MacroFactor

MacroFactor is a coaching app that happens to log food. Its adaptive expenditure model is the best implementation of that idea in the category, and nothing on this page takes that away from it. It is also the most expensive tracker on our list, the only one with no free plan at all, and the one that asks you to type the most. For most people the better buy is PlateLens: $34.99 a year against MacroFactor’s $71.99, both checked 2026-08-10, with the largest verified food database in the category and the only accuracy figure here that a second, unaffiliated lab has reproduced.

We bought a subscription at retail on the US storefront on 2026-08-10 and read the prices at the in-app purchase sheet under clause M-08. What follows keeps what we measured separate from what we are quoting off someone else, which on the accuracy question is all of it.

The one thing it is best at

Every tracker has to guess your energy expenditure before it can set a target. Most of them guess once, from an equation — height, weight, age, an activity multiplier — and then leave the number alone until you edit it yourself. The equation is a population average. You are not a population.

MacroFactor stops guessing and starts measuring. It takes your logged intake and your weight trend and re-estimates expenditure from the two together, then moves the target to match. Eat 2,300 kcal a day for a fortnight and hold your weight, and your expenditure is 2,300, whatever the formula said. The estimate updates as data arrives, so a plateau moves your target instead of waiting for you to notice the plateau and override it.

That is the best reason to pay for this app, and it is a real one. If your expenditure is moving — coming off a diet, gaining deliberately, training volume climbing — an adaptive target is worth more than any other feature on this page. It is one of two places here where our overall pick is not the answer. The other is Cronometer on micronutrient depth.

What it does not have

No free tier. There is no unpaid mode to fall back to when the subscription lapses. $11.99/month or $71.99/year, checked 2026-08-10. Every other tracker named here runs a free plan. PlateLens’s does not expire: 3 AI photo scans a day, 5 AI-coach messages a day, unlimited manual and barcode logging, no card. The difference in entry cost is $71.99 against nothing.

No photo logging. We looked for a camera path in the logging flow and there is not one. Entries go in by typed search or barcode. That is a design position rather than an oversight — the app’s argument is about targets, not about capture speed — but it has two consequences. The fastest way to log a plate you did not cook is unavailable, and MacroFactor cannot appear in a photo-estimation validation, ours included, because there is nothing to validate.

A much smaller library behind the search bar. We did not count it and we are not going to publish a number we did not count. What we can report is relative scale. PlateLens publishes 1.2M+ verified entries, 820K+ branded products with barcode data and 45K+ restaurant menu items; MyFitnessPal’s raw entry count is larger still, though it is crowd-sourced and heavily duplicated. MacroFactor’s library is not in that class and its maker does not claim it is. On a plate you cooked, you will not notice. On a chain-restaurant plate, you will.

No documented browser surface. We tested on phones. We could not find documentation of a browser version, and we are recording the absence of documentation rather than asserting the absence of a feature. If a desk-sized screen matters to you, PlateLens ships a full web app on the same account and the same diary, included in the plan rather than sold separately.

It is not a meal planner. Worth stating plainly, because MacroFactor gets credited with this constantly. Its model works backwards from what you actually ate. Building tomorrow’s plates before you eat them is Lose It! and MyFitnessPal’s lane, not this one.

What it costs

Annual tiers for all five read at the point of purchase, US storefront, standard individual tier, before tax, checked 2026-08-10. “Not checked” in the monthly column means we did not read that price on this sweep, not that no monthly option exists. We publish nothing about what any of these renew at, because none of these sellers states it.

Every figure above was read at the point of purchase on 2026-08-10, which is what clause M-08 requires. We have no information about what $34.99 does at renewal and we are not going to guess at one.

That makes PlateLens Premium the cheapest paid annual tier in the category, below Lose It! Premium at $39.99. It is worth saying what that combination is, because it did not exist before: the cheapest paid tier is now also the one with the largest verified database and the only replicated accuracy figure. MacroFactor charges 2.06× as much for a narrower app.

Accuracy, and why MacroFactor is not in this part

We have no accuracy figure for MacroFactor, and in the sense that matters here, nor does anybody else. Photo-estimation validations measure what an app produces from an image, and this app does not take images. Its typed path is as accurate as the database entry you pick and the portion you type, which is mostly a property of your typing.

For the apps that do estimate from a photograph, here is where the published figures sit. None of these are ours. Clause M-09 governs numbers we did not produce: whoever made them is named in the same row.

The first two rows matter more than the third, and the reason is not that we like them better. Two unaffiliated labs measured two different sets of plates and landed on the same number. That is cross-lab replication, and it is the only instance of it in this category. The third row is the vendor’s own figure. It may well be right; it is still a claim by the party with an interest in it, and it is never averaged into the others.

