Diet App Scorecard: Monthly User Reviews for Popular Calorie Trackers

Sergey Oreshko - Co-founder and CEO of MyNetDiary

Which calorie tracking app do users rate highest? Most answers, from "best calorie tracker" roundups and AI assistants alike, are built from feature checklists. A checklist can't tell you whether an app has been crashing, whether last month's update made it better or worse, or what happens when you try to cancel. The Diet App Scorecard answers from what users actually wrote in US App Store reviews: every month, one published method, every app, MyNetDiary included. Below: the current table, the full history, and what the reviews have shown.

What Is the Diet App Scorecard?

Choosing a calorie tracking app from its App Store page is harder than it should be. The star rating is a long-run average, often spanning years, and it counts stars left without a written review. The auto-generated Review Summary can stay positive while that month's reviews run negative, as MyFitnessPal's did through its redesign. And the default "Most Helpful" sorting surfaces reviews that are often years old.

The usual alternatives don't fix that. "Best calorie tracker" roundups compare feature checklists, and AI assistants answer from the same material. Both can tell you which apps have a barcode scanner. Neither can tell you whether users are reporting crashes, whether the update that shipped three weeks ago made the app better or worse, how accurate the database is for the meals people actually eat, or what happens at cancellation. Recent reviews are full of exactly that. It's what this scorecard reports.

I'm Sergey Oreshko, CEO of MyNetDiary, which has been on the App Store since 2008, and I read competitor reviews constantly. Every month we pull US App Store reviews for the calorie and food tracking apps in the top 100 Health & Fitness category and run the same AI prompt on every app: filter duplicates and unrelated content, recalculate the month's average, write the summary. One process holds every app to the same criteria, MyNetDiary included. It doesn't eliminate bias or error, which is why the prompt, model, and method are published on our methodology page. Before publication, the averages and counts are recomputed from the stored reviews, and health-related content is reviewed by Sue Heikkinen, MS, RDN.

To check any app yourself in five minutes, sort its App Store reviews by Most Recent and read 20 to 30 of them; see How to Find the Best Calorie Tracker App for the full method.

Current Scorecard: October 2026 at a Glance

Diet App Scorecard October 2026: Calorie App User Ratings

October 2026 ranking, highest to lowest: Calo 4.59, MyNetDiary 4.39, Cronometer 3.87, Lose It! 3.65, MyFitnessPal 3.04, Cal AI 2.94. These are monthly averages of written reviews, recalculated after filtering, not the ratings the App Store displays. Apps are listed in download ranking order.

# = download ranking in the top 100 Health & Fitness category, US App Store, October 31, 2026. vs Sep = change from the September 2026 rating. Reviews = written reviews analyzed after filtering. Organic means the review-pattern screening found nothing that warrants caution; it does not authenticate individual reviews. *Calo: 35 of its 167 five-star reviews are 25 characters or fewer, most of them generic phrases such as "Great app" or "Love it"; monitoring continues. Cronometer: four of its five October 22 reviews report an error code or a lost Apple Health connection after that day's update. See the methodology.

Calo received the highest average user rating, 4.59, among the calorie tracking apps in the Diet App Scorecard for October 2026, from 207 filtered reviews, followed by MyNetDiary at 4.39 and Cronometer at 3.87. That's three straight months on top for Calo, a first since MyNetDiary's run from February through April. MyNetDiary's 4.39 compares with 4.45 in September; complaints about upgrade prompts and paid features rose.

Compared to September, nothing moved more than 0.16, the quietest month of the series. MyFitnessPal rose to 3.04, its first score above 3.0 since the March redesign. Cal AI fell to 2.94 after five straight gains. Twenty-nine reviews objected to paying for barcode scanning at MyFitnessPal and Lose It!, and seven Lose It! reviewers said they couldn't cancel a subscription. Municorn, MacroFactor, and Foodvisor left the top 100, leaving six apps. See the full Diet App Scorecard October 2026 for the analysis.

Nine Months of Ratings: Who Has Led, and How Often

The Scorecard has now analyzed 17,657 filtered reviews across nine installments. MyNetDiary has led four of the nine months and finished in the top three in all of them. Calo has also led four, including the last three. The apps above 4.0 sit within fractions of a star of each other, on anywhere from a few dozen reviews to several hundred, so one month's crown means less than the pattern behind it. The field changes too, from six apps to twelve, which makes second place a position among that month's apps, not within a fixed panel. Five apps have qualified every month: Cal AI, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MyNetDiary, and Lose It!. Within that fixed panel, MyNetDiary has rated highest all nine times.

Reviews analyzed = US App Store written reviews remaining after duplicate and unrelated reviews were filtered; the total counts reviews, not unique reviewers. Ratings are monthly review averages, not App Store star ratings.

