Free Alternatives to MyFitnessPal Premium in 2026

Title: Free Alternatives to MyFitnessPal Premium in 2026

You don't want to pay $79.99 a year to scan a barcode. Reasonable. Here are the apps that do it for nothing, ranked by what you actually get, with the tradeoffs stated rather than buried.

We make a paid app, Stride, and it isn't in the top of this list because it isn't free. If your requirement is zero dollars, the honest answer is one of the first four options here.

What MyFitnessPal's free tier still does

Worth establishing the baseline before you switch, because the free tier isn't dead.

You still get food logging, exercise logging, the full 20-million-item database, basic calorie and macro totals, weight tracking, device connections, and the community. That's a functional calorie counter.

What you've lost is barcode scanning, which moved behind the paywall in 2023, custom gram targets for protein, carbs and fat, and an ad-free experience. Ads sit inside the logging flow, which is the most irritating possible placement.

If the only thing you miss is scanning, one of these will fix it for free.

Cronometer, free tier

The best free option for most people, and it isn't close.

Barcode scanning is included on free. The database is curated from laboratory sources rather than open crowdsourcing, so the numbers are substantially more reliable than MyFitnessPal's. It tracks around 80 micronutrients properly instead of leaving most fields empty. Weight, exercise and biometrics are all in there.

The free tier carries ads and holds back some features, with Gold at $59.99 a year if you want them. But the free version is a serious, complete tracker rather than a trial.

The tradeoff is the interface. It's dense and data-forward, built by and for people who like numbers. If you found MyFitnessPal fiddly, this will feel worse before it feels better.

Open Food Facts

Free, open source, run by a non-profit. There is no premium tier, no upsell, and no company trying to monetize you, because there isn't a company.

Every entry shows its source and how complete it is, which is more transparency than any commercial app offers. Scanning works. The data is community-maintained but openly so.

The tradeoffs are real. It's closer to a food database with a scanner than a full tracking app, so goal setting, trends and coaching are thin or absent. US product coverage is noticeably weaker than European coverage. If you eat a lot of American packaged food, you'll hit gaps.

Best for: people who mainly want to look up what's in a product and log lightly.

YAZIO, free tier

Scanning is available on free, and the design is the cleanest of the bunch. It's genuinely pleasant to use, which matters more than people admit, because the app you don't mind opening is the one you keep opening.

PRO is $47.90 a year, the cheapest paid tier among the mainstream apps, so if you eventually do want to pay, this is the least painful step up.

The US database is thinner than MyFitnessPal's. That's the main catch.

Lose It, free tier

The most familiar landing if you want something that feels like MyFitnessPal. Similar layout, similar logic, decent free tier with scanning.

Worth knowing that Lose It raised its own Premium to $79.99 a year in 2026, matching MyFitnessPal exactly. The whole category is moving the same direction, so don't switch here expecting a permanently cheaper home.

FatSecret

Often overlooked and genuinely free, including scanning, with an ad-supported model and no aggressive paywall. The database is decent and there's a community. Less polished than the others, but it does the job and doesn't nag you.

Apple Health or Samsung Health

Free and already on your phone. Neither is a real food tracker, and food logging in both is minimal to nonexistent depending on version and region. But if all you want is weight, steps and activity in one place without a subscription, you may not need a nutrition app at all. Plenty of people log food because an app told them to, not because it was the thing they needed.

What free will never get you

Be clear-eyed about the ceiling here.

Free apps monetize with ads, with data, or by converting you eventually. That's the deal, and it's a fair one as long as you know it. Cronometer and Open Food Facts are the most honest about it.

What you won't find at zero dollars is anything that interprets your data. Free apps record. They show you charts. Every app that turns logs into specific personalized guidance, or connects your food to your medications or your bloodwork, or puts a human in the loop, charges money, because the underlying cost of doing that per user is real and ongoing.

So the question isn't only which free app to pick. It's whether recording is the thing you need.

The one reason to reconsider paying

If you're reading a free-alternatives article, you've decided price is the constraint, and for most people that's correct. A calorie counter is a commodity and you shouldn't pay much for one.

But there's a specific reader who lands here for the wrong reason: you've tracked on and off for years, nothing much has changed, and you're shopping for a cheaper version of the thing that hasn't been working. In that case the price was never the problem. You've been getting a record of what happened when what you needed was a decision about what to do.

That's what we built Stride for. It's $10 a month, there's no free tier, and it logs food by photo, voice or barcode while also holding your medications, supplements, sleep, weight and lab results, with an AI coach that reads all of it together. If you take pills daily, or there's a lab value you're trying to move, it's a different category of tool than anything on this page.

If that's not you, take Cronometer's free tier and don't spend another thought on it. It's excellent and it costs nothing.

Try Tracking with Stride

If you are ready for a simpler way to view your overall health picture, give Stride a try. The app makes it easy to log your meals, activity, and daily habits while keeping all your nutrition estimates organized in one place. It is a straightforward, supportive tool designed to help you stay consistent with your routine.