SnapNutrition AI turns a photo, a barcode, a voice note, or a typed line into calories and macros, and keeps the diary on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Bring your own Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter key and the app costs nothing. Or turn on Auto Mode for $2.99 a month and never touch a key.
357 kcal · 14 g protein · 52 g carbs · 11 g fat
Every component comes back editable. Drag the weight and the calories follow, using the app's own estimate for these noodles. Change a portion, remove an item, add one, then save.
200 g
Ramen noodles · 280 kcal
Meal total 357 kcal
Every scan comes back as components you can correct. Meals group into days with a total, and the days build a chart with a goal line and a 7-day average.
Photo, barcode, voice, or text. The estimate arrives as a list of components; change a portion, remove an item, add one, then save.
Meals grouped by day with the day's total. Favourites log again in one tap, manual entries can be backdated, and the whole diary exports as JSON or CSV.
Calorie and macro rings, a goal line on the chart, a 7-day average, and how many logged days landed within goal.
The six iPhone screens, as they appear on the App Store. The same diary runs on iPad, and the Apple Watch app logs by voice and shows the day's rings on your wrist.
On Apple Watch: say what you ate, see the day's rings, add a complication to the watch face.
Nine ways in, so the diary stays complete on the days a photo is not practical.
$0to SnapNutrition, ever
Create a key at Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter and paste it in once. Gemini and OpenRouter offer free tiers that cover normal daily logging, so scanning can cost nothing. Paid providers bill a few cents per scan, typically $1 to $3 a month for three meals a day.
$2.99a month, or $29.99 a year
No key to create. Scans pass through our proxy, which never stores your photos, and a fair-use daily limit applies. Three-day free trial, cancel any time in the App Store settings.
Core tracking is never locked behind Auto Mode. Provider prices and free tiers are set by the providers and can change.
Free means different things. Checked against each app's own listing or FAQ in August and September 2026.
| App | Photo scans without paying | When you outgrow free | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SnapNutrition AI | Unlimited with your own key. Only your provider's limits apply. | $0, or Auto Mode at $2.99 a month | |
| MyFitnessPal | None. Meal Scan is a Premium feature. | $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year | Full comparison |
| Cal AI | None without a subscription. | About $29.99 a year; offers vary in-app | Full comparison |
| SnapCalorie | Up to 3 AI logs a day. | Premium subscription; price not listed in its FAQ | Full comparison |
Estimates from a photo land within 10 to 30 percent of the truth, depending on portion size, hidden oils, and mixed dishes. That is good enough for consistent logging and not good enough for laboratory measurement, which is why every component can be edited after a scan, and why a week's trend tells you more than any single day. The accuracy guide goes through the failure modes and how to get better results.
The app has no mandatory subscription. In BYOK mode, Gemini and OpenRouter offer free tiers; paid providers bill you directly for AI usage. Optional Auto Mode costs $2.99/month or $29.99/year after a 3-day trial. Provider pricing and free-tier availability can change.
Simply take a photo of your food, and the AI analyzes the image to identify ingredients and estimate calories, protein, carbs, and fat. You can also scan barcodes, type a description, use voice input for hands-free tracking, share a photo in from another app, or enter a meal manually when you already know the numbers.
AI calorie estimates are typically within 10-30% accuracy depending on portion sizes and preparation methods. SnapNutrition AI displays this disclaimer and allows you to manually adjust portions and ingredients for better accuracy. Read more about what AI calorie counters can and can't do.
Yes. Your meal data stays on your device, and syncs through your own iCloud only if you turn that on. In BYOK mode, food images go straight from your device to the provider you picked — Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter — and we operate no backend at all. In optional Auto Mode, photos pass through our proxy on the way to the AI and are not stored. You can export your whole diary as JSON or CSV at any time. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
Any of four: Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), or OpenRouter. Gemini is the easiest starting point because it has a free tier — create a key at aistudio.google.com, paste it in, and you can scan without paying anyone. OpenRouter also has a free tier. The app marks which providers are free while you're choosing, so you don't have to research it first.
BYOK stands for Bring Your Own Key. Rather than requiring a subscription, SnapNutrition AI lets you use your own API key from Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter. You pay the AI provider directly for usage — typically $0.01-0.03 per food scan, or nothing at all on Gemini's or OpenRouter's free tier. This model makes the app free to use while giving you access to the latest AI models. (For users who'd rather skip the API-key setup, an optional Auto Mode subscription is also available.) Read our full guide to the BYOK calorie tracker model.
Yes, SnapNutrition AI is available on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch with iCloud sync across all your Apple devices. The Watch app lets you log calories by voice and view your daily progress right from your wrist. There is no Android version.
