For most people, Lose It is the better calorie tracking app in 2025. It has a larger, more carefully maintained food database, a cleaner interface, and a more generous free tier than MyFitnessPal currently offers. That said, MyFitnessPal still has strengths that matter depending on how you track, so the right choice comes down to what you actually need day to day.
Food Database: Size and Accuracy
This is where the two apps diverge most. Lose It has over 33 million food entries that go through a curation process, meaning the app’s team reviews data for accuracy before it’s available to search. MyFitnessPal has around 14 million entries, and most of those were submitted by users with no formal verification step.
In practice, this difference shows up when you’re logging. MyFitnessPal’s open contribution model means you’ll sometimes find duplicate entries for the same product with conflicting calorie counts. One user might have entered a granola bar at 150 calories while another logged it at 190. If you pick the wrong one without checking the label, your daily total drifts. Lose It’s curated approach reduces that problem significantly, though no database is perfect. You should still spot-check entries against packaging when something looks off, regardless of which app you use.
What You Get for Free
Both apps have moved key features behind their paywalls in recent years, and this has been a major source of frustration. The barcode scanner, which lets you scan a product’s packaging instead of manually searching, has at various points been restricted to premium subscribers in both apps. For many users, barcode scanning is the single feature that makes calorie tracking fast enough to stick with. If you’re choosing based on the free version alone, check the current feature list for each app before committing, since both companies have shifted what’s included more than once.
Beyond the scanner, both free versions cover the basics: logging food, setting a calorie goal, and tracking your weight over time. Macro tracking (seeing your protein, carbs, and fat breakdown) is available in both, though the depth of reporting and visual breakdowns tends to be richer on the paid tiers.
Interface and Daily Logging
Lose It generally gets higher marks for having a simpler, less cluttered interface. Users who have tried both frequently describe MyFitnessPal as feeling bloated, with ads and feature prompts that slow down the core task of logging a meal. When you’re trying to enter breakfast before your coffee kicks in, small friction points add up. Lose It keeps the logging flow more streamlined, which matters because the best calorie tracker is the one you’ll actually use every day.
MyFitnessPal’s interface isn’t bad, but it tries to do more, and that extra functionality comes with extra visual noise. If you want a focused tool for tracking calories and not much else, Lose It feels lighter. If you want an app that connects to a wide ecosystem of fitness devices and other health apps, MyFitnessPal’s extensive integration list can be an advantage.
Recipe Logging
Both apps let you build custom recipes by adding individual ingredients, which is essential if you cook at home regularly. Lose It’s premium version adds a recipe import tool that pulls ingredients directly from a website URL. You paste in a link to a recipe, and the app attempts to break down the ingredients and calculate nutrition automatically. You can then edit individual ingredients, swap them for different database entries, or delete ones you skipped. It doesn’t work with every website, but when it does, it saves considerable time compared to entering each ingredient manually.
MyFitnessPal also supports recipe creation and has a similar URL import feature for premium users. Both tools require you to review the output, since automated parsing of recipe websites isn’t always accurate, especially with vague measurements like “a handful” or “season to taste.”
Community and Social Features
MyFitnessPal used to have a clear advantage here. Its news feed let users post updates, cheer each other on, and build accountability networks. That feature was removed, and the fallout was significant. Many long-time users describe the social feed as the reason they stayed with MyFitnessPal for years, and its removal as the reason they left. One user described spending time every day scrolling the feed, commenting encouragement on friends’ posts, and using it as a built-in support system for weight loss. When the feed disappeared, entire friend groups migrated to Lose It together.
Lose It offers group challenges and a friends list, giving it a modest social layer. Neither app is a social platform in the way MyFitnessPal once was, but Lose It currently offers more in this space than MyFitnessPal does.
Premium Pricing
Both apps charge for their premium tiers on a monthly or annual basis. Prices fluctuate with promotions, but Lose It has historically been the cheaper option, and it occasionally offers a lifetime membership that eliminates ongoing costs entirely. MyFitnessPal’s premium subscription tends to run higher. If you’re on the fence about paying, consider whether the features behind the paywall (barcode scanning, detailed nutrient reports, recipe importing) are ones you’d use daily or just occasionally.
Which App Fits You Better
Choose Lose It if you want a clean, fast logging experience with a more reliable food database. It’s the better pick for people who cook at home, want a straightforward calorie counter, and don’t want to second-guess whether the nutrition data they’re logging is accurate. Its curated database and simpler design make daily tracking feel less like a chore.
Choose MyFitnessPal if you’re already embedded in a fitness ecosystem that integrates with it, or if you’ve been using it for years and have a library of saved meals and recipes you don’t want to rebuild. MyFitnessPal’s integration with fitness trackers, gym equipment, and third-party apps remains broader than Lose It’s. Switching apps means losing that history and starting fresh, which is a real cost if you’ve been tracking for months or years.
For someone starting from scratch with no loyalty to either platform, Lose It is the stronger choice in its current form. It does the core job of calorie tracking with fewer headaches, and that’s what determines whether you’re still using the app three months from now.