KalTrack
Comparison
A long-running free tracker with a genuinely generous free tier, against a newer camera-first app.
4.8 from 14,850 ratings · Free
One of the oldest calorie counters still going, and notable for how much it gives away free. Large community-built database, barcode scanning, a food diary with no aggressive paywall, plus a professional side used by clinicians and health programmes.
5.0 from 1 rating · Free
A camera-first tracker. Point at the plate for an AI estimate you confirm in two taps, or scan a barcode or nutrition label to get exact published figures instead. Built around the idea that a photo estimate is an estimate, with cuisine coverage beyond American food databases. New, and small.
| Calorie Counter by fatsecret | KalTrack Made by Viral Labs | |
|---|---|---|
| App Store rating | 4.8 from 14,850 ratings | 5.0 from 1 rating |
| How you log a meal | Search, barcode, and an image recognition feature | Photo of the plate, barcode, nutrition label, or a typed description |
| Food data | Large long-established community database | AI estimate from the photo, plus Open Food Facts for barcodes and OCR for printed labels |
| Free tier | Unusually generous; core tracking is free | A few AI scans every day; barcode lookups unlimited and free |
| Paid plan | Premium tier available, priced on the App Store listing | KalTrack Pro, $9.99/month or $29.99/year, 7-day free trial, cancel in iOS Settings |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android, web | iPhone. Android in development, no date promised |
| Offline diary | Partial | Yes, diary is on-device and syncs later; scanning needs a connection |
| Apple Health | Yes | Optional: reads steps and active energy, can write logged food back |
you want to spend nothing and still get a complete food diary. FatSecret's free tier is the most generous of the established trackers, which matters more than any feature comparison if budget is the binding constraint.
the camera path is worth a scan limit to you, or you want cuisine coverage beyond a US-centric database.
FatSecret deserves more credit than it gets. It has been running for a very long time, its free tier is genuinely generous rather than a trial in disguise, and if paying nothing is your requirement, this comparison is already over — take FatSecret.
KalTrack has a free allowance of AI scans per day and unlimited free barcode and label scanning, but the photo estimator is metered and the subscription is how the analysis gets paid for. Each scan costs us money to run, which is the plain reason it is not unlimited, and it is better to say that than to dress a limit up as a feature.
What you get for the limit is a different interaction. FatSecret's core loop is still a database search over a community-built dataset — enormous, and inconsistent in the way crowd-sourced data always is. KalTrack estimates from the plate and lets you correct it, and where an exact figure exists, it reads it.
Both are honest products. FatSecret is the better value and the safer bet; KalTrack is the faster loop if that is what has been stopping you.
Method: figures come from each app's public App Store listing on the day this page was built, and from each app's own published pricing. Features were checked against the apps' own descriptions. We make KalTrack, so treat this as our account of the difference, not a review.