Which AI calorie counter gets closest from a photo or a sentence?

The short answer

• SayLift, best overall for lifters: say the meal, snap it, scan the barcode or type it, check each line, and see it next to your workouts in one app. $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year) after a 3-day free trial, with no free tier and no ratings yet.
• Cal AI, best for photo-first estimates: the most popular photo-first counter, with 4.80 stars from over 371,000 ratings. Photo results need a subscription.
• SnapCalorie, best for photo accuracy: photo or a spoken note, depth sensing on iPhone Pro models, and more than 100 nutrients. The most expensive here, with plans listed up to $149 a year.
• Cronometer, best for a free barcode scanner: a careful database app that added photo and voice estimates in its Gold plan. The barcode scanner is free.
• MyFitnessPal and Lose It!, best if you already use them: the big calorie apps, with photo, voice and barcode entry in their paid plans.

Photo, voice or barcode: three ways an AI gets a number

From a photo. The app recognises the foods on the plate and guesses the portions from how they look. That works well for things you can see. It works badly for things you cannot: the oil in the pan, the butter in the rice, the sauce under the chicken. Those are often the most calorie-dense parts of a meal, so photo-only estimates tend to come out low. SnapCalorie tries to measure portion size with the depth sensor on iPhone Pro models, which helps with size but not with hidden fat.

From a sentence. You say or type "chicken thigh fried in a tablespoon of olive oil, a cup of rice, and garlic sauce." A sentence can carry exactly the things a photo misses: the cooking fat, the portion, the sauce. The estimate is only as good as the description, but a good description often beats a photo.

From a barcode. For anything in a pack, scanning the barcode pulls the numbers printed on the label. There is no guess at all, as long as the database entry is right. It is the most exact option, and the least useful for a home-cooked plate.

How the counters compare

Why SayLift is #1 for lifters

How we ranked them. Four things: built for people who lift, a real lifting tracker in the same app as your food (sets, reps, weights and a coach that sets your next working weight), how a meal goes in and how easy the estimate is to correct, and the price per year. SayLift has a full lifting tracker in the same app as your food. It takes a photo, a sentence or a barcode and shows every line before you save, and at $49.99 a year it costs less than Cronometer Gold ($59.99) or SnapCalorie's annual plan ($149); Cal AI, MyFitnessPal and Lose It! list some plans at or below that price. Each section below says where the others are stronger.

One app instead of two. SayLift holds both: your sessions and your meals sit on one day-by-day timeline, and its coach sets your next working weight from your own sets.

Voice first. Say your workout after training and it writes down every exercise, set, rep and weight. Say what you ate, with the oil and the portion, and its AI works out the calories, protein, carbs and fat.

Photo, barcode or typing too. Snap the plate and the AI estimates it, scan a barcode for the label numbers through Open Food Facts, or type a few words. Every line can be changed before you save.

What it does not do. Meal numbers are estimates, and a photo alone often reads low because oil, butter and sauces do not show. The daily guide sets targets for calories and protein only. There are no micronutrients and no body-weight chart. It is iPhone only, subscription only, and new, with no App Store ratings yet.

The price. $4.17 a month, billed $49.99 a year, after a 3-day free trial, or $7.99 a month or $3.99 a week. There is no free tier, and the subscription covers both the workout and the food side.

Who should pick something else. If you only want photo estimates from a widely used app, Cal AI has over 371,000 ratings. If photo accuracy matters most, SnapCalorie measures portions with the depth sensor on iPhone Pro models. If you want a free barcode scanner and a verified database of 1.1 million foods, Cronometer. If you do not lift, the workout half of SayLift is wasted on you.

SayLift is our app, so weigh this ranking with that in mind. Everything above is what the shipping app does today.

#1 SayLift: best overall for lifters

SayLift gives you four ways in: say the meal, snap a photo, scan the barcode or type a few words. Spoken and typed meals carry the details a photo misses, so you can say "two tablespoons of garlic sauce" and it is counted. Barcodes pull the label numbers from Open Food Facts, with no estimate at all.

