The food diary app you keep because it takes ten seconds

The short answer

• SayLift, best overall for lifters: one app for your workouts and your food diary, filled in by voice. Say your whole day in one recording and each meal lands at its own time, or say "yesterday" to fill in a day you missed. $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year) after a 3-day free trial, with no free tier and no ratings yet.
• MyFitnessPal, best free diary: the default food diary, with the largest database and a free version. The fast ways in (barcode, photo and voice) need Premium at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year.
• Cronometer, best for detail: the most detailed record, including vitamins and minerals, with a free barcode scanner. Gold is $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year.
• Lose It!, best for weight loss: a diary built around weight loss, with photo, voice and barcode entry in Premium.

Why food diaries get abandoned

Most people who have tried a food diary know the pattern: careful records for a few days, then fewer, then none. The usual reasons are practical, not a lack of willpower.

Recording takes longer than eating. Searching a database for each item, picking a portion, then doing it again for the side and the sauce takes minutes. A snack eaten in thirty seconds is not worth three minutes of tapping, so it gets skipped.

One missed day breaks the chain. You forget lunch on Tuesday, and filling it in on Wednesday feels like homework. A diary with gaps feels useless, so people stop rather than catch up.

The numbers feel like a grade. Some apps turn a high day red. If the diary feels like a judgment, people stop opening it on the days that matter most.

So the app worth choosing is the one that makes recording fast, makes catching up easy, and does not scold you.

How the diaries 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 quickly a meal or a missed day goes in, and the price per year. SayLift has a full lifting tracker in the same app as your food. You can say a whole day in one recording or say "yesterday" to catch up, and at $49.99 a year it costs less than Cronometer Gold ($59.99); 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, one meal or the whole day, and each meal is saved at its own time with its calories, protein, carbs and fat.

Photo, barcode or typing too. Snap the plate and SayLift 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 want a free diary, a database of over 20.5 million foods or Android, MyFitnessPal. If you want vitamins and minerals in the record, Cronometer. If your diary is only about losing weight, Lose It! is built around that. 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 treats the diary as something you talk to. You tap the microphone and say "oatmeal with banana for breakfast, a chicken wrap for lunch, and pasta at seven." It splits that into three meals and saves each one at its own time. Missed a day? Say "yesterday I had…" and the meals land on yesterday, up to 14 days back. You can also snap a photo, scan a barcode or type a few words.

Before anything is saved you see every line, with a portion and a number, and you can change any of it. Calories are rounded to the nearest 10 and marked ≈, because they are estimates. When you type, your own foods come up first, and a saved meal can be added again with no new estimate, so it keeps exactly the same numbers. Each meal also shows protein, carbs and fat, and a daily ring and a weekly view show the totals.

Nothing is judged. There is an optional daily guide for calories and protein, but nothing turns red and no day counts as failed. Your meals sit on the same day-by-day timeline as your workouts, and Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets start a meal entry in one tap. Everything is backed up to the cloud.

The honest limits. Meal numbers are estimates, not medical advice, and a photo alone often comes out too low because oil, butter and sauces do not show. There are no micronutrients, no water log and no body-weight chart. Spoken, photo and described meals 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 is 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. You can say a whole day at once or catch up on yesterday by voice, which is what keeps a diary going, and your training sits in the same app. If you want a free diary or an Android app, MyFitnessPal is the safer pick.

#2 MyFitnessPal: the default free diary

MyFitnessPal is the food diary most people already know. Its listing claims more than 20.5 million foods, including restaurant dishes, so whatever you ate is probably in there. You can save meals and recipes you eat often, set goals, and track water as well as food.

The free version is a search-and-tap diary with ads. The faster ways to record a meal, scanning a barcode, photographing a plate or speaking, are listed under Premium at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year, with some lower prices also on the list. If you are happy to search for each item, the free version is enough.

#3 Cronometer and #4 Lose It!

Cronometer calls itself a food diary designed for accuracy, and it is the most detailed record here. Its database of more than 1.1 million verified foods is consistent, it tracks vitamins and minerals as well as the main numbers, and the free version scans barcodes. Photo and voice entry, repeat items and a recipe importer come with Gold, at $10.99 a month or $59.99 a year. Pick it if the detail matters more to you than speed.

Lose It! is a diary for losing weight. The free version covers calorie tracking and a weight-loss plan; photo, voice and barcode entry, plus fuller nutrient tracking, are in Premium, which its App Store list shows at several prices from $9.99 to $79.99. Its listing also covers intermittent fasting and GLP-1 medication tracking.

How to keep a food diary for 30 days

1. 1Record each meal right after you eat it. Ten seconds at the table beats ten minutes of remembering at night.
2. 2Do not aim for perfect. A rough entry for every meal is worth more than an exact entry for half of them.
3. 3Save the meals you repeat. Your usual breakfast should take one tap, not a search.
4. 4If you miss a meal, fill it in the next day instead of giving up on the week. In SayLift you can just say "yesterday."
5. 5Look back once a week. A diary you never read is just a list; a weekly look is what shows the patterns.
6. 6Stop calling a day bad. The point is the record, and a day you avoid recording is the only day that is actually lost.

How to pick

• You keep forgetting to record meals, or you miss whole days: 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 a free diary and do not mind searching for each item: MyFitnessPal.
• You want vitamins and minerals in the record too: Cronometer.
• Your diary is for losing weight: Lose It!
• You want numbers worked out from a photo or a sentence: see our comparison of apps that estimate a meal from a photo or a sentence.
• You mostly cook at home: see how apps handle food you cooked yourself.
• You are on Android: MyFitnessPal, Lose It! or Cronometer. SayLift is iPhone only.