Is MyFitnessPal free?
Yes, and its own help centre says so plainly: "Yes! The standard features of MyFitnessPal are free to use, and creating a basic account is free." Read 17 September 2026, the page lists what a free account can do under its own headings, food and exercise logging, weight, your own foods, meals and recipes, and view the macronutrients, "Carbs, Fats, Protein", in grams and percentages, and customise the calorie goal and macro goals by percentage. One line notes that some logging methods require a Premium subscription.
The free tier carries ads, by the premium page read 14 September 2026, which lists an "ad-free logging experience" under Premium. The same page lists "custom macros and goals" as Premium, read alongside the help centre as goals in grams rather than percentages, and "voice logging and multi-day logging" as Premium+. Premium is $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year on the App Store, read 8 and 14 September 2026, and a 7-day trial exists for anyone who never redeemed one.
| What you want | Free | Premium | Premium+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Log food, exercise, weight | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| See protein, carbohydrate and fat | Yes, in grams and percentages | Yes | Yes |
| Set macro goals | By percentage | "Custom macros and goals", read as goals in grams | Yes |
| A diary without ads | No: "ad-free logging experience" is Premium | Yes | Yes |
| Voice logging, multi-day logging | No | No | Yes |
| Price on the App Store | $0 | $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year | $24.99 a month or $99.99 a year |
Bottom line: the diary and the macros are free; the quiet and the gram goals are paid.
Does MyFitnessPal work?
It does what a food diary does: on the days it is kept, it shows what you ate against a goal you set. The honest part of the answer is the condition. In a 2019 study in Nutrition by Chen and colleagues, 43 adults used the app; 80 percent rated it easy to use, and 20 percent said they would continue; the barriers they named were matching foods, portion size and time. In a 2019 trial by Harvey and colleagues in Obesity, what went with the outcome was how often people recorded, not how long they spent, and recording took about 23 minutes a day in the first month.
So the question is not whether the app works but whether you keep it. What its users say stopped them in 2026 is in the reviews and threads read on 4 September 2026: the entries to choose among, the ads in the diary and the April 2026 redesign, set out in the MyFitnessPal alternatives article; this page stays with the research on keeping a diary at all. In two six-month trials reported by Turner-McGrievy and colleagues in 2019, fewer than half the participants were still recording after week ten, whichever definition of adherence was used.
None of that is a verdict on the numbers. MyFitnessPal's reach is real: a very large database, a barcode scanner, integrations, a community. What its users describe leaving over is the keeping: the taps, the ads, the choosing among entries. A diary works for as long as those do not stop you.
What is IZeat, if not a free MyFitnessPal?
IZeat is the calorie tracker inside ChatGPT, Claude or any other assistant. Tell the assistant you already use what you ate instead of searching for foods and entering them one by one. It has no free tier and no ads, one product, with its plans and prices on the price card, and a trial without a card. It is not MyFitnessPal for less; it removes the part of MyFitnessPal that its users say they leave over.
There is no search box and no database to pick from: a packaged food is recorded from its label, read back to you first; a plain food you weighed from a reference table; a dish nobody weighed as an estimate that says so. The macros are on every item from the first day, with no tier to keep them for. The day is a list with a total on the web app, every meal visible, what is left in view, and nothing turns red. Leaving is from the account page, with the whole record exported first.
Monday lunch, said in a chat: "180 g of grilled chicken, 150 g of rice and a plain yoghurt." The assistant is asked to check what your words leave open, then to record the meal through IZeat; the receipt lists the three rows with their sources, the meal's figures, the day so far and, once you have set a target, what is left. That is the whole of the entry. Whether that is enough to keep a diary past the first month is the hypothesis IZeat is built on, and not a result it has measured.
What you give up coming here: IZeat has no import from MyFitnessPal, no barcode scanner and no food database, so a history built there stays there and a packaged food is recorded from its label. The MyFitnessPal alternatives article compares the other diaries; this page answers the two questions in its title.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers to the questions people type, each one sourced above.
Is MyFitnessPal free to use?
Yes. Its help centre, read 17 September 2026, says the standard features are free and a basic account is free: logging food, exercise and weight, creating foods and recipes, seeing protein, carbohydrate and fat in grams and percentages, and setting macro goals by percentage. The free tier carries ads, by the premium page, which lists an ad-free diary under Premium, at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year on the App Store.
Is MyFitnessPal Premium worth it?
That depends on what the ads, the gram goals and the voice logging are worth to you; the prices are $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year on the App Store, read in September 2026, and Premium+ with voice logging is $24.99 or $99.99. The diary itself is free. If what stops you is not the ads but the typing, the searching and the choosing among entries, Premium removes the ads and leaves the rest.
Does MyFitnessPal actually work for weight loss?
It does what any food diary does on the days it is kept: it shows what you ate against a goal you set. Whether that leads anywhere is not something this page can settle for you. In a 2019 study of 43 adults, 80 percent found the app easy to use and 20 percent said they would continue; the barriers were matching foods, portion size and time. No app makes the body change; a record you keep lets you see what you are doing.
Why do people stop using MyFitnessPal?
Mostly over the keeping, in the research on food journaling. Journalers in a 2015 study called it "too much effort" and "time-consuming" and named the crowd-sourced database's many entries for one food among the barriers; in a 2019 study of 43 MyFitnessPal users the barriers were matching foods, portion size and time, and one in five said they would continue. The 2026 redesign is another story, told in the alternatives article. The numbers are rarely the reason; the keeping is.
Is MyFitnessPal accurate?
Closer than its reputation, when the right entry is picked. In a 2020 study, 50 people recorded four days of meals in MyFitnessPal with instructions on choosing entries, and energy came out 1.3 percent high against the Belgian food composition table. The database works; the picking, among many entries for one food, is where the record drifts, and the ten entries article says why. IZeat's answer is a source on each item rather than a bigger database.
How is IZeat different from MyFitnessPal?
There is no diary screen: you say the meal to the assistant you already use, and the receipt comes back with each item and its source. No search box, no database, no ads, no tier above the one product; a trial without a card; the macros on every item from the first day; the whole day on one screen on the web app; as CSV or JSON, with one download for each format. No barcode scanner and no import, so a MyFitnessPal history stays where it is.