Best Calorie Tracking Apps in 2026: 9 Apps Ranked for Hitting Your TDEE Target

Quick picks

• One app for a TDEE target, free: PlateLens.
• Every vitamin and mineral in view: Cronometer.
• Targets that adjust themselves each week, paid: MacroFactor.
• The gentlest start: Lose It!.
• Eating out at chains most days: MyFitnessPal.
• Fasting plus calories: Yazio. A plain free diary: FatSecret. A plan to follow: Lifesum. Keto: Carb Manager.

Why the app matters once you have a number

A TDEE figure answers one question: how much does my body burn on an average day? Turning that into results takes a second step, eating close to a target for weeks at a time, and that is where most plans fall apart. People are poor judges of their own intake. In a well-known 1992 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, participants who believed they were eating very little were in fact eating about twice what they reported. A systematic review of self-monitoring in weight loss found the same pattern from the other side: people who logged their food more consistently lost more weight.

So the app is not a gadget. It is the tool that tells you whether the number from the TDEE calculator is the number you are actually eating.

How we ranked them

We judged each app as a companion to a calorie target someone already has, not as a diet program. Five things decided the order, the first two weighted most because they decide whether you keep logging:

1. Logging speed. How many taps does a normal meal take? Photo, voice and barcode logging all count here.
2. The free tier. What you actually get without paying, and whether it expires.
3. Targets. Can you enter your own calorie and protein goals, and does the app make them easy to see through the day?
4. Food data. Are entries verified or lab-sourced, or built by users with duplicates and typos?
5. Price of the upgrade, at the list prices on each maker’s site, checked October 2026.

The 9 best calorie tracking apps

1. PlateLens — best overall

On day one you type in the target from your TDEE result — calories plus protein, carbohydrate and fat — and log whichever way is quickest at that moment: a photo of the plate, a barcode, a typed search or a sentence spoken into the phone. Every route ends in the same diary, and the diary draws on a verified catalogue of more than 1.2 million checked foods, about 820,000 packaged products with barcodes and 45,000 restaurant dishes, rather than entries any user can add. If a photo guesses a portion wrong, you open the meal and fix the ingredient or the grams.

A few weeks in, the tools that matter for a TDEE target take over. The adaptive target compares what you log with your weight trend and moves the calorie goal so it keeps fitting. The AI coach answers questions like “how do I get 40 grams of protein into dinner?” using your own diary. And with 82+ nutrients tracked, you can see whether fibre or iron is falling short while you cut.

Why it ranks above Cronometer and MacroFactor for most people. Cronometer has deeper micronutrient data, but its photo and voice logging are part of the $59.99 Gold plan; on PlateLens they are free, and for a calorie target, speed of logging matters more than a 95th nutrient. MacroFactor’s weekly adjustments are excellent, but it costs $71.99 a year from the first day, while PlateLens’s adaptive target is on the free plan.

What free means here. Every feature is on the free plan, with no end date and no card: all four ways of logging, the web app, the coach, the adaptive target, blood-glucose logging, a fasting timer and the 3D body scan described below. Premium, $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month, raises the daily allowance of AI photo logs (three a day on free) and coach messages (five a day); typed and barcode logging are unlimited either way. The diary is the same on iPhone, Android and the web, syncs both ways with Apple Health and Health Connect, and can be exported in full at any time.

Best for

Anyone eating to a calorie target, from first-timers to lifters

Free tier

Every feature, no expiry, no card

Paid

$34.99/yr or $9.99/mo

2. Cronometer — best for micronutrients

Cronometer is built for people who care about what is in their food beyond calories and macros. Its makers say curated laboratory data lets a single food show up to 95 nutrients and compounds, and the free diary tracks all of them, with ads. Gold, at $59.99 a year, removes the ads and adds Crono Coach, an AI assistant that turns your logged data into guidance, along with photo and voice logging. Logging is slower than in photo-first apps because the database favours precise lab entries over branded shortcuts.

Best for: vegans, people managing a deficiency and anyone who wants a full vitamin and mineral picture.

3. MacroFactor — best for adaptive targets

MacroFactor estimates your energy expenditure from what you log and what you weigh, then rewrites your calorie and macro targets each week. That makes it the closest app to a running TDEE estimate, and it rewards people who log every day and weigh in regularly. There is no free tier: plans cost $11.99 a month or $71.99 a year.

