"Is it free" is now one of the most common things people type after the name of a calorie app. That is not a coincidence, and it is not stinginess — it is a reasonable reaction to a category where "free" has come to mean "free until the moment it becomes useful".
We are building an app in this category, so we have an obvious interest here. What follows is still the honest version, because the alternative — being vague about pricing — is the exact behaviour that made this a search query in the first place.
The four things "free" is used to mean
| What the listing says | What you get | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Free to download | The app installs at no cost. | Says nothing at all about whether you can use it. This is the phrase to be most careful with. |
| Free trial | Everything, for three to seven days. | Usually requires payment details up front, and renews unless you cancel. A trial is a subscription with a delay. |
| Freemium with a scan cap | A fixed number of photo scans per day or per month, forever, with no card. | The cap. This is the only model where you can genuinely use the app indefinitely without paying. |
| Free with ads | Full features, interrupted. | Your attention, and often your data. Ad-supported health apps have a poor record on what they share. |
Why the AI ones cost more to run
This part is worth understanding because it explains the pricing rather than excusing it. A traditional calorie app is a database lookup — searching a food table is nearly free, which is why apps could give it away for a decade. A photo app runs a vision model on every single scan, and that has a real per-scan cost, paid by whoever built it, every time you photograph a sandwich.
That is why free tiers in this category are capped by scans rather than by features. It is also why an app promising unlimited free AI scanning forever should prompt the question of what is paying for it.
What a subscription should be buying you
If you are going to pay for one of these, the money should be going somewhere you can point at:
- More scans, obviously — and a cap high enough that you stop thinking about it.
- History that goes back further than a few weeks, and exports in a format you can leave with.
- Better handling of the food you actually eat, rather than a broader menu of Western restaurant plates.
- Genuinely no advertising and genuinely no data sharing, stated in specifics rather than in a privacy paragraph that could mean anything.
- A "premium" badge on a feature that costs nothing to run.
- Basic correction of a wrong result. Fixing the app's mistake should never be behind a paywall.
- Your own data. Export is not a premium feature; it is the difference between a tool and a hostage situation.
The questions worth asking about any of them
- How many scans do I get before paying, and is that per day or per month?
- Do I need to enter a card to try it?
- What happens to my logged meals if I stop paying — visible, read-only, or gone?
- Where are my food photographs processed, and how long are they kept?
- Can I export everything, and in what format?
Where Plateknow will land
The free tier is not settled yet, and we would rather leave this blank than promise a number the App Store listing might not match. The waitlist gets the answer before anyone else does.
What we can commit to now, because these are design decisions rather than pricing ones: correcting a wrong result will never be a paid feature; there will be no advertising; you will be able to export your log; and the first photo works before there is any account to create. Whatever the free tier turns out to be, the App Store listing and this page will say the same number — saying two different things in two places is the fastest way to earn the reviews this whole page is about.
Before the App Store
Get it before it is public — and tell us what to build.
Early access on TestFlight, and no charge during the beta.
Are there genuinely free AI calorie counters?
There are apps with a real free tier — a fixed number of scans, no card, indefinitely. There is no serious app offering unlimited free AI scanning, because every scan has a running cost. Judge the cap, not the word.
Is the paid version more accurate?
It should not be, and if it is, that is worth knowing. Accuracy comes from the model, and running a worse model for non-paying users would be a strange product decision to build deliberately.
What about the free tier on the big incumbent trackers?
The long-established trackers generally have generous free tiers for manual logging and database search, and put the AI photo features behind their subscription. If you do not mind typing, that is a real free option and worth knowing about.
Why did my free app suddenly start asking for money?
Repricing an existing free tier is common in this category, especially after a funding round or an acquisition. It is the main argument for choosing an app whose export you have checked.