Calorie Tracker With No Account: What Actually Stays on Your Phone (and What Doesn't)

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What stays, what leaves — line by line

No line of this table sends a food item, a calorie, a weight or a meal photo to our servers — except the two named exceptions, which you trigger yourself.

Check it yourself in 30 seconds

1. Turn on airplane mode and switch Wi-Fi off.
2. Open Radish and log a meal from the built-in database.
3. Build a personal recipe from those same foods.
4. Read a Nutri-Score and the micronutrients of a food.
5. Everything above works. Now try scanning a barcode the app doesn't already know: that one needs the network, and this is exception 1.

What stays on the device, no exception

Your food log, day by day and meal by meal; your weight history; your calorie and macro goals; your personal recipes and their ingredients; your weekly plan; your unit and language settings. All of this is stored in the app's local storage, on your phone — the same technical mechanism any app uses to keep your data between two launches, without sending it anywhere. Reading a Nutri-Score, checking the micronutrients of a food from the built-in database, or building a recipe from those foods: none of these actions need a connection, because the food database itself is embedded in the app, not queried on a server every time you read it.

The benchmark we use to describe this, precisely because it doesn't claim more than is true: your food log stays on your phone — never sent to our servers (except AI or barcode scanning, if you use them); counting, recipes and the Nutri-Score work without a connection. You can check this yourself, without taking our word for it: turn on airplane mode, turn off Wi-Fi, open the app, log a meal, build a recipe. All of it works.

Exception 1 — scanning a barcode absent from the database

Radish's food database is embedded in the app: tens of thousands of entries, sourced from CIQUAL (ANSES) and USDA, available offline. But a specific commercial product — a brand, a package size, a limited edition — isn't always in it. When you scan a barcode the built-in database doesn't recognize, the app queries Open Food Facts, an open collaborative database, to try to find that product. What's sent in that exchange: the barcode, alone. Nothing else — not your identity, not your log, not your other meals. This exchange happens only for that specific scan, triggered by your action; if the product is already in the built-in database, the scan stays local and nothing leaves.

Exception 2 — the optional AI assistant

Radish offers, as an option, an assistant that can estimate a meal's calories and macros from a written description or a photo. This feature does nothing by default: it only activates when you choose to use it. If you use it, the text you type or the photo you take is sent to an AI provider to be analyzed, and the result (a nutritional estimate) comes back to you in the app. It's the feature that sends the most information off the phone among the exceptions — because a meal photo or its description can be more identifying than a simple barcode — which is why we name it plainly rather than leaving it vague as "cloud processing". It can be turned off: without it, Radish remains a complete calorie counter, with manual search and scanning.

Two other flows, unrelated — neither your log nor your nutrition

Two other network exchanges exist in the app, unrelated to your food log. A purchase or subscription goes through Apple, Google, and our subscription provider (RevenueCat) — it's the transaction, not your log, that's involved. And an audience measurement tool (Google Firebase Analytics) sends technical usage counters — screens viewed, time since install, device model — to understand overall app usage; it waits for your consent in the European Union, the UK and Switzerland, and can be turned off in Settings › Data & Privacy. Neither of these two flows sends a food item, a calorie, a weight, or a meal photo — full detail is in our legal notice.

Why we never say "100% local"

That phrasing would be false, and it has a real cost: an app that promises "100% offline" and then sends something off at the first scan of an unrecognized product loses the trust it tried to build. We prefer wording that stays true even in edge cases: the log stays on the phone — never sent to our servers (except AI or barcode scanning, if you use them), two specific features need the network, and here they are, named. Anonymised usage statistics are also sent to Google (in the EU, only if you agree); your diary, foods and weight never are. That's also why the Our Promise page publishes a line-by-line table rather than a slogan — and why an "airplane mode test" is described there so you can check for yourself, in thirty seconds, what that page says.

General information about how the app works, not legal advice. Accurate as of August 31, 2026.

General information about how the app works, not legal advice.

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