Because its targets come from your own data, it is forgiving of a starting estimate that was off: after a few weeks of weigh-ins it settles on your real expenditure. The flip side is that it needs those weigh-ins and complete logs to work well, and gaps make the estimate wobble.

Best for: experienced trackers who want the targets to move with them.

4. Lose It! — best for beginners

Lose It! turns a goal weight into one daily calorie budget and keeps the interface encouraging. Barcode scanning is free, Snap It speeds up photo logging, and meal planning is one of its strengths. Premium ($39.99 a year) adds detailed nutrient reports and other extras. Its food entries list fewer nutrients than the top three.

Weekly summaries and streaks keep beginners going, and the free version covers everything you need to learn what your usual meals add up to.

Best for: people tracking for the first time who want a simple daily number.

5. MyFitnessPal — best for restaurant meals

MyFitnessPal’s food list is the largest, built by its community over many years, and it covers more restaurant chains than any other app here. That size cuts both ways: you will often find several versions of the same food with different numbers, so check the one you pick. Barcode scanning now sits in Premium, which at $79.99 a year is the most expensive plan in this list.

It also connects with a long list of fitness apps and devices, so steps and workouts flow in without typing. If you use that, make sure exercise calories are not being added back to a TDEE-based budget.

Best for: people who eat out often and want chain menus to hand.

6. Yazio — best for fasting plus calories

Yazio pairs a calorie diary with intermittent-fasting timers and a large recipe library, and it is popular in Europe. PRO ($34.99 a year) adds more fasting plans, recipes and nutrient detail.

Best for: people who combine time-restricted eating with a calorie target.

7. FatSecret — best plain free diary

FatSecret has offered a free food diary for a long time, with a big food list, a barcode scanner and community features. It does the basics without fuss; an optional paid tier at $19.99 a year adds extras on top.

Best for: people who only want to log and see their totals.

8. Lifesum — best for structured diet plans

Lifesum’s strength is presentation: a clean design and named eating plans, from high-protein to Mediterranean, that tell you what to eat rather than only counting it. Premium costs $44.99 a year.

Best for: people who prefer following a plan to building their own.

9. Carb Manager — best for keto

Carb Manager puts net carbs first, with keto recipes and low-carb meal ideas. Premium is $39.99 a year. If you are not eating low-carb, its screens put the emphasis in the wrong place.

Best for: keto and low-carb eaters.

The 3D body scan, in brief

PlateLens adds something none of the other eight offer. Twelve photos taken as you turn in front of your phone produce a 3D model with waist, hip, chest and other measurements. A peer-reviewed analysis found PlateLens accurate to within ±1 cm of a tape measure over 1,000 trials (how the scan works). Comparing two scans shows changes in shape that a flat week on the scale hides.

Setting your app to your TDEE target

1. Get your number. Run the TDEE calculator with your real job, steps and workouts.
2. Pick a goal. Use the goals table in the results, or the calorie calculator if you have a target weight and date.
3. Enter it in the app. Replace the app’s own estimate with your calorie goal where the app allows it, then add a protein target from the macro calculator.
4. Leave exercise out of the budget. Your workouts are already inside TDEE, so turn off any setting that adds exercise calories back.
5. Log honestly for two weeks, weighing portions where you can, and weigh yourself on most mornings.
6. Compare and adjust. If your two-week average weight is moving faster or slower than planned, change the target by 100 to 200 calories and repeat.

How accurate is calorie tracking?

Even perfect logging carries some error. In the United States, food labels are allowed to understate calories by up to 20% under the FDA’s compliance rules, and portion estimates by eye are often further out than that. Restaurant meals are harder still, because oil and sauces are invisible on the plate.

That does not make tracking pointless; it makes consistency the goal. If you log the same way every day, the errors are similar from one week to the next, and your weight trend tells you whether the target is right. A verified database removes one source of error, a kitchen scale removes another, and the trend does the rest.

The bottom line

If you have a TDEE and want one app to eat to it, choose PlateLens: the most complete free plan of the nine, verified food data with photo, voice and barcode logging, a coach that knows your diary, an adaptive target and a 3D body scan to see the progress the scale hides. Choose Cronometer for deep micronutrient tracking, MacroFactor if you want weekly automatic adjustments and are happy to pay, and Lose It! if you want the gentlest start.