Cronometer vs MyFitnessPal: one of these databases is guessing
Both apps will tell you that lunch was 640 calories. Only one of them has been tested against a research-grade reference database and passed — and the failure mode of the other one is stranger than "it's a bit off."
Use Cronometer if you care whether the numbers are true; use MyFitnessPal if you care whether logging is fast. In a 2025 peer-reviewed comparison, Cronometer showed good validity for most nutrients while MyFitnessPal showed poor validity for energy, carbohydrate, protein, sugar, fibre and cholesterol. Cronometer's free tier tracks 84 nutrients; MyFitnessPal now paywalls its barcode scanner.
Cronometer
Free tier tracks 84 nutrients · Gold ≈ $50–60/yr
Wins on accuracyMyFitnessPal
Free tier limited · Premium $79.99/yr · Premium+ $99.99/yr
Wins on speed & socialThe 60-second scorecard
| What you care about | Cronometer | MyFitnessPal |
|---|---|---|
| Peer-reviewed validity (2025) | Good for most nutrients | Poor for energy, carbs, protein, sugar, fibre, cholesterol |
| Same diary, two different people | Consistent | Inconsistent for sodium and sugar |
| Database sourcing | USDA + NCCDB, staff-verified | Largely user-submitted, unverified |
| Nutrients tracked, free tier | 84 | ~14 without Premium |
| Barcode scanning | Free | Paywalled |
| Speed of logging a common meal | Good | Fastest in category |
| Database breadth (restaurant, regional) | Narrower but cleaner | Enormous |
| Micronutrient tracking | Best in category | Weak |
| Social / community features | Minimal | Extensive |
| Annual cost of the useful tier | $0–60 | $79.99–99.99 |
Which app's numbers are actually right?
There is one study that tests both apps head-to-head against a research reference, and it is unusually well designed. Published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics in 2025, it had two raters independently enter the same 43 three-day food records into both apps, then compared the output to ESHA Food Processor running the Canadian Nutrient File.
That design tests two different things at once — whether the app is right (validity) and whether it gives the same answer twice (reliability). MyFitnessPal struggled on both.
Cronometer: good inter-rater reliability and validity for most nutrients, with exceptions for fibre, vitamin A and vitamin D. MyFitnessPal: poor validity for total energy, carbohydrate, protein, cholesterol, sugar and fibre — with the energy, carbohydrate and sugar discrepancies driven by women's records and protein by men's — plus inconsistency between raters for sodium and sugar.
MyFitnessPal underestimated protein by 7.8%, carbohydrate by 6.4% and fat by 1.7%, while overestimating energy by 1.3%. The authors concluded it was adequate for energy, macros, sugar and fibre — but not for cholesterol and sodium.
1 diary,
2 answers
The most damning result isn't that MyFitnessPal is inaccurate — it's that two trained people entering the same food record got materially different sodium and sugar totals. An app that can't reproduce its own answer can't be audited, by you or anyone else.Morello et al., J Hum Nutr Diet, 2025
Why is one database wrong? Curation versus crowdsourcing.
This isn't a mystery, and it isn't malice. It's an architectural choice made a decade ago.
Cronometer builds on the USDA FoodData Central and the Nutrition Coordinating Center Food & Nutrient Database — lab-analysed, research-grade sources — and staff-verifies entries before they become searchable. MyFitnessPal's advantage was always its enormous crowdsourced catalogue: millions of user-submitted entries, which is why it can find the exact burrito from the exact chain in about four seconds. Those entries are not verified before they become searchable.
The consequence is predictable. Search a common food in MyFitnessPal and you get a wall of near-duplicate entries whose values disagree, sometimes by a factor of two. Choosing between them is a judgement call you are not equipped to make, which is precisely why two raters produce two answers.
The practical tell. In MyFitnessPal, a verified entry carries a green tick. If you're staying on MyFitnessPal, using only ticked entries removes most of the error — and roughly doubles the time it takes to log a meal. That trade is the whole comparison in one sentence.
What do they cost in 2026?
| Tier | Monthly | Annual | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cronometer (free) | $0 | $0 | 84 nutrients, barcode scanning, 7-day reports, ads |
| Cronometer Gold | ≈$9–11 | ≈$50–60 | Ad-free, full history, custom charts, recipe tools |
| MyFitnessPal (free) | $0 | $0 | Manual logging, limited photo scans, fasting timer — no barcode scanner |
| MyFitnessPal Premium | $19.99 | $79.99 | Barcode scanning, custom macros, ad-free |
| MyFitnessPal Premium+ | $24.99 | $99.99 | Adds meal planning and additional coaching content |
Verified 1 September 2026. Cronometer Gold pricing varies by plan and promotion; treat the range as indicative and check at purchase.
This is an unusual outcome for our leaderboard: the more accurate product is also the cheaper one, and its free tier is better than the competitor's paid tier for the thing the category exists to do. MyFitnessPal moving barcode scanning behind the paywall in 2022 remains the single most consequential pricing decision in nutrition apps, and it's why so many long-time users are still annoyed.
