Best Calorie Counter Apps

Noom takes a psychology-based approach to weight management through calorie counting, education, and personal coaching. Noom’s mission is to guide users as they learn to understand and alter their eating habits to make healthier choices with the help of dedicated coaches to offer extra motivation and insights.  

The app’s calorie counter uses color coding to not just log calories, but give you a quick view of how well you are eating. It offers an at-a-glance view of which foods are most calorie-dense (orange) versus which are nutrient-dense (green) and will help you feel fuller longer. More than 1,000 recipes—accompanied by color-coded rankings for how well they fit your goals—are also available in its database. 

Noom’s marquee feature, however, is that it functions more like a personal coach than a calorie counter. After signing up, users have the option to work with a coach who will check in weekly via live chat (for an extra fee). Users can also reach out to their coaches and the Noom community 24/7. Noom is more expensive than most of our favorite calorie counters, but for those looking for extra one-on-one motivation and comprehensive education in eating well, we think it is a worthwhile investment.

Health and fitness advocates and professionals herald MyFitnessPal as one of the best healthy-living apps on the market. That’s with good reason: MyFitnessPal makes food logging and calorie counting easy with its simple interface and food database of more than 14 million food items (one of the largest available—most calorie counting apps have databases of 10 million or fewer items).

MyFitnessPal also has a barcode scanner that recognizes millions of food products, a restaurant logging feature with meals from popular restaurants, a recipe importer so you can import nutrition information from your own recipes, and, perhaps best of all, an automatic calorie counting feature that compiles your calorie intake from all the food you log. 

With MyFitnessPal, you can accurately track nutrients and count calories on any diet, thanks to the personalized diet profile and flexibility afforded by the app. To celebrate your success, check out the weight charts and nutrition insights. And don’t forget to upload progress photos!

Lifesum is one of our favorite best diet apps because of its flexibility, ease of use, integrated platforms, and motivational components. With Lifesum, you’ll not only enjoy a simple and quick way to count calories, but you’ll also learn how to eat healthier, plan meals, understand the nutrient quality of different foods, and more.

If you’re just getting started, you can opt for the app’s kick-starter three-week weight loss program, during which you’ll get pre-planned meals, easy five-ingredient recipes, shopping lists, and support for as little as $8.33. From there, you can continue with another Lifesum plan or revert to the free version and simply count calories and track nutrients on your own.

Lifesum’s calorie counter feature includes an impressive food database and a barcode scanner for easy logging. Lifesum also supports macronutrients and net carb tracking, so if you need to count carbs on a keto diet, Lifesum will work for you. No matter what you track, Lifesum gives you daily reports and a "Life Score" so you always know how you’re doing. 

If you want to do a little more than just count calories, you can track all of your nutrients specific to any diet with MyNetDiary. In addition to a basic calorie counter tool, MyNetDiary allows you to set a focus, such as macros, paleo, or keto. 

First, you set your targets and plan by answering a few questions that MyNetDiary uses to create your daily calorie budget. You also get to choose your desired weekly weight loss rate, macronutrient intake, and target weight loss completion date. Then, you can start logging food in the app (pro tip: log ahead of time to better adhere to your day’s meals and save time during the workday). 

In addition to its great calorie counting features, MyNetDiary also boasts extreme connectivity: you can connect the app to products from Fitbit, Apple Watch, Withings, Garmin, Google Fit, and Samsung.

Overall, Lose It! is a great weight loss app, largely because it provides such a simple way to log and count calories. Its four main features—goal-setting, food and exercise tracking, app and device integration, and community—make this app an easy addition to any health efforts you’re currently pursuing.

Lose It! has a food database boasting more than 50 million food products, from produce to packaged foods to restaurant meals. You can also create your own recipes to quickly log calories in one touch for recipes you eat often. For example, if you eat two eggs and two pieces of whole-wheat toast every morning, you can create a recipe and log the entire meal at once, rather than logging the individual items each morning.

On top of that, you can use the app’s barcode scanner or Snap It feature, which allows you to log food via photos. (Did you know that logging your food with photos helps you become even more aware of your eating habits?) To keep you on track with your goals, Lose It! provides weekly and monthly reports of your calorie and nutrient intake, as well as graphs to show your weight loss over time.

Carb Manager makes it easier to stay in ketosis and maintain or lose weight with three different calculators: a keto calculator allows you to track carbs and net carbs, a nutrient calculator allows you to track protein, fats, and other nutrients, and a calorie calculator brings it all together and shows you your total food consumption for the day. 

Carb Manager also has plenty of keto-friendly recipes for when you’re in a pinch for ideas, as well as meal plans and shopping lists to make your life easier. 

ControlMyWeight is the app for anyone who just wants to count calories—and that’s it. There’s beauty in simplicity, and that shows with ControlMyWeight. When you open the app, you’ll find a visually appealing, easy-to-navigate interface. The number of features on ControlMyWeight doesn’t compare to most of the other calorie counter apps on this list, but that’s exactly the point. 

If you do need a little help, ControlMyWeight still has your back: You can set up the app so that it sends you push notifications throughout the day, reminding you how many carbs, fats, and sugars you’ve eaten to help you stay on track. The app also features very simple weight charts so you can visualize your progress.

If you are looking for a calorie counter app that’s free and still contains all of the features you need for successful calorie counting, go with Calorie Counter by FatSecret. We covered this great app as one of our picks for best keto apps, but it also works as a calorie counter and food diary for any diet.

Calorie Counter by FatSecret is fast, simple, and comprehensive: enjoy a food diary, large food database, exercise diary, weight chart and journal, and a vast collection of healthy recipes to support your efforts. This app also features image recognition of food, making it easier than ever to log and track calories, as well as a unique diet calendar to visualize when you eat and burn the most calories. 

If you are ready to change your eating habits, but unsure where to start, MyPlate by Livestrong can help by offering an eight-week meal plan—even with its free version. 

The app, available for both Android and iOS devices, tracks not only how many calories you are eating with each meal, but detailed nutritional information. Simple graphs and charts make tracking your progress toward your custom goal easy. Plus, the app connects you to other users and success story videos to help you stay motivated. MyPlate also has a database of exercise routines and tracks how many calories you burn with each.

The free eight-week meal plan can be tailored to omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free diets, but you’ll need to pay to get access to more recipes geared toward “clean eating.”

Ate Food Diary was designed with mindfulness around food as its mission. The app allows you to document your meals and snacks in photos and log why and when you ate them, how your food made you feel, and whether your choices were in line with your wellness goals. It does not provide the detailed nutritional information that some of our other favorite apps do, but if you find counting every calorie discouraging, this app may help you experiment with new habits—it offers suggestions like “cooking at home”—and how they make you feel in a less judgmental format. 

Ate food diary is free for a seven-day trial period. After that, the service is only available with a $9.99 monthly subscription.