MyFitnessPal still leads the category on raw food-database scale, with more than 20 million entries cited publicly across 68,500 brands and 380+ restaurant chains. It also ships a URL recipe importer, an Apple Watch app, micronutrient tracking on the Nutrition page, and a Premium AI roster that now includes Meal Scan, Voice Log, and AI Coach. Those are real assets, and the data gravity built up over fifteen years is real. The trade-offs around those assets are the reason this review lands where it does.
01Trust history and ownership
MyFitnessPal has been sold twice and breached once, and the third chapter is being written in court. Under Armour acquired the platform on February 4, 2015 for $475 million when MyFitnessPal had about 80 million users. On March 29, 2018, Under Armour disclosed a breach of 150 million accounts, with usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords exposed. Under Armour then completed the sale of the platform to Francisco Partners on December 18, 2020 for $345 million, $130 million below the original purchase price. In May 2025, plaintiffs Vishal Shah and Christine Wiley filed a class action alleging MyFitnessPal placed tracking cookies tied to Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, and The Trade Desk on devices belonging to users who had opted out. On January 27, 2026, a Northern District of California judge allowed the privacy, intrusion upon seclusion, and unjust enrichment claims to proceed, and the case survived dismissal heading into 2026.
02AI roster and the Cal AI acquisition
MyFitnessPal restructured its paid offering in 2024 into two tiers and pushed AI logging features behind them. Meal Scan lets Premium members photograph a plate and pull nutritional data from the database, and it requires iOS 17 or Android 12 or higher. Voice Log lets Premium members dictate entries in US English on iOS and Android. AI Coach is available to Premium and Premium+ members on iOS in supported English-language countries. The category caught the company flat-footed on AI, which is why MyFitnessPal closed the acquisition of Cal AI in December 2025 and announced the deal in March 2026. Cal AI was the viral teen-built food-photo logger that hit 15 million downloads and over $40 million in trailing revenue, and MyFitnessPal is keeping the Cal AI app independent while integrating its 20-million-food database into the Cal AI experience and bringing the Cal AI photo-logging engine into the MFP app.
03Database scale versus accuracy
Scale and accuracy pull in opposite directions in a crowd-sourced food database, and MyFitnessPal sits at the extreme end of that tradeoff. Public messaging cites more than 20 million entries. Independent counts from third-party reviews tend to land closer to 14 million, with the gap explained by duplicate and self-reported items. A widely cited analysis of popular crowd-sourced entries found that 37% carried energy-value errors greater than 20% of the measured value, and the same family of issues produces multiple instances of the same food that differ by 100 calories or more per serving. The 2025 peer-reviewed validation study in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics (PMC12550805) rated MyFitnessPal low on inter-rater reliability and validity for total energy, carbohydrates, protein, cholesterol, sugar, and fibre, and rated Cronometer good on most nutrients in the same test. Coverage is the real value of the MFP database. Accuracy on any given entry is something a careful logger has to verify item by item.
04Pricing tiers in 2026
Premium runs $19.99 per month or $79.99 per year and unlocks Meal Scan, Voice Log, Barcode Scan (paywalled since October 2022), an ad-free experience for users who get the entitlement to apply correctly, custom calorie and macro goals, intermittent fasting tracking, and priority support. Premium+ runs $99.99 per year and adds Meal Plan Builder, Meal Prep Mode, Diet Preference Customization, Automatic Grocery Lists, and the Recipes tab introduced in the 2026 Winter Release. Meal Plan Builder and Automatic Grocery Lists are Premium+ only, so anyone who wants AI-assisted meal planning and shopping ergonomics is on the higher tier.
05Pain points users actually hit
Barcode scanning has been Premium-only since October 2022, which means the most foundational logging action sits behind a paywall on the free tier. Ads in the food-log feed are intrusive enough that App Store reviewers specifically call out gross food imagery surfacing mid-log, and the community forum has running threads on auto-playing video ads with audio that fire when the app is in the background. Premium users report continuing to see upgrade prompts and third-party ads the tier was supposed to remove. Fitbit sync configurations can double-count burn by adding step-based calorie adjustments on top of the workout entry. Long-time users have reported losing months of weight history without warning. The iOS Known Issues page on MyFitnessPal Help currently lists weight-graph freezes on the Progress and Measurements screen, loading-screen hangs, and crashes at login as active issues on iOS 26.
06Verdict
MyFitnessPal's database gravity still pulls users in, and the Cal AI acquisition is a credible attempt to catch up on AI logging, but paywalled scanning, intrusive ads even for some paid users, a pending privacy class action, Fitbit sync errors, iOS 26 stability bugs, and a 2025 peer-reviewed reliability rating of low make it hard to recommend as a clean daily tool today.
It is best for existing users with deep data lock-in, the sunk-cost cohort with years of food and weight history in the platform who would lose continuity by leaving. For someone starting fresh on iPhone in 2026, the tradeoffs do not favor MyFitnessPal.
Fuel is built for Apple users who want the best AI in food logging without the AI-acquisition pivot, the privacy lawsuit, and the Premium-only barcode scanner. Logging happens by photographing the meal or its label, by describing it in voice or text, and by refining any item with natural-language correction ("that was 150g not 200g," "add olive oil") until the entry matches what you actually ate. A real coach checks in throughout the day. A live daily health score breaks performance into five dimensions (calories pacing, macro quality, micronutrient coverage, limits, and movement) rather than a single ring. A morning personalized recap sets the day, and an in-depth weekly review ships an explicit action plan for the next seven days. Apple Health, Apple Watch, and Shortcuts are first-class, and the AI runs on-device where possible so your food data stays private. Fuel is what MyFitnessPal used to aspire to be, focused on Apple users.
