. This gives you the option to do calorie or carb cycling, which can be helpful if you follow a demanding workout plan and need more carbs or protein on certain days.

Additionally, the initial calorie and macronutrient targets are accurate, but you can also adjust them as needed.

Logging meals is relatively easy thanks to the rich food library and intuitive search bar. The barcode scanner is also effective, as it accurately scans most products (although it may occasionally come up blank). 

That said, one drawback of the food library is that you can’t tell which entries are verified and which aren’t. This means you can sometimes log entries that aren’t super accurate, which could skew your daily calories and macronutrients.

Read our full review here.

Foodvisor

Tier: FeastGood Approved

Foodvisor offers a well-rounded blend of tracking, education, one-on-one coaching, and accountability to support you in achieving your goals. 

The app provides accurate calorie and macronutrient targets once you complete its detailed questionnaire. This allows you to get started on the right foot and not worry about whether your nutritional targets are suitable for your goals or not. 

On top of that, Foodvisor gives you access to a nutrition coach – a real person, not an AI-powered chatbot. You can ask all sorts of questions, and the coach will provide you with tailored tips that specifically address your unique situation.

Similar to other apps on our list, Foodvisor comes with a rich recipe library with 300+ entries, each with information on:

• Required ingredients
• How to prepare
• Nutritional value per serving

You can also find a variety of educational resources (short articles) inside the app on numerous topics, including diets, weight loss, lifestyle, workout plans, and more.

Also, Foodvisor allows you to log your exercise activity in the app. You can look for almost any activity, and the app will automatically calculate the calories burned based on the intensity and your body weight. By default, the app adds the calories burned to your daily total, but you can turn this off.

Lastly, Foodvisor offers meal logging through photo taking. The feature works well enough, but there is room for improvement. You need the proper lighting and angles for the app to recognize the foods on your plate, but it can still miss or misinterpret foods. You can always edit an entry before recording it in your diary, though.

As a whole, Foodvisor offers a unique blend of education, support, accountability, and tracking capabilities.

Read our full Foodvisor review.

Avatar Nutrition

Tier: Decent for Most

The Avatar Nutrition app claims to have the coaching capabilities of a nutritionist. Once you complete the app’s detailed questionnaire, it provides calorie and macronutrient targets that take into account your weight, age, sex, activity level, and other essential details. 

The initial nutrition targets are pretty accurate, but what’s even better is that Avatar Nutrition continually adjusts your targets as you make progress.

Additionally, unlike most other apps (apart from Foodvisor), this app offers the option to speak with a nutrition coach for guidance and accountability. 

You can also select to have more calories, carbs, and fats on some days (for example, when having your most challenging workouts of the week), and the app will automatically adjust your nutritional targets for the remainder of the week. 

What’s also cool is that the app provides a list of suggested foods for each macronutrient, which is extremely helpful. For example, let’s say you have 50 grams of protein left to eat for the day. Avatar Nutrition will list some foods you can eat to hit your daily target. 

Speaking of that, the app leaves some room by providing macro ranges instead of fixed targets. That way, so long as you’re close enough, you’ve done a good job and don’t need to feel guilty. 

While that might not be ideal for a competitive bodybuilder during contest prep, it provides freedom and flexibility for the average person, allowing them to work toward their goals without becoming overly obsessed with every gram of food.

Additionally, similar to a handful of other apps, you can upload and store progress photos to view visual changes and compare them over time. And, similar to Carbon Diet Coach, this app allows you to set reverse dieting as a goal.

Overall, Avatar Nutrition is a great nutrition tracker that offers a unique blend of helpful features. 

Read our full review here.

Macrostax

Tier: Not Worth Your Calories

Macrostax is one of the least-known apps on our list and, unfortunately, falls in the bottom tier. However, let’s start with a couple of positives.

First, food logging is not as bad as you might expect from an app in the lowest tier. The food library is okay, and you get multiple ways to find foods and log them in your diary. We can’t say the experience is that much different from other nutritional trackers.

Second, the app prioritizes macro tracking by displaying your protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake clearly on the home screen. This bold appearance is excellent if you want to look at your daily nutrition at a glance.

Third, the app features a decent recipe library, allowing you to search for various keywords, such as “gluten-free,” “cook-free,” “high-protein,” and “low-carb.” The app will bring up various cool recipes that match your dietary preferences.

Now, for some of the bad:

• The initial calories and macros recommended tend to be lower than what you’d need
• You can’t adjust your calorie and macro targets
• There’s no automatic calorie or macro adjustment based on progress
• The food library search could be more refined; it sometimes brings up unrelated foods in searches

To top it all off, we initially reviewed the app in early 2023. Returning to it now, we hoped that some of the early issues with the app had been resolved. Unfortunately, most still appear to be present, and the app doesn’t seem to be receiving the development it sorely needs.

