Free calorie app with no subscription: what to do when your tracker goes paywall

Download the Radish app

2026, the year counting calories got (even more) expensive

It's not just a feeling. Three dated, public facts explain the wave of people looking for a free alternative right now:

• At MyFitnessPal, some logging features are part of Premium. Meal photo logging (Meal Scan) and custom macronutrients are listed in the Premium plan, shown at $79.99/year (official page, checked 09/16/2026). The barcode scan has been Premium-only since October 1, 2022, according to the vendor's official help center.
• Cal AI was briefly pulled from the App Store in April 2026. Apple temporarily removed the app over billing practices deemed deceptive — hidden auto-renewal, bypassing in-app purchase — before it was reinstated after fixes. The user complaint: subscriptions triggering without people really meaning to.
• Price is becoming a deciding factor. Between a Premium at $79.99/year on one side and a PRO listed from €11.90 to €59.90 for 12 months on the other (checked 09/16/2026), stacking these subscriptions over several years adds up fast for one simple task: logging what you eat.

No judgment on the quality of these products: these are public facts, sourced at the bottom of the page. But the direction is clear — features that used to be free are becoming paid over time. If that doesn't suit you, you're allowed to leave. We break down the MyFitnessPal case in our free MyFitnessPal alternative guide.

"Free to install" is not "free, period"

The most common trap isn't the price tag: it's the word "free" used to mean "free trial". Many apps let you in without paying, then lock the essentials behind a subscription, or start a few-day trial that turns into an annual charge if you forget to cancel. Technically it's legal; in practice, it's a credit card requested before you've even decided the app is right for you.

3 signs an app will end up charging you

• It asks for your card to "unlock the trial". A truly free app doesn't need a payment method to work.
• Core features are blurred or locked from the home screen. Scanning, seeing your macros, saving a food: if it's locked, "free" is a storefront.
• An account is mandatory. An account means an email, an ID, and data leaving for a server. It's not paid in dollars, but it has a price.

To avoid a hidden subscription, the safest reflex is to check whether you can count calories without ever entering a payment method. And if you're already caught in an auto-renewal, our piece on how canceling a nutrition subscription works (from the sourced Noom case) explains the mechanics to know.

What a truly free, no-subscription app must tick

"Free" means nothing on its own. What you are looking for has a name: a calorie counter without subscription, where the log survives the trial period. Here are the five criteria that separate real free from fake free:

• Count without a subscription — journal, calories and macros available without paying, today and in two years.
• No mandatory account — you open it and start, no email, no password.
• Barcode scanning included — the most useful feature shouldn't be a paid lure.
• Counting without a connection — it works on a plane or abroad, without depending on a server that can change its rules tomorrow.
• More than calories — Nutri-Score and micronutrients to understand what quality, not just how much.

Radish: free to count, no subscription, private by default

Radish ticks all five boxes. The core is free: journal, barcode scanning (via Open Food Facts), Nutri-Score, macros, personal recipes and 11 vitamins and minerals drawn from public reference databases — USDA (the US reference database) and CIQUAL (the French table from Anses). No account, no credit card, no subscription for the core. Counting, recipes and the Nutri-Score work without a connection; scanning a product missing from the database and the AI assistant need one. Your food log stays on your phone — never sent to our servers (except AI or barcode scanning, if you use them) — so there's nothing to sell — that's our promise, detailed in the calorie app that doesn't sell your data. Depending on your goal, our seven ways to track what you eat page points to the matching guide.

An optional Pro exists, as a one-time purchase — not a recurring subscription — and only unlocks advanced features. In other words: you never pay to count your calories, and never "by surprise".

It is, in the end, a plain food logging app: a calorie counter app when that is what you want from it, a calorie counting app for a week you are watching closely, a food diary app for the rest of the time. And in all three cases, with no account needed to open it.

Comparison: free with no subscription, really?

The criteria that matter when you want to count without paying or signing up. Checked in July 2026; "~" flags a partial point or one not documented by the vendor. Public prices for reference, subject to change.

✓ included free · ✗ not included (or paid) · ~ partial · Not documented = the vendor does not publish the information on the official pages we checked; we do not guess. Checked on 09/16/2026 on the official pages cited at the bottom of this page, prices in the currency shown by the vendor (MyFitnessPal and Cal AI: US pages, in dollars; Yazio: French App Store, in euros). Vendors can change their plans at any time.

If your only need is to count cleanly without paying or signing up, Radish stands out. For a detailed head-to-head with the leader, see Radish vs MyFitnessPal; for a market overview, our best calorie app in 2026 guide.

How to switch without losing the thread

Switching apps feels scary because we think we're "starting from zero". In practice, past history barely matters: what helps with weight loss or sticking to a goal is mostly consistency from today on, not the months before. Three simple steps:

• Note your current markers — your calorie goal and your recurring foods (breakfast, snacks). Five minutes is enough.
• Install Radish and log your first day — with no account, you can start right away; the scan finds most products.
• Cancel the old app's subscription once you're reassured, from your store's subscription settings (App Store or Google Play), not inside the app itself.

The most effective tracking is the one that follows you everywhere: that's why counting without a connection matters as much as being free. And if scanning is your number-one feature, we explain how to scan your calories for free.

Sources. MyFitnessPal: Premium ($79.99/year) and Premium+ ($99.99/year) prices, meal photo (Meal Scan) and custom macros in Premium — myfitnesspal.com/premium, checked 09/16/2026; barcode scan Premium-only since October 1, 2022 — MyFitnessPal official help, checked 09/16/2026. Cal AI: in-app purchases from $0.99 to $29.99, no duration shown — App Store listing (US), checked 09/16/2026; temporarily pulled from the App Store over deceptive billing (hidden auto-renewal, bypassing in-app purchase), April 2026, then reinstated after fixes — TechCrunch, 04/21/2026. Yazio: PRO 12 months from €11.90 to €59.90 depending on the offer — App Store listing (France), checked 09/16/2026; photo (AI) logging in Yazio Pro — Yazio official help, checked 09/16/2026. Radish nutrition data: CIQUAL (Anses) and USDA. Radish is not affiliated with any of the vendors mentioned; names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Prices subject to change; check the current plan before subscribing.

General information, not medical advice.

Prefer the installed app? Get Radish on iPhone or Android →