The short answer#
If you want micronutrient depth, use Cronometer. It tracks 95+ vitamins and minerals against a curated database of over a million verified foods, including laboratory-analysed entries, and it is the app dietitians and researchers actually reach for. SmartCrunch tracks four figures beyond calories and macros. There is no version of this page where we win that argument.
We differ somewhere else: on where the daily calorie number comes from, and on what costs money.
Where Cronometer is better#
- Nutrient coverage. 95+ against our four (fibre, sugars, sodium, saturated fat). If you are managing an actual deficiency, tracking iron or B12, or working with a dietitian, this is the whole ballgame.
- Database quality. Curated and verified, with analysed entries, rather than the open, community-contributed Open Food Facts that we read.
- Platforms. Android, web, and more integrations.
- Fasting, biometrics and a long tail of tracked measures we do not have.
Where SmartCrunch differs#
The calorie number is derived, not assumed. Cronometer, like most trackers, sets your target from a formula over your profile. SmartCrunch treats that as the fourth rung of five and prefers to solve your maintenance backwards from what you actually ate against where your weight actually went — with published thresholds and a refusal when the data cannot support an answer.
Depth we do not have, we do not fake. This is the one place our shallowness is deliberate rather than a shortfall. A typed-in meal has no micronutrient fields, and an app with 95 nutrient slots has 95 opportunities to show a confident zero for a meal it knows nothing about. We report coverage next to every figure and decline to show a total below half. With four nutrients that is honest bookkeeping; across 95 it would be an enormous amount of “unknown”, which is part of why we did not try.
No account, and the diary stays on the phone. Cronometer syncs across devices, which requires an account and a server. We have neither, with the trade-offs that implies in both directions.
Price#
Measured on the US App Store on . Apple’s in-app purchase list mixes current and legacy items, so this is the range it showed.
| Cronometer | SmartCrunch | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | yes, with ads; Gold removes them and adds features | yes, no ads, no caps |
| Monthly | ~$10.99 (Gold) | $9.99 |
| Annual | ~$59.99 (Gold) | $49.99 |
| What the money buys | ads off, more charts, custom nutrient targets, more | one feature: photo and sentence estimation |
Which to choose#
Choose Cronometer if nutrients beyond calories and macros are the reason you are tracking at all, or if someone clinical is going to read your data.
Choose SmartCrunch if you are tracking calories towards a goal weight, want the daily number to come from your own weeks rather than a formula, and would rather have four figures you can trust than ninety-five you cannot check.
Claims about Cronometer were checked against its public pages on and are not warranted to stay current — prices and features change without notice, and the vendor's own site is authoritative. SmartCrunch is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Cronometer; the name is used only to identify the product discussed. Corrections: support@smartcrunch.org.
Read next
- Why a nutrition app should say “I don’t know” Counting a missing value as zero makes a day of packaged food look cleaner the less you know about it. The fix is to report how much of the day the number covers.
- How much fibre per day? About 28 g on a 2000 kcal day, and 30 g on 2200. Tied to energy rather than fixed, because the same grams mean different things at different intakes.