The honest trade-off: accuracy versus adherence
Here's the counter-argument, and it deserves a hearing. A food log you abandon in week two is worth nothing regardless of database quality. MyFitnessPal is faster, its catalogue is broader, its social layer keeps people logging, and a slightly wrong number you record every day beats a precise number you stop recording.
That argument holds — for weight management, where the useful signal is the trend in your own consistently-biased estimate, not the absolute value. It collapses in three situations:
- Micronutrients. If you're tracking iron, B12, vitamin D or potassium — the reason most people open a food log in the first place — MyFitnessPal's coverage is not adequate and Cronometer's is excellent.
- Clinical or sports contexts. If a dietitian is reading your log, entry-level noise becomes their problem. The 2025 study exists because sports dietitians needed to know which app they could trust.
- Sodium and cholesterol. Both studies flag these specifically. If you're logging for blood pressure or lipids, MyFitnessPal is the wrong instrument.
Marcus's take
Senior Reviewer — Metabolic · RD · logged 31 days in bothI spent a decade as a dietitian watching clients bring me MyFitnessPal exports, and I want to be fair to it: that app got more people to look at what they eat than every clinician in my province combined. That's a real public-health contribution and no amount of database criticism erases it.
But I've also had the conversation where someone shows me a log claiming 1,400 calories a day, and we go through it entry by entry, and about 200 calories a day are simply an artefact of picking the wrong duplicate. That person didn't fail at discipline. They failed at a database lookup nobody warned them was a judgement call.
So my position is blunter than most reviews you'll read: if you are logging food to learn something, use Cronometer. The free tier is better than MyFitnessPal's paid tier at the actual job, it tells you where each number came from, and its answers survive a second opinion. If you are logging food to build a habit and you already know MyFitnessPal's interface by muscle memory, stay — but turn on verified-entries-only and accept that your micronutrient screen is decoration.
What I'd like from both: show me the provenance in the row. "USDA, lab-analysed" versus "submitted by a user in 2016" is the single most useful piece of information in a food database, and neither app puts it where I'm making the decision.
Who should use which
Use Cronometer if…
- You track micronutrients at all
- A clinician or coach reads your log
- You're managing sodium, cholesterol or a deficiency
- You want $0 to be a real option
- You want to know where a number came from
Use MyFitnessPal if…
- Speed and adherence are your bottleneck
- You eat out a lot and need the huge catalogue
- The community keeps you logging
- You'll stick to verified entries
- You only care about calories and rough macros
Use neither if…
- Logging makes you anxious or restrictive — the risk is real and well documented
- You want a diagnosis or a therapeutic diet; see a dietitian
- You'd get further from three fixed meals and a walk
Frequently asked questions
Is Cronometer more accurate than MyFitnessPal?
Yes, on the available evidence. A 2025 study in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics found Cronometer had good validity and inter-rater reliability for most nutrients, while MyFitnessPal showed poor validity for total energy, carbohydrate, protein, cholesterol, sugar and fibre. The difference comes from database sourcing: Cronometer verifies entries against USDA and NCCDB data, MyFitnessPal accepts unverified user submissions.
Is Cronometer free? What's behind the paywall?
Cronometer's free tier tracks up to 84 nutrients and includes barcode scanning, with ads and a 7-day report window. Gold (roughly $50–60/year) removes ads, unlocks full history, custom charts and recipe tools. Notably, the free tier already does the core job better than most paid competitors.
Why did MyFitnessPal put the barcode scanner behind a paywall?
It was a 2022 monetisation decision, and it remains the most-complained-about change in the category. Barcode scanning is now a Premium feature ($79.99/year), while Cronometer includes it free.
Does the inaccuracy actually matter for weight loss?
Less than you'd think. For weight management, a consistently biased estimate still produces a usable trend. It matters a lot for micronutrients, sodium, cholesterol, and any context where a clinician reads your log — which is exactly where the published research found MyFitnessPal wanting.
Can I move my data from MyFitnessPal to Cronometer?
Both support CSV export and Cronometer supports importing historical data, though category mapping is imperfect and custom foods usually need rebuilding. Budget an hour if you have years of history.
Which is better for tracking protein?
Cronometer. Both studies cited here flagged protein specifically: the 2020 JMIR validation found MyFitnessPal underestimated protein by 7.8%, and the 2025 study found poor validity for protein driven by men's records.
Sources
- Morello et al. Reliability and Validity of Nutrient Assessment Applications for Canadian Endurance Athletes: MyFitnessPal and Cronometer. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 38(5), 2025. Accessed 1 Sep 2026
- Accuracy of Nutrient Calculations Using the Consumer-Focused Online App MyFitnessPal: Validation Study. JMIR, 2020. Accessed 1 Sep 2026
- Cronometer — plan pricing and free-tier nutrient coverage. Verified 1 Sep 2026
- MyFitnessPal — Free, Premium ($79.99/yr) and Premium+ ($99.99/yr) tiers. Verified 1 Sep 2026
- USDA FoodData Central and the NCC Food & Nutrient Database — the reference sources behind Cronometer's entries.