MyFitnessPal alternatives

Calorie and macro tracker with a food database and barcode scanning.

5 of its 8 core features can be rebuilt with AI. Here is one, working, below.

They makeRevenue estimate on Sensor Tower: $12M a month
You pay: $80 a year
AI can rebuild: 5 of 8 core features

Try it

Visual demo only. Copy the prompt below to get the app.

Build it yourself

Real files on your machine, a real database, and it is yours. This one carries the interface as well — the layout, the colours and the shape of the real app, read off its own screens.

Each opens with the prompt loaded and waiting — nothing is sent until you press enter. It is copied at the same time, in case the app is not installed.

Build me a local calorie and macro tracker I own, to replace MyFitnessPal.

- A web app I run on my own machine: a single Node process serving one page, data in a SQLite file next to it.
- Log food by typing a description. Send it to an LLM (key from .env) and get calories, protein, carbs and fat back as structured JSON, then show the estimate for me to edit before it saves.
- Barcode lookup against the Open Food Facts API, which is free and needs no key. Cache every result locally so the same product is never looked up twice.
- Store my corrections as a personal foods table and check it before calling the model, so the app gets cheaper and more accurate the longer I use it.
- Also accept a photo: send it to a vision model and estimate the same four numbers.
- A day view with running totals against targets, a 90-day history page, and a weight trend with a moving average.
- Saved meals: mark any entry a favourite and re-log it with one click.
- One command to export the whole database to CSV.
- Runs on localhost only. No accounts, no telemetry. The only thing leaving the machine is the model call and the barcode lookup.
- Skip: a mobile app, Apple Health sync, step tracking, and any account system.
- Include a README with setup, where to put the API key, and where the database lives.

## Look and feel

MyFitnessPal's own — strong blue on white, one large ring for the day's calories, tidy food rows, numbers dominating the layout. Generous spacing, clear hierarchy, big tap targets, phone-readable type, system font. Keep the text dark enough to read at a glance: the softness of a palette belongs to the shapes and the fills, never to the words. Nothing I need to read — dates, numbers, labels — in pale grey on white.

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Feature by feature

Every feature, whether AI can rebuild it, and what you would be signing up to keep running if you did. The paid app does that last column for you, and that is most of what the money buys.

Feature	Core	AI can rebuild	You'd maintain
Log food from a searchable databaseTyping food and getting numbers back is easy. Fourteen million foods that are actually correct is not.	Yes	Partly	You maintain the food list
Barcode scanningThe scanning is trivial. It needs a barcode-to-nutrition database behind it, and the free one, Open Food Facts, is thinner on packaged brands.	Yes	Partly	Free database, thinner on brands
Photo and voice loggingWorks, but a model has to look at every photo. That recurring cost is the part you cannot make free.	Yes	Partly	Costs money per photo
Daily calorie total against a goal	Yes	Yes	Nothing
Macro tracking: protein, carbs, fat	Yes	Yes	Nothing
Calorie and macro goals	Yes	Yes	Nothing
Food log history	Yes	Yes	Nothing
Weight logging and trendNot mentioned anywhere in the App Store listing, despite being one of the most-used screens in the app. We found it in the menu.	Yes	Yes	Nothing
Saved meals and recipes	No	Yes	Nothing
Water tracking	No	Yes	Nothing
GLP-1 dose logging and reminders	No	Yes	Only while the page is open
AI nutrition coachEvery question costs a model call.	No	Partly	Costs money per question
Step and exercise syncNeeds a real app on your phone with motion permissions you have to grant.	No	No	Not possible on the web
Apple Health integrationOnly an installed app can read and write Health data.	No	No	Not possible on the web
Friends and communityOther people are the feature.	No	No	You would need the people

What you give up

a food database with fourteen million entries that other people keep correct
barcode coverage for supermarket brands
step and exercise sync from your phone or watch
Apple Health, and the friends who keep you honest

Why people still pay

The tracker is a spreadsheet with a nice face. What costs money is the food database, and that is fifteen years of other people's corrections. You are not paying for the app, you are paying for everyone else's typing.

Or use one somebody already built

Free and open source. No prompt, no building, no subscription.

Cronometer: A genuinely usable free tier with better micronutrient data than MyFitnessPal, from lab-analysed sources rather than crowd entries. (web, ios, android)
Open Food Facts: The free, open food and barcode database. It is the ingredient rather than the app, and it is what you would point your own build at. (web, ios, android)
Waistline: An offline calorie counter with barcode scanning built on Open Food Facts. No account, no subscription. (android)

Other apps people are freeing

Questions

Can AI really replace MyFitnessPal?: 5 of its 8 core features, yes. The demo above is what one prompt produced. What it cannot do is on this page too.
What does MyFitnessPal cost?: About $80 a year on the Premium plan. Logging, macros and weight tracking are free. Barcode scanning, meal scanning and voice logging are Premium.
Is there a free alternative to MyFitnessPal?: Yes: Cronometer, Open Food Facts, Waistline. They are listed below, and they are somebody else's finished work rather than yours.