Chowdown vs MyFitnessPal: The Free Alternative

MyFitnessPal has been the default name in food tracking for over a decade. It’s the app most people think of first when they decide to start logging their meals. And for good reason — it built the category.

But the MyFitnessPal of 2026 is a very different product from the one that earned its reputation. Repeated price increases, an increasingly aggressive premium paywall, and a cluttered user experience have left many users looking for alternatives.

Chowdown is one of those alternatives. It takes a fundamentally different approach: AI-first food scanning, zero paywalls, and a commitment to being free forever.

Here’s an honest comparison.

Price: The Most Obvious Difference

Let’s get the big one out of the way.

	MyFitnessPal	Chowdown
Free tier	Yes (limited)	Yes (everything)
Premium price	£79.99/year	£0/forever
Ads in free tier	Yes	No
Feature gates	Many	None

MyFitnessPal’s free tier exists, but it’s increasingly restricted. Key features like detailed nutrient breakdowns, meal plans, and unlimited barcode scanning are locked behind the £79.99/year Premium subscription. The free experience is peppered with banner ads and upgrade prompts.

Chowdown has no premium tier. Every feature is available to every user, always. No ads, no upsells, no “you’ve hit your free scan limit” messages. The project is funded entirely by voluntary donations.

Verdict: Chowdown wins this one decisively. Not because MyFitnessPal is overpriced (many people find the premium worth it), but because Chowdown proves these features don’t need to cost anything.

Food Logging: Database vs AI

This is where the two apps differ most fundamentally.

MyFitnessPal uses a crowd-sourced food database — one of the largest in the world, with millions of entries. You search for what you ate, select the matching entry, adjust the portion size, and log it. You can also scan barcodes on packaged foods.

Chowdown uses AI. You either take a photo of your food or describe it in plain English (“two slices of toast with peanut butter and a banana”). The AI identifies the food and estimates the nutritional breakdown automatically.

Pros of MyFitnessPal’s Approach

• Extremely precise for packaged foods with barcodes
• Huge database means most foods are already listed
• Can save custom recipes and meals for quick re-logging
• Verified entries exist alongside user-submitted ones

Cons of MyFitnessPal’s Approach

• Database has accuracy issues — user-submitted entries are often wrong
• Logging is slow (search → scroll → select → adjust portions)
• Home-cooked meals are painful to log accurately
• Restaurant meals require guessing which database entry matches
• The sheer size of the database means multiple duplicate entries, often with conflicting values

Pros of Chowdown’s Approach

• Dramatically faster — photo or text description takes seconds
• Handles home-cooked meals naturally (just describe or photograph them)
• No database navigation or portion estimation
• Works for any food, anywhere, without needing a barcode
• Consistent experience regardless of what you’re eating

Cons of Chowdown’s Approach

• Less precise than weighing and scanning exact barcodes
• AI estimates have a margin of error (typically 15-25%)
• Can’t look up specific branded products with exact manufacturer data
• Newer technology with less track record

Verdict: Depends on your priorities. If you eat mostly packaged foods and want exact numbers, MyFitnessPal’s database approach has the edge. If you eat mostly home-cooked or restaurant meals and value speed over precision, Chowdown’s AI approach is superior. For most people pursuing general health and fitness goals, Chowdown’s speed advantage leads to better consistency — and consistency is what actually drives results.

User Experience

MyFitnessPal has the weight of 15+ years of feature additions. The app is comprehensive but dense. There are tabs for food, exercise, recipes, meal plans, community, progress, and more. For new users, it can feel overwhelming. The free tier adds banner ads between sections, which compounds the cluttered feeling.

Chowdown is minimal by design. Open the app, scan your food, see your dashboard. The interface focuses on three things: logging meals, viewing your macro progress, and getting AI coaching. There’s less to explore, but what’s there is polished and fast.

Chowdown also includes social groups — you can share meals with friends and family, react to each other’s meals, and stay motivated together. MyFitnessPal has a community feature too, but it’s more of a traditional forum than a social feed.