Every result comes back as separate lines, each with a portion and a number, and you can change any line before saving. Calories are rounded to the nearest 10 and marked ≈, which is honest about what an estimate is. When you type, your own foods come up first with numbers you already checked, and a saved meal can be added again with no new estimate. Each meal shows calories, protein, carbs and fat, with a daily ring and a weekly view. You can also say your whole day at once, or say "yesterday" to add a missed day, up to 14 days back.

The honest limits. The numbers are estimates and not medical advice. A photo alone often comes out too low, because oil, butter and sauces do not show, so add a few words. Estimates need a connection and are capped at 10 an hour and 20 a day; entering a meal by hand, with your own numbers, is uncapped and works offline. There are no micronutrients, no water tracking and no body-weight chart, and no Apple Health sync. It is iPhone only, on iOS 17 or later. It is subscription only, at $4.17 a month billed $49.99 a year, $7.99 a month or $3.99 a week after a 3-day trial, and it is new, with no App Store ratings yet.

That is why it is our #1 for lifters. It takes a photo, a sentence and a barcode, shows every line before saving, and has a full lifting tracker with a coach in the same app. If photos are all you want and track record matters, Cal AI and SnapCalorie have put more work into photos alone.

#2 Cal AI: the photo-first default

Cal AI is the app most people mean by an AI calorie counter. You answer a few questions to build a plan, take a photo of a meal, and get a breakdown. With 4.80 stars from more than 371,000 ratings, it has by far the largest following of the photo-first apps.

Its App Store description is short and only describes the photo route, so we have not credited it with voice or barcode entry here. Photo results need a subscription, and its in-app purchase list shows several prices from $2.99 to $29.99 without naming the periods. It also states plainly that it does not give medical advice.

#3 SnapCalorie: the one trying hardest on accuracy

SnapCalorie was founded by former Google researchers and points to its own published research, a study of 5,000 dishes with every ingredient weighed. It takes a photo or a spoken note, and on iPhone Pro models it uses the depth sensor to measure food volume. Its listing also mentions adding a quick note such as "pan-fried in olive oil," which is exactly the fix for the hidden-fat problem. It tracks more than 100 nutrients and syncs with Apple Health.

It is also the most expensive app here. Its Premium list runs from $9.99 to $149, with $19.99 a month and $149 a year labelled as the monthly and annual plans.

#4 Cronometer, #5 MyFitnessPal and #6 Lose It!

Cronometer is a database app at heart, with more than 1.1 million verified foods, and its Gold plan adds photo and voice estimates that identify foods and portions. The barcode scanner is free. Gold is $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year. If you want the estimate as a starting point and a precise database to correct it against, it is a strong pick.

MyFitnessPal lists meal scan, voice entry and barcode scanning under Premium, at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year, on top of a database of more than 20.5 million foods. Lose It! puts photo, voice and barcode entry in Premium too, with prices listed from $9.99 to $79.99. Both are good if you already use them; neither is built around the estimate the way the top three are.

How to get a closer estimate from any AI counter

1. 1Say the cooking fat. "Fried in a tablespoon of olive oil" can add over 100 calories that no photo will see.
2. 2Give the portion in a unit you know: one cup, two slices, a fist-sized piece. "Some rice" is a guess; "one cup of cooked rice" is not.
3. 3Name the sauce and how much. Dressings and sauces are small on the plate and large in the total.
4. 4Scan the barcode for anything packaged. There is no reason to estimate a number that is printed on the label.
5. 5Check the lines before you save. If one portion looks wrong, fix that line rather than redoing the meal.
6. 6Reuse what you have already checked. A saved meal or your own food entry gives the same number every time.

How to pick

• You would rather describe a meal than photograph it, or you also lift: SayLift, if you accept $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year) after the 3-day trial and the lack of ratings.
• You want the most popular photo app and nothing else: Cal AI.
• Photo accuracy matters most and price does not: SnapCalorie, especially on an iPhone Pro.
• You want a free barcode scanner and a precise database: Cronometer.
• You already use MyFitnessPal or Lose It!: their paid plans add photo and voice entry without moving your history.
• You mostly want a simple record of what you ate: see apps for keeping a daily record of meals.
• You cook at home a lot: see how apps handle food you cooked yourself.
• You are on Android: most apps here have Android versions. SayLift is iPhone only.