SmartCrunch vs MyFitnessPal

The short answer#

MyFitnessPal is the app most people mean when they say “calorie tracker”. It has been running since 2005, its food database is the largest in the category, and it works on everything.

It is also a platform, and it is growing. Its own current App Store text describes an AI nutrition coach, GLP-1 medication tracking, workout logging, intermittent fasting, water tracking and food inspiration. If that breadth is what you want, this comparison is short: take MyFitnessPal.

SmartCrunch does one thing. It steers what you eat towards a goal weight, works out your maintenance from your own logged weeks rather than a formula, and gives that away free.

What each one is#

MyFitnessPal calls itself “an AI-powered health, nutrition & fitness platform”. Beyond calorie and macro tracking it carries workouts, an AI coach, GLP-1 support, fasting, water and habit tools, a very large food database with community entries, and apps on every platform. It has a free tier and a Premium subscription, and its own text opens by inviting you to start a free Premium trial.

SmartCrunch is an iPhone-only calorie tracker with one screen, no account and no server holding your diary. Its distinguishing property is not breadth: it is that the daily number comes from your own weeks rather than a formula, and that it says so when it cannot.

The database, which is their real advantage#

This is the honest headline of the comparison and it is not in our favour. MyFitnessPal’s food database is enormous and has two decades of user contributions behind it. If you eat out often, buy regional supermarket own-brands, or want a US restaurant menu item at 11pm, you will find it there and you may not find it in ours.

SmartCrunch reads Open Food Facts, the open food database — good on packaged goods, patchy elsewhere, and public in a way a proprietary database is not. Where a record is missing a field, our app says so rather than filling the gap with a zero, which is the right behaviour but does not conjure the missing data.

Where SmartCrunch differs#

• The daily number is derived, not assumed. MyFitnessPal, like almost every tracker, sets your calorie goal from a formula over your profile. SmartCrunch prefers to solve it backwards from what you actually ate against where your weight actually went, and treats the formula as the fourth rung of five.
• Free means the whole engine. Budget, diary, barcode scanner, product search, goal weight, trend line, forecast date, Apple Health both ways, and your complete history — no daily caps, no locked window. Our paid tier is one feature.
• No account. MyFitnessPal requires one; your diary lives on their servers and syncs across devices. Ours has no sign-up at all and the diary stays on the phone — which also means it does not sync, and if you lose the phone without a backup you lose the diary. That is the trade, stated both ways.
• No advertising. MyFitnessPal’s free tier carries ads; its own App Store privacy card lists advertising among the data uses. SmartCrunch runs no ads and no analytics of any kind.
• One screen, no tab bar.

Where MyFitnessPal is straightforwardly better#

• Database size and restaurant coverage.
• Every platform — Android, web, iPad, watch. We are iPhone only.
• Breadth — workouts, fasting, GLP-1 tracking, an AI coach, recipes and community. We have none of these and are not building them. (We do track water, and we do save dishes you build yourself — what we lack is a recipe library, not the ability to store a named meal.)
• Sync and backup across devices, which follows from having an account.

Price#

Measured on the US App Store on 7 September 2026. Apple’s in-app purchase list mixes current and legacy items, so this is the range it showed rather than a quoted price list.

Which to choose#

Choose MyFitnessPal if you want the biggest food database, apps on every device, and a product that also handles workouts, fasting and everything else. For most people most of the time, that is the sensible answer.

Choose SmartCrunch if you have already decided that calorie tracking is the only part you want, you are on an iPhone, and you would rather have a number derived from your own weeks — free, without an account, without ads — than a formula’s guess with a subscription attached to the useful parts.

Claims about MyFitnessPal were checked against its public pages on 2026-09-07 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 MyFitnessPal; the name is used only to identify the product discussed. Corrections: support@smartcrunch.org.