Verdict: Chowdown for simplicity and speed. MyFitnessPal for depth and comprehensiveness. If you want one screen that tells you everything you need to know, Chowdown nails it. If you want granular control over every aspect of your nutrition and exercise tracking, MyFitnessPal offers more.

Features Comparison

Feature	MyFitnessPal (Free)	MyFitnessPal (Premium)	Chowdown
Basic food logging	✅	✅	✅
AI food scanning	❌	❌	✅
Photo-based logging	❌	❌	✅
Barcode scanning	Limited	✅	❌
Macro dashboard	Basic	Full	✅ Full
Nutrient breakdown	Limited	Full	✅ Full
AI nutrition coach	❌	❌	✅
Social groups	Community forums	Community forums	✅ Groups
Meal ideas/recipes	Limited	✅	✅
Food history	✅	✅	✅
Exercise tracking	✅	✅	❌
Meal planning	❌	✅	❌
Ad-free	❌	✅	✅
Works offline	✅ (app)	✅ (app)	Partial (PWA)
Price	Free	£79.99/yr	Free

Notable differences:

• Exercise tracking — MyFitnessPal includes it; Chowdown focuses purely on nutrition
• AI coach — Chowdown has “Robin,” a personalised AI nutritional coach; MyFitnessPal doesn’t offer this
• Barcode scanning — MyFitnessPal’s strength; Chowdown doesn’t need it because AI handles all food types
• Social features — Chowdown’s groups feel more like a WhatsApp group for food; MyFitnessPal’s community is more forum-based

Accuracy

Let’s be real about this. Neither app is perfectly accurate.

MyFitnessPal’s database, despite its size, is riddled with user-submitted entries that contain errors. Studies have found that 10-15% of entries in food tracking databases have significant inaccuracies. You can partially mitigate this by sticking to verified entries, but for many foods — especially restaurant meals and home-cooked dishes — you’re guessing anyway.

Chowdown’s AI estimates are transparent about their limitations. They’re typically within 15-25% of actual values. That sounds like a wide margin, but consider that most people underestimate their food intake by 30-50% when they don’t track at all. Even a rough AI estimate is vastly better than no tracking.

The research is clear: tracking consistency predicts outcomes better than tracking accuracy. A study published in Obesity found that the frequency of food logging was the strongest predictor of weight loss — more than exercise, more than diet quality, more than the accuracy of individual entries.

Verdict: Roughly comparable for real-world use. MyFitnessPal can be more precise for packaged foods, but its database errors and the difficulty of logging home-cooked meals narrow the gap significantly. Neither is a substitute for a food scale if you need clinical precision.

Who Should Use Which?

Choose MyFitnessPal if:

• You eat mostly packaged/branded foods
• You need exercise tracking integrated with food logging
• You want meal planning features
• You’re willing to pay £79.99/year for the full experience
• You prefer a large established platform with a long track record

Choose Chowdown if:

• You want completely free macro tracking with no compromises
• You eat mostly home-cooked or restaurant meals
• You value speed and simplicity over comprehensiveness
• You want AI-powered features (photo scanning, nutrition coaching)
• You like social features for accountability
• You refuse to pay a subscription for basic nutrition data

The Bigger Picture

The macro tracking space has been dominated by subscription-based apps for years. MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MacroFactor, Lose It — they all follow the same model: offer a limited free tier, then charge £40-80 per year for the full experience.

Chowdown represents a different philosophy: that nutrition tracking is too important to lock behind a paywall. It’s not the most feature-rich app on the market, and it doesn’t try to be. It focuses on doing the core job — tracking what you eat — as quickly and painlessly as possible, and making that available to everyone.

For many people, especially those just starting their nutrition journey, that’s exactly what they need. Not more features. Not more complexity. Just a fast, free way to know what they’re eating.

---

Want to try Chowdown? It’s free — start tracking your macros today. No account required beyond a Google sign-in, no credit card, no trial period. Just open and go.