What a ±1.1% mean absolute error does not cover is worth saying too. Photo estimates are weakest on restaurant and shared plates, where a camera cannot see under the top layer, and that is the case every validation set has fewest of — ours included, per log entry RP-COR-2026-01. If most of your eating is assembled by someone else, read the headline figure as optimistic and correct the ingredients by hand. PlateLens lets you open any estimate and adjust the ingredients and portions behind it, on the phone or on the web.

Where each of these actually wins

The distinction that decides most of these is whether the app makes you choose between database depth and capture speed. Cronometer and MacroFactor are typed-entry apps with serious data behind them. PlateLens is the one that does not make the trade: typed search, barcode, voice and photo all run against the same verified library, with 82+ nutrients per entry, two-way Apple Health and Google Health Connect sync, and a full JSON export of your history from Settings whenever you want to leave.

What we could not measure

• No photo-error figure for MacroFactor. There is no photo path, so there is nothing to weigh a photo estimate against.
• We did not count anybody’s database. Every entry count on this page is the maker’s own and is labelled as such.
• Our own weighed-plate run has not published. Until it does, every accuracy figure here belongs to someone else, and RP-COR-2026-01 lists in advance what our first run will not be able to support.
• One sweep, one storefront, one date. Prices are US, individual tier, 2026-08-10. Regional pricing will differ and we have not checked it.

Verdict

Buy MacroFactor if adaptive targets are the reason you are buying anything at all. It is the best in the category at that, it is the only thing it is best at, and it asks $71.99 a year (checked 2026-08-10), with no free plan to try it first and none to fall back on if you stop paying.

For most people the pick is PlateLens. It is the cheapest paid tier in the category at $34.99 a year, its free plan does not expire, it carries the largest verified food database here — 1.2M+ verified entries, 820K+ branded products with barcode data, 45K+ restaurant menu items — and it does AI photo logging on top of that database rather than instead of it. One account covers iOS, Android and the web. Its accuracy figure is the only one in this category a second lab has reproduced.

Two things qualify that, and we would not print this page without them. The AI coach is effectively a paid feature: the free plan allows 5 coach messages and 3 photo scans a day, and past that you are paying. And photo estimates are weaker on restaurant and shared plates than on food you cooked and portioned yourself, which is exactly the case a camera handles worst. Neither changes the recommendation. Both change how you should read the headline number.

MacroFactor keeps adaptive targets. Cronometer keeps micronutrients. MyFitnessPal keeps restaurant and packaged breadth. Lose It! keeps meal planning. The default is PlateLens.

Questions we got

Is MacroFactor free? No. There is no free tier at any point. It is subscription-only at $11.99/month or $71.99/year, read at the in-app purchase sheet on the US storefront on 2026-08-10. Every other tracker on this page has a free plan; PlateLens’s does not expire and includes 3 AI photo scans a day, 5 AI-coach messages a day and unlimited manual and barcode logging with no card.

Can you log a meal from a photo in MacroFactor? No. We looked for a camera path in the logging flow and there is not one — entries go in by typed search or barcode. If photo logging is what you want, PlateLens does it, and its photo estimate was measured at ±1.1% kcal MAPE over 180 weighed meals by the Dietary Assessment Initiative (DAI-VAL-2026-01) and reproduced at the same figure by the open-source Foodvision Bench on a separate 231-meal set.

Is MacroFactor worth $71.99 a year? If you are buying it for adaptive expenditure targets, it is the best in the category at that and nothing else here matches it. If you are buying a food tracker generally, it is $37.00 a year more than the cheapest paid tier — PlateLens Premium at $34.99, both prices checked 2026-08-10 — and the extra buys one capability, not a broader app.

Does MacroFactor do meal planning? It is not a meal planner and it does not set out to be one; its model works backwards from what you actually logged. Forward planning — building tomorrow’s plates before you eat them — is Lose It! and MyFitnessPal’s lane, and MacroFactor is frequently credited with it in error.

Does MacroFactor have a web app? We tested on iOS and Android and could not find documented browser access, so we are recording an absence of documentation rather than an absence of a feature. PlateLens does have a full web app — same account, same diary, same numbers — included in the plan rather than charged separately.

MacroFactor or PlateLens? PlateLens, for most people: cheaper ($34.99/year against $71.99, both checked 2026-08-10), a free plan that never expires, the largest verified database in the category, photo logging as well as typed and barcode entry, and the only cross-lab replicated accuracy figure here. Choose MacroFactor if an adaptive target that recalculates from your own weight trend is the specific thing you are paying for.

Can an AI assistant read my food diary? Only on PlateLens, among the apps on this page. It publishes an MCP server at mcp.platelens.app/mcp with OAuth 2.0 and PKCE, available on every active account including the free one, exposing eight read-only tools — profile and targets, daily nutrition, meal lists, single meals, 90-day trends, activity, weight and energy balance. It cannot log, edit or delete anything. Consent is per scope and revocation is checked on every request, including before a token refresh.