Simple is a wellness app centered on intermittent fasting that tracks your eating windows, scores your meals, monitors hydration, and uses an AI coach to nudge you toward better habits. Rather than counting every calorie, it takes a lighter approach to food logging and focuses on behavior change to help you lose weight or improve your eating patterns.
The Fasting Timer
The core of Simple is its fasting timer. You pick a fasting schedule, and the app tracks when your eating window opens and closes. The most popular options are 12:12 (12 hours fasting, 12 hours eating), 14:10, and 16:8, which is the most common intermittent fasting protocol. Once you select a schedule, the timer runs in the background and sends you notifications when it’s time to start or stop eating.
If you’re new to fasting, the app typically starts you on a gentler schedule like 12:12 and suggests progressing from there. You can adjust your fasting window to fit your lifestyle, shifting the start and end times to match your sleep schedule or work routine.
How Meal Logging Works
Simple’s meal logging is deliberately simpler than traditional calorie-counting apps. You can log food by typing, using voice input, or snapping a photo. There’s no need to weigh portions or look up macros in a database. Instead, the app runs each meal through a scoring algorithm and assigns it one of four ratings: Optimal, Good, Fair, or Low.
That score is based on a nutrient profiling model developed using World Health Organization guidelines for nutrient profiling. The algorithm evaluates meals across about ten factors: energy density, protein, fiber, total sugar, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, sodium, calcium, vitamin C, and alcohol content. It checks these against reference intakes from European and FDA daily values, then generates both a score and a short list of nutrient highlights, like “high in fiber” or “low in protein.”
The goal is to give you a quick read on meal quality without the friction of traditional food journaling. Over time, the pattern of scores helps you see which meals are working and which ones could use more protein, fiber, or better fat balance.
The AI Coach
Simple uses an AI assistant (called Avo in the app) to provide personalized feedback and goal-setting. The AI pulls from your food logs, weight entries, and activity data to suggest specific changes to your diet or routine. A Stanford analysis of AI-driven health coaching found that tapping into users’ personal data like goal setting and food intake logs allowed AI to effectively motivate habit-changing behavior in some users.
On the free plan, you’re limited to two AI responses per day and one photo-based food scan. Premium unlocks unlimited access to the AI coach along with personalized insights and more detailed meal analysis. The coaching leans on a behavior change approach rather than rigid meal plans. It’s designed to teach you patterns, like eating more protein at breakfast or reducing late-night snacking, rather than prescribing exact meals.
Other Tracking Features
Beyond fasting and food, Simple lets you log water intake, physical activity, and body weight. The hydration tracker is straightforward: you tap to add glasses of water throughout the day. Weight logging lets you track trends over time rather than fixating on daily fluctuations. Movement tracking captures general activity without requiring a connected fitness device, though it works alongside them if you use one.
All of these data points feed into the AI’s recommendations. If your water intake drops or your weight plateaus, the app adjusts its coaching accordingly.
Free vs. Premium
Simple does not offer a free trial for its premium subscription, but the free version works indefinitely with limited features. On the free plan, you get the fasting timer, basic logging, two AI coach replies per day, and one photo scan per day. You won’t get personalized insights or unlimited meal analysis.
Premium pricing varies by commitment length and current promotions:
- Monthly: roughly $15 per month
- 3 months: about $30 total, or $10 per month
- 6 months: $30 to $40 total, roughly $5 to $7 per month
- Annual: $50 to $60 total, roughly $4 to $5 per month
Pricing fluctuates depending on promotions and how you access the app (direct vs. through the App Store), so the exact number you see at signup may differ. Longer commitments cost significantly less per month, but they do lock you in upfront.
What Makes It Different From Calorie Counters
The biggest distinction between Simple and apps like MyFitnessPal or Lose It is that Simple deliberately avoids calorie and macro tracking. There’s no food database to search, no barcode scanner for packaged foods, and no daily calorie target. The nutrition score system replaces all of that with a broader quality rating.
This works well for people who find traditional food logging tedious or anxiety-inducing, but it means you won’t get granular data on exactly how many calories or grams of carbs you’re eating. If precise macro tracking matters to you, Simple isn’t built for that. Its strength is in reducing friction: logging a meal takes seconds rather than minutes, and the feedback focuses on patterns rather than numbers.
The app positions itself as a behavior change tool first and a tracker second. The fasting structure gives you a simple rule to follow, the nutrition scores give you quick feedback, and the AI coach ties it together with personalized suggestions based on what you’re actually doing day to day.