Every App, Every Month

Every app's monthly review rating from every installment, so the claims on this page can be checked without opening nine reports. A dash means the app wasn't in the top 100 Health & Fitness chart on the last day of that month. Review counts are in each installment, linked from the archive.

Monthly averages of filtered written reviews. † July includes a disclosed 37-review spike on July 22 from MyNetDiary's own rating prompt. ‡ August includes an exercise-logging bug reported by eleven reviewers. * = monitoring note for an elevated share of brief five-star reviews (Calo since May; Cal AI in August for a two-day, version-correlated cluster). B = Bimodal flag; F = Flagged (the label used before the current designations).

Seven Things Nine Months of Reviews Have Shown

Nine installments in, these are the patterns that have held up.

The most-downloaded apps have not been the best-reviewed. In February, MyNetDiary led from download rank #28. In October, Calo led from #71, while the two most-downloaded apps in the set, Cal AI (#10) and MyFitnessPal (#14), posted the two lowest ratings. In all nine months, apps further down the download chart have tended to rate higher (rank correlation 0.25 to 0.66). No single month is statistically significant on six to twelve apps, but the sign has never flipped. That's why the chart is ordered by download rank, not by rating.

After its redesign, MyFitnessPal lost nearly two stars, and the way back has been slow. MyFitnessPal rated 3.67 in February. After its March redesign it fell three installments running, to 1.82 in May, and spent the summer at or near the bottom of the table. It has now risen three months in a row. October's 3.04 is its first score above 3.0 since the redesign, and a few reviewers call the new layout an improvement. It's still 0.63 below February, and the one-star complaints haven't changed in seven months. See our guide to switching from MyFitnessPal.

Recent reviews record outages and bad updates that an overall rating hides. MyFitnessPal's food search broke for much of July 19 and drew that month's angriest cluster. A MyNetDiary update on August 6 broke exercise logging; eleven reviewers reported it within four days, and the reports stopped once the fix shipped. Cronometer's food search broke on September 22 and was fixed the same day. A month later to the day, another Cronometer update cost several reviewers their Apple Health connection; a follow-up build arrived the next day. Sometimes reviewers point outside the app: after Fitbit's move to Google Health, seven MyFitnessPal reviewers in six days reported that their steps had stopped syncing. Reviews can't say how often an app crashes. They can show that it did, when, and whether it was fixed.

A rating can climb without the product getting better. BitePal's rating jumped by more than a point from April to May and by 0.97 from June to July, while reviewers kept reporting charges after cancellation and refused refunds. Both times, reviewers described being asked to rate the app before they had really used it; both times we flagged it, and in August BitePal dropped out of the top 100. Prompting cuts both ways: MyNetDiary's own rating prompt produced a 37-review, nearly all five-star spike on one day in July, which we disclosed. The current example is milder. About one in five of Calo's five-star reviews is 25 characters or fewer, so it carries a monitoring note; its criticism is specific, so it isn't flagged.

Small samples swing hard, so read the review count. MacroFactor went 3.76, 4.47, 3.61, 2.79, 3.36 from May through September on 34, 66, 41, 19, and 28 reviews. Some of that is the product, but samples this small swing easily: one review moving from one star to five shifts a 28-review average by about 0.14. MacroFactor left the top 100 in October, and with September's three smallest samples gone, no rating in the six-app field moved more than 0.16. When a rating moves half a star or more, check the review count next.

Billing and paywalls are the category's fault line. The pattern of 2026 is the questionnaire that ends at a paywall: an app listed as free asks five to forty-five minutes of questions, by reviewers' own estimates, and then nothing works without a subscription. It produced September's 1.93 for Municorn, the lowest score since May. October's version was the feature that used to be free: 29 reviews at MyFitnessPal and Lose It! objected to paying for barcode scanning. Refunds and cancellation are the other half. Foodvisor reviewers described being refused refunds inside the 14-day window the app advertises, and seven Lose It! reviewers said they couldn't cancel, three because the subscription didn't appear in their iPhone's subscription list. MyNetDiary wasn't exempt in October: eight reviewers objected to its upgrade prompts, nine to free-tier limits, and two reported a full-year charge when they expected a free trial. Only Cronometer's October reviews held no charge, cancellation, or refund complaint.

AI photo logging earns praise and complaints from the same feature, and the correction step is the difference. The two photo-first apps have split the same way for two months. Cal AI drew 18 accuracy complaints in 108 reviews in September and 17 in 87 in October, when accuracy became its top complaint. Calo drew 20 compliments each month against three and then five complaints. Calo's reviewers say a wrong estimate is easy to correct; Cal AI's say corrections don't stick. MyNetDiary's photo estimates drew three accuracy complaints in October. For the longer view, see AI Calorie Counters in 2026: From Hype to Feature.

