This is not medical advice. General information about calorie tracking apps, not a treatment plan. If you are under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding, have ever had an eating disorder or a difficult relationship with food, or are managing a medical condition, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before you start counting calories. The full list is here.
Switch to MyPlate if an account is what keeps breaking: a login that fails, a password reset that never arrives, a subscription the app will not recognise. MyPlate has none of that, because it has no account.
Stay with MyFitnessPal if you scan barcodes on most of what you eat. MyPlate has no barcode scanner.
Why people leave MyFitnessPal
Rather than guess, I read the reviews. On 25 September 2026 I pulled the 200 most recent United States App Store reviews of MyFitnessPal, covering 1 to 23 September 2026. Of those, 103 were at two stars or fewer.2 I grouped them by keyword, so treat the counts below as rough groupings rather than exact tallies, and the reviews themselves as the evidence.
The largest group by far is about money. Around 46 of the 103 mention the subscription, the price or the paywall, and 13 name the barcode scanner specifically. MyFitnessPal lists barcode scanning as part of its paid plan,3 and a long-time user put the change plainly: "When they put food scanning behind the paywall, I knew it wasn't going to end well."2
I am not going to build a page on that complaint, because MyPlate does not fix it. MyPlate gives a non-subscriber one AI scan a day and charges for the second, with no trial.4 Anyone leaving over the price is worse off with me, and they have just been let down once already.
The group I can do something about is smaller and more specific. Roughly ten of the 103 describe being shut out of their own log by the account system: a password that stopped working, a reset code that never came, Face ID rejected so often that a forgotten password becomes a daily obstacle. One review reports being unable to log in at all after an update, while the same credentials worked in a phone browser. Another describes reinstalling, being forced to re-subscribe because there was no restore option, and then being billed twice.2
What those have in common is not a bug in any one release. It is that your food log lives behind somebody else's authentication, so every failure in that system is a day you cannot log. One reviewer's line is the whole reason this page exists: "Have used app for many years. Don't want to lose all data."2
A smaller group, around eight reviews, complains that the recent redesign made logging slower, naming the loss of multi-select for restaurant meals and limits on copying a meal from one day to another.2 That one I can help with, and it is the subject of a separate post on logging friction.
One more group deserves naming because it counts against me. Around eight reviews complain that MyFitnessPal's push into AI has made the app slower or worse.2 MyPlate is entirely AI: there is no database to fall back on. If that is your objection, neither app is your answer.
MyFitnessPal vs MyPlate, side by side
Everything in this table comes from each app's own App Store listing or pricing page, checked on 25 September 2026. Prices are United States prices and features change, so check both listings before you decide.
| MyFitnessPal | MyPlate | |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Required | None. No email, password or login4 |
| Where the log lives | The company's servers | On the device only4 |
| How you log a meal | Search, barcode or voice3 | A photo, or a sentence4 |
| Food database | Yes, and it is the reason to stay | None4 |
| Barcode scanner | Yes, on the paid plan3 | No4 |
| Free tier | Yes, with ads3 | One scan a day4 |
| Price | $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year1 | $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year4 |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, web1 | iPhone and iPad only4 |
| Ratings | 4.7 from about 2.36 million1 | 4.1 from 204 |
That last row is not a typo, and I would rather put it in the table than leave you to find it. MyFitnessPal has been rated by more than two million people and MyPlate by twenty. A rating average from twenty people tells you almost nothing, and you should weigh it accordingly.
What logging a meal looks like in each
MyFitnessPal asks you to identify the food and then the amount. You search the database, or scan a barcode on the paid plan, or speak the entry, then choose among the matching results and set a portion.3 For a packaged food with a barcode that is fast and precise. For a plate somebody else cooked, it becomes a series of judgement calls about which of several similar entries is yours.
MyPlate asks for a photograph. You point the camera at the plate, or describe the meal in a sentence, and the model returns a dish with calories, protein, carbohydrate and fat, which you can edit before saving.4 There is nothing to search and no portion picker.
The honest cost of that trade is precision. A barcode read returns what the manufacturer declared. A photograph returns an estimate, and it cannot see what a scale would: whether the sauce had oil in it, how big the portion really was. I have written up how far off both approaches are, and the short version is that neither is measuring anything, so consistency matters more than either one's accuracy.
Where MyFitnessPal is still the better app
Four things, and any one of them is a reason to stay.
It has a free tier. You can log food in MyFitnessPal without paying, which is the single biggest difference between the two apps and the reason most of those 103 unhappy reviewers should not follow me anywhere.3 MyPlate allows one free scan a day and no trial, which is a meal, not a day of eating.4
It has a database and a barcode scanner. If most of what you eat comes out of a packet, a barcode read beats a photograph every time, and no amount of AI changes that.3
Your data survives your phone. The account that locks people out is the same account that restores their history on a new device. MyPlate keeps everything on the device, which means deleting the app deletes your log permanently, with no export and no way to move it to another phone.4 That is the other side of having no login, and you should decide which failure you would rather have.