Yes. SnapNutrition AI is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with a companion Apple Watch app, and needs iOS 17.6 or later. It is made by Unibrix, and there is no Android version.
No. Several unrelated apps and websites use a similar name, including an Android app. SnapNutrition AI is a separate app for Apple devices, made by Unibrix, and snapnutritionai.app is its only official website.
Both estimate calories from food photos. SnapCalorie's FAQ says it is free for up to three AI logs per day, with a premium subscription beyond that, and it runs on a SnapCalorie account. SnapNutrition AI sets no scan cap of its own in BYOK mode, only your provider's limits apply, and it needs no account: the diary stays on your device. Read the full SnapCalorie comparison.
Three questions that come up next to calorie trackers in search, answered briefly, with the longer reads linked.
There is no single best calorie tracker, because the apps are built for different habits. Database apps such as MyFitnessPal and Cronometer suit people who weigh ingredients and look them up. Photo-first apps such as Cal AI, SnapCalorie, and SnapNutrition AI trade some precision for speed: you point the camera, check the list of components, and fix a portion when it is wrong.
Choose by how you will actually log every day, then by what free covers in each app and where your diary is stored. SnapNutrition AI is the pick if you want photo logging on your own AI key with no subscription, a diary that stays on your device, and an Apple Watch app. The best free AI calorie tracker apps guide compares four of them line by line, and MyFitnessPal vs Lose It puts the two biggest head to head.
No. For almost every adult, 1,200 calories a day is a steep cut, not a lot: resting needs alone run from roughly 1,100 to 1,900 calories a day before any activity, so a 1,200-calorie day almost always sits under what even a sedentary day burns, often far under. Those resting figures come from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, a standard formula that uses height, weight, age, and sex, and the one SnapNutrition AI's goal calculator uses.
NICE, the UK's clinical guideline body, classes 800 to 1,200 calories a day as a low-energy diet, to be considered only inside a specialist weight-management program with long-term support. Under 800 calories a day is what NICE calls a very-low-energy diet, reserved for people under specialist care with a clinical need to lose weight quickly: at that level it is a treatment, not a self-set goal. The app's calculator caps a weight-loss cut at 30 percent of your estimated expenditure and can go as low as 1,000 calories, which is inside that low-energy range, so if your goal lands near 1,200, check it with a doctor or a dietitian before going lower. The 1,200 calories a day guide works through the numbers.
Usually because you are eating more than 1,200 calories without realizing it. Logs run low, not high: cooking oil, butter, dressings, and the second helping go unlogged, and portions get read small. In a 2026 test by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIDDK), four popular photo-based tracking apps undercounted 102 weighed meals by about a third, worse than the 10 to 30 percent range quoted above and all in one direction, mostly fat the camera could not see. SnapNutrition AI was not in that test, but the lesson applies to it too: the camera misses fat, so add it yourself.
What you burn is an estimate too, so a small deficit on paper can be no deficit at all. Scale weight also swings with water, salt, and glycogen (stored carbohydrate, which holds water), and that can hide a real loss for a couple of weeks. What helps: weigh the foods that carry the calories, log the oil, compare weeks rather than days, and read the 7-day average instead of one morning's number. The calorie deficit guide explains which logging errors average out and which never do. If a careful log and a flat average still disagree after a month, ask a doctor: some conditions and medicines change the picture. The 1,200 calories a day guide covers the usual reasons in order.
Longer reads on cost, accuracy, and privacy, with sources.
What the free tiers cover, what Premium costs, where the barcode scanner went, and what "number one" means.
Total and extra calories for 10,000 steps by body weight, what a 3,000-calorie day means, and the real signs of fat loss.
Where 1,200 sits against what you burn at rest, what NICE calls that level, and why the scale stalls on it.
Random error cancels over a week; bias never does. How to read a goal line and an average.
Follow the path of food photos, account data, local storage, and AI providers.
What free actually means across SnapNutrition AI, SnapCalorie, Cal AI, and MyFitnessPal.
Free scans, accounts, accuracy claims, Apple Watch, privacy, and export.
Both scan food by photo. One needs a subscription to work at all.
What bring-your-own-key means, what a scan costs, and the tradeoffs.
Where photo estimates go wrong and how to get reliable results anyway.
SnapNutrition AI, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, Lose It!, and Cal AI compared.
Free on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Add a Gemini or OpenRouter key and the first scan costs nothing.
SnapNutrition AI is for general food logging and wellness support. It is not medical advice and should not replace guidance from a doctor or registered dietitian.