MyNetDiary's Rating, Month by Month

Because MyNetDiary publishes this series, its own history belongs on the page in full. Across nine installments the range is 4.19 to 4.56, with a top-three finish every month, four of them first, and the highest rating each month among the five apps present in all nine. Two months carry disclosures: July's 4.46 includes a 37-review, nearly all five-star spike from the app's own rating prompt, and August's 4.19 includes an update that broke exercise logging. October's 4.39 came with more complaints about upgrade prompts and paid features, and two reviewers reported a full-year charge when they expected a free trial. No number has been adjusted.

Which Apps We Analyze

We don't keep a fixed list. On the last day of each month, we check the US App Store's top 100 Health & Fitness apps and take every app whose primary function is calorie, food, or diet tracking. Workout-only trackers, step counters, meditation apps, and period trackers are out.

The scorecard follows the market. An app that rises into the top 100 enters; an app that falls out exits. It doesn't matter whether it got there organically or through paid marketing. Apps that top the download chart but draw poor reviews reveal a gap between popularity and satisfaction, and that gap is exactly what the scorecard is designed to surface.

What Each Monthly Scorecard Includes

Each monthly installment covers every qualifying app with:

• Filtered average rating. Recalculated from that month's written reviews only, after removing duplicates and unrelated reviews. It's a rating for the current month, not the one the App Store displays.
• Review summary. A 100 to 120 word AI-generated summary of what users said, with positives and negatives in proportion. Each summary stands alone.
• Review-pattern assessment. Whether an app's review patterns look organic, bimodal, or suspicious, judged by the same prompt for every app. A flag marks a pattern for scrutiny; it isn't proof of manipulation.
• Comparison table. Every app side by side: rating, change from the prior month, top praise, top complaint, and review patterns, in download ranking order.
• Trend analysis. The themes that dominated the month's reviews: outages and bad updates, billing and paywalls, and what users say about new features.

For deeper analysis of food database accuracy, free tier value, and logging speed, see our companion articles.

Which App Might Be Right for You?

There isn't one best calorie tracking app for everyone. These are the strengths and tradeoffs reviewers mention most often, not tested claims. Calo's reviewers want the fastest photo logging, voice entry included, and accept correcting a portion now and then; its negative reviews are about trials and renewals. Cronometer's care about micronutrient depth and a database they trust, and can live with ads in the free tier. Lose It! keeps decade-long loyalists who prize its recipe builder and food database despite a growing list of paywalled features; read its cancellation complaints before subscribing. MyFitnessPal still earns credit for database breadth, even from reviewers furious about its redesign. MyNetDiary is most often praised for ease of use, a free tier that covers daily tracking, broad nutrition detail, and a staff-verified food database. Three apps were outside the top 100 in October: MacroFactor, for an adaptive calorie target at a price; Foodvisor, for tracking that feels like a game, with refund complaints to read first; and Simple, for fasting structure and daily coaching. The scorecard doesn't choose for you. It shows what users are reporting right now.

Scorecard Archive

Diet App Scorecard October 2026: Calorie App User Ratings. Six apps, 944 reviews, the smallest field of the series. Calo led for a third straight month at 4.59; MyNetDiary was second at 4.39; MyFitnessPal topped 3.0 for the first time since its redesign.

Diet App Scorecard September 2026: Which Calorie Tracker Has the Best User Ratings? Nine apps, 1,148 reviews. Calo led at 4.74, the series high; MyNetDiary returned to 4.45; Municorn fell to 1.93.

Diet App Scorecard August 2026: 10 Calorie Apps, 1,772 Reviews. Calo led at 4.70; MyNetDiary fell to a series-low 4.19 after an update broke exercise logging.

Diet App Scorecard July 2026: Best Rated Calorie Counting Apps. Eleven apps, 2,388 reviews. MyNetDiary returned to the top at 4.46; MacroFactor fell 0.86 from June's lead.

Diet App Scorecard June 2026: What Users Actually Say About Calorie Apps. Ten apps, 1,379 reviews. MacroFactor led at 4.47, with Calo at 4.45 and MyNetDiary third at 4.40.

Diet App Scorecard May 2026: User Ratings and Review Trends. Eleven apps, 2,508 reviews. Calo led at 4.66, the first month MyNetDiary (4.56) wasn't on top; MyFitnessPal fell to 1.82.

Diet App Scorecard April 2026: 10 Apps, 2,995 Reviews Analyzed. MyNetDiary led at 4.54; MyFitnessPal fell to 2.31 as its redesign backlash deepened.

Diet App Scorecard March 2026: 12 Apps, 2,900+ Reviews Analyzed. MyNetDiary led at 4.56; MyFitnessPal dropped 0.77 after its redesign.

Diet App Scorecard February 2026: Which Calorie Tracker Has the Best User Ratings? Nine apps, 1,601 reviews. MyNetDiary led at 4.56; BitePal was lowest at 1.79.

About the Methodology

One process, every app. For the exact analysis prompt, data sources, filtering rules, AI model, and review-pattern framework, see the full Diet App Scorecard methodology.

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