MyCalorieCoach: a Cronometer alternative for people who want coaching, not a lab report
Cronometer is the accuracy app. Its data is curated rather than crowd-sourced, and it tracks over eighty micronutrients, which nothing else in consumer software comes close to. That accuracy has a shape: you log carefully, then you read a report. MyCalorieCoach asks for a sentence and answers with what to do next. $29.99 a year against $59.99 for Gold.
Price, side by side
MyCalorieCoach
$29.99 / year
or $9.99 a month. 14 day free trial, the whole app.
Founding price, locked for 3 years against a standard annual plan of $83.99.
Cronometer
$59.99 / year
or $10.99 a month. Free trial length not stated.
The annual plan works out at about $4.99 a month. There is a genuinely usable free tier with the full food database. Cronometer does not advertise a free trial for Gold on its pricing page.
That is $30 a year less, every year.
Prices in USD. App Store prices vary by territory, and several apps in this category run frequent price tests, so check before you buy. Cronometer price checked on 2026-09-01: Cronometer Gold pricing, published by Cronometer.
MyCalorieCoach vs Cronometer
Including the rows we lose. A table one side wins ten to nothing is an advert, not a comparison.
| MyCalorieCoach | Cronometer | |
|---|---|---|
| How you log a meal | Say it, type it, or photograph it | Search and log, ideally by weight |
| Conversational coach | Yes, it is the whole product | No |
| Tells you what to eat next | Suggestions sized to what is left today | No |
| Micronutrient tracking | Protein, carbs, fat, fibre and water only | Over eighty nutrients, and the best data anywhere |
| Data quality | Grounded per item in code, estimates tagged | Curated and verified, not crowd-sourced |
| Non-Western and home-cooked dishes | Any cuisine, nothing to fall out of | Strong on ingredients, you build the dish yourself |
| Foods it will never ask you to cut | You name them, it plans around them | Not a concept in the app |
| Free tier | No, a 14 day free trial then paid | Yes, and it is generous |
| Cheapest paid plan | $29.99 a year | $59.99 a year |
| Android | iPhone only at launch | Yes |
Why people go looking for a Cronometer alternative
It shows the gap and leaves you to close it
It will show you that you are short on magnesium and 40g down on protein, in a chart, accurately. Which of the things already in your kitchen fixes that tonight is not a question it answers.
Accuracy costs effort
The data quality is real, and you buy it by weighing and logging carefully every day. A fair trade, if you enjoy that sort of thing. It is also the exact part most people quit.
Curated data means missing dishes
A verified database is superb for ingredients and thin for a plate of rice and three curries as your aunt makes it. You end up building recipes by hand.
Some food is not up for negotiation
No tracker has a concept of a food that is off the table. If the morning coffee and the Friday pizza are fixed, that is information a plan should be built around.
Where Cronometer is the better choice
If any of these matter more to you than the rest of this page, stay where you are. It is a good app and we would rather you kept using it than paid us for the wrong fit.
- The nutrition data is the best in consumer software, curated rather than crowd-sourced, and we do not pretend otherwise.
- Over eighty micronutrients. If you are managing a deficiency or a clinical diet, this is the app.
- The free tier is genuinely usable, which ours is not, because we do not have one.
- It runs on Android and the web, and it has been trusted by dietitians for years.
Common questions
- Is MyCalorieCoach as accurate as Cronometer?
- On micronutrients, no, and it is not close. Cronometer curates its data and tracks over eighty nutrients. We track calories, protein, carbs, fat, fibre and water, ground each logged item in code, and tag anything that is an estimate rather than presenting a guess as a measurement.
- How much does Cronometer Gold cost?
- $10.99 a month, or $59.99 a year, which works out at about $4.99 a month. There is a free tier with the full food database. Checked on 2026-09-01 against their own pricing page.
- Which is better, Cronometer or MyCalorieCoach?
- Different tools. If you want to see exactly what you ate down to the micronutrient, Cronometer. If you want something that decides what you should eat tonight around the food you refuse to cut, this. People managing a medical diet should use Cronometer.
- Does MyCalorieCoach track micronutrients?
- Not beyond fibre. Adding a full micronutrient panel would mean building the curated database we deliberately do not have, and Cronometer already does that better than we would.
- Is there a free version of MyCalorieCoach?
- No. There is a 14 day free trial with the whole app, and then it is $29.99 a year. An AI coach costs money every time you talk to it, so a free tier would mean either a worse coach or selling your data, and we would rather do neither.
Lose weight without losing your food.
14 days free, then $29.99 for the year. We are onboarding founding members by hand before launch.
Join the founding waitlistNot sure of your number yet? Try the free calorie calculator.