Read our original review here.

My Diet Coach

Tier: Lightweight Tracking

My Diet Coach is a nutrition tracker designed to help with weight loss or gain. Like most apps, you complete an onboarding survey for the app to get to know you and recommend your initial nutrition targets. You can even select your preferred rate of progression and diet style.

One significant drawback is that the app recommends fewer calories and less protein than you would typically consume in a day. You can change those manually and even select a preferred macronutrient percentage split, but that means the app can only work for experienced people, not beginners.

What’s cool is that your daily calorie and macronutrient targets are displayed front and center, allowing you to quickly see where you’re at for the day. 

Food logging is also intuitive, and the search field works well. The food library is extensive, and each entry includes a detailed nutritional breakdown. You can create and store recipes, save your favorite meals to reuse, and log foods more quickly from the ‘Recent’ tab. 

The barcode scanner also works well and accurately finds the nutritional information for most products, further assisting with food logging, especially when on the go.

The app also allows you to track your water intake, sync with Apple Health, and even log exercise activity. One drawback is that calories burned through exercise are added to your daily total (perhaps to compensate for the initially low calorie recommendations), and you can’t seem to turn it off.

There isn’t much else to say about the app. It’s fairly basic but functional, with a pleasant interface and good color scheme. 

However, given the functionality of other nutritional trackers and more accurate calorie and macro targets, we are reluctant to recommend My Diet Coach.

Read our full review here.

BetterMe

Tier: Not Worth Your Calories

Unlike other apps on our list, BetterMe combines the roles of nutrition coach, health coach, and personal trainer into one. It works as a nutrition tracker, workout logger, and an educational resource, designed to promote a healthier relationship with food and help resolve body image issues through learning modules. 

You can access various workout options and log each session inside the app. BetterMe can even recommend a personalized workout plan tailored to your goals and preferences. Each session comes with follow-along videos, making everything super convenient.

The thorough onboarding questionnaire also helps the app better understand your situation by asking various health and lifestyle questions. It can even cater to specific needs, such as being pregnant, recovering from an injury, or dealing with a chronic ache. 

That said, while the onboarding process feels detailed, I wasn’t happy with my initial calorie and macronutrient targets. I thought they were pretty low (even if I was interested in rapid fat loss, which I didn’t claim to be), so I had to adjust everything manually.

As with other apps, this is a red flag, indicating that the app may not be suitable for a beginner who hasn’t previously tracked calories and macronutrients. 

I also found the food logging process to be more challenging than with other apps. For instance, one drawback was that I could only log certain foods in ounces and not in grams. Also, I found the nutritional information on numerous entries to be inaccurate––another red flag. 

Paired with the high subscription cost, the lack of a monthly option (you can only subscribe for three months or longer), and the additional payments required for certain features, we believe that BetterMe is simply not worth it.

Read our full review here.

Asana Rebel

Tier: Not Worth Your Calories

Unlike other apps on our list, Asana Rebel is highly specific, targeting primarily yogis who follow a vegan diet. 

The app focuses on yoga and includes an introductory program to help you get up to speed if you’re not experienced. You can then access follow-along workouts, which mostly serve as visual demonstrations and don’t have detailed instructions.

Apart from yoga, you can engage in other activities, mainly revolving around bodyweight movements designed to improve your cardio, flexibility, and strength. You can pick from various workouts of different lengths, depending on what you have the time for. 

Now, the nutritional side of Asana Rebel is not as impressive. It consists of various plant-based recipes, but there’s little else. You can also access nutritional tips to eat healthier and avoid certain foods, but there’s nothing super specific.

Read our full review here.

8Fit

Tier: Lightweight Tracking

8Fit is one of the most popular fitness apps out there. And since it offers workouts and meal plans, we had to test it. 

The first thing that stands out about 8Fit is that this isn’t just a nutrition or exercise app. Rather, it guides you in both areas to help you achieve your goals – whether that’s muscle gain, fat loss, or general fitness and health improvements.

First, the app starts by gathering information about the user’s goals, weight, activity level, preferred workout frequency, dietary preferences, and restrictions. It then provides personalized workout and meal suggestions. 

These are available to trainees of all levels, regardless of their access to workout equipment. You can pick sessions based on duration and even opt for equipment-free workouts if you exercise at home or outside. 

8Fit also provides personalized meal plans based on your dietary preferences and restrictions. You can select meal plans for a specific diet style (for example, paleo or keto) and even exclude specific ingredients. That way, the app will only recommend the most relevant meals.

That said, 8Fit’s approach is not what you’d expect from the average nutrition app. While it offers guidance through customizable meal plans, it doesn’t track your calories or macronutrients, which can be a drawback for anyone who prefers a more flexible dietary approach, such as if it fits your macros (IIFYM).

Read our full review here.