It runs almost everywhere. MyFitnessPal is on Android, the web, and Apple Watch.1 MyPlate is an iPhone and iPad app and nothing else.4 It also has no exercise logging and no Apple Health connection, which I have argued is the right call, but it is still a feature MyFitnessPal has and I do not.
Who should switch
One reader, described as narrowly as I can manage: you have used a calorie counter app before, you are willing to pay for one, and what pushed you out was the account rather than the tracking. A login loop, a reset email that never came, a subscription the app would not recognise, or simply the knowledge that your food diary sits on somebody's server behind a password you have to remember.
For that reader MyPlate removes the whole category of problem, because there is nothing to log in to. Open the app and it is your log, on your phone. Nobody can lock you out of it, and nobody can lose it but you.
If you are not that reader, stay where you are. If the price is the problem, MyPlate is more expensive at the point of use than a free MyFitnessPal account. If you scan barcodes, stay. If you want your history on a new phone next year, stay.
Common questions
What is the best MyFitnessPal alternative?
It depends entirely on which part of MyFitnessPal stopped working for you, and no honest answer is a single app name. If the account is the problem, a tracker without one removes the whole failure: MyPlate has no email, password or login, and the log lives on the device.4 If the price is the problem, MyFitnessPal's free tier beats MyPlate, which gives you one AI scan a day and charges beyond it, with no trial.4 If you scan barcodes on most of what you eat, stay with MyFitnessPal, because MyPlate has no barcode scanner and no food database at all.4
Is there a calorie counter app with no account or login?
Yes. MyPlate asks for no email, no password and no login, and stores your meals, weights and targets only on the device.4 That is worth stating with its consequence attached: because nothing is uploaded, deleting the app deletes the log permanently, and there is no way to move it to a new phone. An account is what normally provides that backup, so removing the account removes the backup too.
Why did MyFitnessPal put the barcode scanner behind a paywall?
I cannot tell you why, only what is the case: MyFitnessPal lists barcode scanning among its paid plan features.3 It is one of the most common complaints in the recent low reviews, named in 13 of the 103 reviews at two stars or fewer that I read on 25 September 2026.2 Switching to MyPlate does not solve this, because MyPlate has no barcode scanner to unlock.4
How much does MyFitnessPal cost compared with MyPlate?
On the United States App Store on 25 September 2026, MyFitnessPal Premium listed at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year, and the app is free to download with a free tier.1 MyPlate listed at $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a $6.99 weekly option, and one free AI scan a day for non-subscribers.4 So MyPlate is cheaper per month and more expensive than free, which is what most people are actually comparing it against. Prices change; check both listings.
Will I lose my MyFitnessPal history if I switch?
Yes, in the sense that nothing transfers. There is no import in MyPlate, so your years of entries stay in MyFitnessPal and your new log starts empty.4 Before you switch, export what you want to keep from MyFitnessPal while your account still works. This matters more than it sounds: a food history is the only record of what you actually ate, and starting again means a few weeks before the weight trend says anything useful.
The account is the thing MyPlate removes
Most of the people writing angry MyFitnessPal reviews this month are angry about money, and I have nothing to sell them. The ones this page is for are a smaller group with a different complaint: the app works, but the account keeps failing, and a food log you cannot open is not a food log.
MyPlate answers exactly that, by not having an account. Everything else about it is a trade you should make with your eyes open: one free scan a day and no more, no barcode scanner, no database, iPhone and iPad only, and a log that exists in one place and disappears with the app.4
Whichever you pick, the target matters more than the tracker. MyPlate will not show a daily figure below 1,200 calories for women or 1,500 for men, a floor taken from the NIH clinical guidelines on obesity.5 If switching apps is standing in for eating less, that is worth a conversation with a doctor rather than a new download.
Sources
Every figure above traces to one of these. If you find a number that doesn't match the source it claims, tell me and I'll correct it.
- Apple. (2026). MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter, App Store listing (version 26.38.0; 4.7 from 2,364,122 ratings; in-app purchases $19.99 monthly and $79.99 yearly). Retrieved 25 September 2026. View the listing →
- Apple. (2026). MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter, Ratings and Reviews. App Store, United States storefront. Sample of the 200 most recent reviews, covering 1 to 23 September 2026, of which 103 were rated two stars or fewer. Retrieved 25 September 2026. Read the reviews →
- MyFitnessPal, Inc. (2026). Premium. Retrieved 25 September 2026. See the plan features →
- Apple. (2026). MyPlate: AI Calorie Counter, App Store listing (version 3.2.1; 4.1 from 20 ratings; in-app purchases $6.99 weekly, $9.99 monthly and $39.99 yearly). Retrieved 25 September 2026. View the listing →
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH (1998). Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. NIH Publication 98-4083. Read the guidelines →
The formulas and limits behind MyPlate's own numbers, with their citations, are on the health sources page.