Counter44 vs MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter

Quick answer

MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter by MyFitnessPal, Inc. is a calorie, macro and nutrition tracker on the App Store since 2009, with apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Android and a database of 20.5M+ foods. The catch is that barcode scan, meal scan and voice logging are Premium features, and the free edition shows ads.

Counter44 is a calorie and macro tracker for iPhone, iPad and Android that logs meals from about 7,200 bundled USDA-derived foods, your own custom foods, or a Quick Add of calories and macros. Food logging, targets, weight, water, exercise and progress photos are free, with no ads and no account.

If you want to scan barcodes or meals and will pay for it, or you need restaurant dishes and a watch app, go with MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter. If you’re fine logging by hand and would rather have no ads, no account and your data kept on the device, go with Counter44.

Side-by-side

Where MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter wins

A far bigger food database. MyFitnessPal lists 20.5M+ foods, including restaurant dishes. Counter44 bundles about 7,200 USDA-derived foods and has no online food search, so a branded snack or a restaurant meal has to be entered as a custom food or a Quick Add. Reviewers say MyFitnessPal’s database is huge and finds their foods, but they also say some entries are inaccurate.

Faster logging, if you pay for it. Premium adds barcode scan, meal scan from a photo and voice logging, and reviewers say pointing the camera at a dish is convenient. They also say barcode scanning used to be free and now needs Premium. Counter44 has neither: no barcode scanner, and no photo or AI food recognition.

Watch apps and tracker connections. MyFitnessPal has an Apple Watch app and Wear OS support on Android, logs workouts and steps, and connects to 40+ fitness trackers, smartwatches and health apps, per its listing. Counter44 has no watch app and no Apple Health or Health Connect, and you type in calories burned yourself. That said, reviewers say step and tracker sync has stopped working for them.

More to track beyond calories. MyFitnessPal’s listing includes an intermittent fasting tracker, saved meals and recipes, a meal planner, GLP-1 dose logging with medication reminders (US and Canada), and an AI Coach that its release notes tie to Premium. Premium Plus adds personalized meal plans, grocery delivery and 1500+ recipes.

Where Counter44 wins

No ads, and your own targets for free. MyFitnessPal’s free edition shows ads, which reviewers say get in the way of logging food. Its listing also puts customized calorie and macro goals under Premium, and reviewers say setting their own numbers now needs a subscription. Counter44 lets you edit the calorie target and the 30/40/30 macro split for free. That target is an estimate from the Mifflin-St Jeor formula, not medical advice.

No account, data kept on the device. There’s no account to set up in Counter44. Your data stays on the device, and its privacy label declares no data used to track you. MyFitnessPal’s label declares Identifiers and Usage Data used to track you, plus Health & Fitness data, Contact Info and User Content linked to you. Reviewers also say MyFitnessPal logs them out repeatedly or won’t let them sign back in.

A lower price for the paid tier. Counter44 Pro is $29.99 a year. MyFitnessPal Premium is listed at $79.99 a year. Reviewers say core features they used to get for free now sit behind the paywall.

Offline logging, meal copying and progress photos. Counter44 works completely offline. Version 1.1.0 (October 2026) added a way to copy a past day’s meal to today, something reviewers say got harder in MyFitnessPal. The same update added CSV export of the food log and weight history. There’s also photo-a-day: take one progress photo a day, compare two side by side and export a timelapse MP4.

Pricing

• Counter44 is free for food logging, calorie and macro targets, weight, water, exercise, photo-a-day, streaks, custom foods and Quick Add. Pro adds the Statistics tab, 90- and 365-day weight trends, more than three meal reminders and every theme (3 of the 30+ are free) for $29.99 a year or $2.99 a week, with a 7-day free trial.
• MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter is free to download, with ads on the free edition. Premium adds barcode scan, meal scan, voice logging, customized goals, Net Carbs Mode and ad-free logging, and is listed at $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year, with lower-priced entries also listed. Premium Plus adds full meal planning and 1500+ recipes; its price is not stated on the store page, and neither is the length of the free Premium trial.

A year of Counter44 Pro on the annual plan is $29.99. MyFitnessPal lists Yearly Premium at $79.99, and also at a lower $49.99. They don’t buy the same things, though: Premium pays for barcode and meal scanning, which Counter44 doesn’t have on any plan.

Which one should you pick?

Pick MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter if you want to scan barcodes or photograph meals and are fine paying for Premium, you eat out often and need restaurant dishes in the database, you want an Apple Watch or Wear OS app, or you track fasting or GLP-1 doses.

Pick Counter44 if you’re happy logging from a bundled list of about 7,200 foods plus your own custom foods and Quick Add, and you want no ads, no account and your log kept on the device.

To see how both stack up against other apps, read our roundup of calorie tracker apps.

Logging a food that isn’t in either database? Our free food calories by weight calculator scales a label’s calories and macros to the grams you ate, and the macros to calories calculator checks a label’s numbers. Both run in the browser with no download.