MyCalorieCoach: a MyFitnessPal alternative that talks back
MyFitnessPal is a food diary with a very large database and a search bar sitting on top of it. MyCalorieCoach is a coach you talk to: say what you ate in a sentence, or point the camera at the plate, and it finds the deficit around the food you refuse to give up. MyFitnessPal is genuinely good at logging. The question is whether logging is the part you keep quitting.
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.
MyFitnessPal
$79.99 / year
or $19.99 a month. Free trial length not stated.
MyFitnessPal has a free tier, but barcode scanning moved behind Premium in 2022, which is the single most common reason people go looking for something else. Premium+ is $99.99 a year.
That is $50 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. MyFitnessPal price checked on 2026-09-01: MyFitnessPal pricing, as reported.
MyCalorieCoach vs MyFitnessPal
Including the rows we lose. A table one side wins ten to nothing is an advert, not a comparison.
| MyCalorieCoach | MyFitnessPal | |
|---|---|---|
| How you log a meal | Say it, type it, or photograph it | Search, scroll, pick an entry |
| Conversational coach | Yes, it is the whole product | An AI coach added in 2026 |
| Non-Western and home-cooked dishes | Any cuisine, nothing to fall out of | Strong on packaged food, thin on mixed plates |
| Foods it will never ask you to cut | You name them, it plans around them | Not a concept in the app |
| Barcode scanning | Included, plus whole-basket scanning | Premium only since 2022 |
| Photo logging | Included, and every number grounded in code | Premium only |
| Apple Health sync | Not yet | Yes |
| Android | iPhone only at launch | Yes |
| Available today | Founding waitlist, launching soon | Yes, for over a decade |
| Cheapest paid plan | $29.99 a year | $79.99 a year |
Why people go looking for a MyFitnessPal alternative
The search bar is the work
Every meal is a search, then a scroll past a screenful of near-identical entries for the same chicken curry, then a guess at the portion. Fine for a week. Week three is where most people quietly stop.
Barcode scanning went behind the paywall
Free barcode scanning was the reason a lot of people opened MyFitnessPal in the first place. It moved behind Premium in 2022, and the free tier has felt thinner ever since.
The database is only as good as your food
Crowd-sourced entries are superb at a barcode on a cereal box. They are thin at a plate of rice with three curries around it, because nobody ever entered that plate, and you cannot search for something nobody entered.
Counting is where it stops
It will tell you at 9pm that you are 300 over, which is true and about eight hours late. Nothing in it suggests a dinner that still fits, or mentions that your protein has been short since Monday.
Where MyFitnessPal 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.
- It is shipping today, on iPhone and Android, and has been for over a decade.
- The packaged-food database is enormous. If most of what you eat carries a barcode, nothing here beats it.
- It syncs with Apple Health, Garmin, Fitbit and a long list of other apps. We do not yet.
- It has a free tier. We do not: 14 days free, then a paid subscription.
Common questions
- Is there a free MyFitnessPal alternative?
- Yes, several, and most of them run the same search-and-log loop with ads bolted on. MyCalorieCoach is not one of them: $29.99 a year after a 14 day trial, which is under half what MyFitnessPal Premium costs. We would rather charge for the thing than sell your food diary.
- How much cheaper is MyCalorieCoach than MyFitnessPal Premium?
- $29.99 a year against $79.99 a year, so $50 a year less, and the founding price is locked for three years. Prices are in USD and vary by App Store territory. MyFitnessPal price checked on 2026-09-01.
- Can I import my MyFitnessPal data?
- No, and deliberately. There is no database to import into: you tell the coach what you eat, and it learns your foods and your portions from your corrections over the first week or two.
- Does MyCalorieCoach have barcode scanning like MyFitnessPal Premium?
- Yes, including scanning a whole basket of items in one go, and it is not a separate tier. Photo logging is included too.
- Is MyFitnessPal still worth it in 2026?
- For packaged food, Android and Apple Health, yes. It is still the most complete diary there is. Quit it twice already? Then the logging loop is the likely culprit rather than your discipline, and a different shape of app is worth a fortnight of your time.
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.