A calorie app that doesn't sell your data: what leaves, and what never does

"Free": so who's paying?

A calorie app costs money to run: servers, a food database, a team. If you're paying nothing, that money comes from somewhere else. Most free apps live off ads and off your data — and your food diary is a goldmine: your weight, your goals, your meal times, your slip-ups. This is personal health data, among the most sensitive there is. We've broken down what calorie apps really know about you; the summary fits in one sentence: when it's free and everything goes to a server, you're the product.

And even paying doesn't fix everything. MyFitnessPal put barcode scanning behind its Premium subscription: the model squeezes you on one side (your data) and the other (your wallet).

What never leaves your phone

Your food diary, your weight, your history, your goals, your settings: all of it stays stored locally, on your device — that's the overwhelming majority of the data, the part that matters most, and it doesn't move. No account, no ID, no cloud copy, so nothing to cross-reference with other records, nothing that can leak from a server that doesn't exist for this data. An app that demands an account before it lets you log an apple has a reason for that — and it isn't your convenience.

The one exception: AI meal analysis

One feature breaks this rule, and we'd rather say so plainly than bury it: AI meal analysis. When you choose to describe a meal by text or photo so the app can estimate its calories and macros, that text or photo is sent to our AI provider for analysis. Three things worth knowing:

• It only triggers when you use it — never automatically, never in the background.
• It requires your explicit consent, asked for before the first use.
• You can turn it off or revoke consent at any time in settings, and keep using Radish normally — search, barcode scan, manual entry — without ever touching it.

The rest of the app — diary, weight, goals, history — never needs this feature to work.

What we never do

No account. No advertising profile. No third-party trackers. And above all: no selling your data, to anyone — that hasn't changed and won't. The one piece of data that leaves your phone, on your own action, serves exactly one purpose: estimating your meal. It is never sold and never used for ad targeting.

With most other apps: everything transits, account required

Many calorie apps require an account from install and continuously sync your diary, weight and goals to their servers, AI or not. Radish is the opposite: the one thing that leaves the phone is optional, one-off and under your control — the honest exception, not the norm.

Radish applies this principle end to end. The core is free: Nutri-Score, macros and 11 vitamins and minerals from public reference databases (CIQUAL/USDA): counting, recipes and Nutri-Score work without a connection. The funding? An optional Pro with a one-time payment, not a subscription, for advanced features. Either you're the customer, or you pay nothing — but you're never the merchandise.

4 privacy checks before installing a calorie app

• Account required? If you can't do anything without an email, your data is going somewhere.
• Does it work in airplane mode? A locally stored food log works with no network. Test it — it takes seconds.
• Where does the money come from? Ads, "partners", subscription, one-time payment: the visible business model tells you everything.
• Where is the data stored? "On your device" and "on our secure servers" are not the same promise.
• If the app offers AI, does it say what it sends? A transparent app spells out what, to whom, when, and how to opt out. Silence on this is a signal.

If you're coming from MyFitnessPal and want a point-by-point comparison, we wrote the guide to the free alternative.

General information, not medical advice. Third-party app prices and features are cited for reference and may change.

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