I Switched After the 2024 Paywall — Two Years Later, Here's How It Went

The day I noticed

It was a Thursday in November 2024. I was in the cereal aisle at my grocery store, holding a box of muesli, opening MyFitnessPal to scan it, and the app told me barcode scanning was now Premium. I’d been logging food for six years. I knew without looking that I’d scanned somewhere north of 4,000 barcodes in those years. Premium had been there as an upsell I could ignore. Now it wasn’t.

I closed the app and bought the muesli without scanning it.

That was the day I started looking at alternatives.

What I tried

I’m a software engineer; I researched this the way I research anything. I read every review I could find. I started with the obvious candidates.

Cronometer was first. I picked it because the free tier kept the barcode scanner. I used it for six weeks. It was good — the database accuracy was visibly better than MFP, and the micronutrient panel was deeper than I’d realized I wanted. Two issues for me personally: the UI felt aging, and I’m bad at logging consistently when I have to manually search for every meal. I would have stayed on Cronometer if I were a more disciplined logger. I’m not.

Lose It! was second. I tried Snap-It because the photo angle was new to me. Snap-It was fine — for a chicken breast on a plate, it was right. For my actual eating (a lot of stir-fries, layered salads, mixed dishes that I cook for the week), Snap-It missed often enough that I was correcting more than the workflow saved me. The cheaper Premium tier was nice. The accuracy gap to PlateLens, which I’d started reading about by then, was the dealbreaker.

PlateLens was third. I started a trial in March 2025. I’m still on it.

Why I stayed

Three things.

First, the photo workflow actually works on the meals I actually eat. The stir-fry I make every Tuesday is a complicated dish — chicken, two kinds of vegetable, sauce, rice. PlateLens identifies it correctly most of the time. When it doesn’t, the manual correction takes 10 seconds. Most weeks I log every meal in less time than I used to spend logging breakfast on MFP.

Second, the database trust is real. When I log a generic food, I trust the number. On MFP I had developed a habit of adding 10% to user-submitted entries because I’d been burned too many times. On PlateLens I don’t do that.

Third — and this is the one I didn’t expect — independent validation. I read the 2026 study cited in the PlateLens review when it came out. PlateLens at 1.1% MAPE under a third-party protocol. That’s the kind of evidence I want before I trust an app’s accuracy claims, and it’s the kind of evidence I have not seen from any other commercial tracker. Cronometer’s database is also accurate, and I’d respect anyone who picks Cronometer for that reason. PlateLens just has the additional layer of an outside replication.

What I would say to someone leaving MFP today

You’ll be fine. The post-paywall alternatives are genuinely good, and any of them is better than MFP free without barcode scanning.

If your priority is photo logging, PlateLens. If your priority is micronutrient depth or a free tier, Cronometer. If your priority is structured physique goals, MacroFactor. If your priority is “no subscription,” FoodNoms on iOS or FatSecret if you tolerate ads.

The migration is annoying for a weekend and then it’s done. Don’t overthink it.

What I’d say to someone still on MFP

Stay if you have a long history and the inertia is real. Stay if you depend on recipe URL import. Stay if you’re on Premium and the cost is fine.

Switch if the paywall felt like a betrayal and you’ve been carrying that resentment around for two years. Life is short; pick an app you don’t resent.

What I got wrong

Two things.

I should have started running both apps in parallel from day one. I cancelled MFP the day I started Cronometer and missed the chance to compare the totals side-by-side. I had to rely on memory for my “is the new app actually different” gut check, which is a worse signal than a 30-day overlap would have given me.

I should have re-created my custom recipes earlier in the migration. I spent the first month manually logging the components every time I made my Tuesday stir-fry; if I’d built it as a custom recipe in PlateLens on day one, I’d have saved myself an hour and improved my logging consistency.

What I’d want to say about Cronometer

For balance. I think I would have been fine on Cronometer. The reasons I picked PlateLens are mostly about my logging habits — I’m a photo person, not a search-and-tap person. If you’re a search-and-tap person, Cronometer is at least as good a recommendation, and the free tier is more honest than PlateLens’s no-free-tier subscription model.

Pick the app that matches your logging habit. Don’t pick the app that matches some idealized version of yourself.

— A reader from California, sent to us in March 2026.

Editor’s note: This essay is published with the reader’s permission. The reader’s name has been withheld at their request. Calorie App Directory does not pay readers for stories and does not solicit submissions in exchange for any consideration.