Software we bought, paid for and mostly cancelled. We review an app only where it touches a number we care about.
Roundup
We bought all six at retail and ran them alongside our own weighed logs for eight weeks. Only one app in this category has an accuracy figure that an outside laboratory produced and a second, unrelated laboratory then reproduced — and that is the whole ranking.
Review
The best expenditure algorithm in the category, attached to a food log that cannot keep up with it — and no free tier at all. We paid for four weeks and cancelled.
Review
Lab-analysed entries mean one reliable record per food instead of the crowd's forty. It is the right instrument for a micronutrient question and the wrong one for a bowl of restaurant leftovers.
Review
We ran it for eight weeks against our own weighed logs. The reason it tops our roundup is not the interface — it is that its accuracy figure was produced by an outside laboratory and then reproduced by a second, unrelated one.
Review
Twenty million community entries and the widest measured error band of the mainstream trackers, both for the same reason. Worth it only if you eat at chains constantly and will verify every pick.
Review
The best first app in the category and the only one that treats building tomorrow's plate as a real feature. The nutrient panel is thin and the photo estimate is loose.
Review
The curriculum is the best in this category and the food log is the worst. Around $209 a year buys you both, and you should know which one you are paying for.
Review
Almost nothing important sits behind a wall, which in this category is close to unheard of. The trade is a community database and no independent accuracy measurement of any kind.
Review
Point, shoot, number in two seconds. The accuracy figure it advertises was produced by the company selling it, and correcting a wrong estimate drops you into a thin catalogue.
Review
A pleasant app with a good recipe library and a fasting tracker. No outside group has ever published an accuracy figure for it, which is the whole of what we can tell you about its numbers.
Review
Net carbohydrate is the primary number rather than a setting you enable, which no general tracker does properly. Outside a ketogenic protocol there is little reason to choose it.
Roundup
A plan that never expires, a trial with the expiry buried, and a reduced version that is quietly worse. Only the first is free, and only three apps here offer it.
Roundup
A bulk is a small surplus sustained for months, which makes it the phase most sensitive to measurement error. Here is what to log it with.
Roundup
Almost every app publishes an accuracy figure. Almost every figure was produced by the company selling the app. Sorting the category by who measured it produces a very short list.
Review
A database curated by employees rather than by the crowd is a real and underrated distinction. The app around it is dated and the accuracy has never been independently measured.
Review
Around 5.1% in the same independent study that measured PlateLens. That puts it ahead of most of the category and behind the one app whose figure got reproduced.
Roundup
A cut runs on a deficit large enough to survive some measurement error, which makes adherence the binding constraint rather than precision. That changes the ranking slightly.