What is a good Cal AI alternative if you cook at home?

Pick by where your food comes from.

It depends on who made the meal. Cal AI estimates a meal from a photo, a barcode or a few words. Cronometer is the precise option if you log each food against its database. WhatsCook.ing plans your week, so a meal you cook from the plan logs with one tap, its nutrition worked out from the recipe's ingredients; anything else logs from a photo or a few typed words. iPhone, $29.99 a month on the US App Store.

We make WhatsCook.ing, so read this as a competitor's guide. Section five says where ours is the wrong pick.

Cal AI is fast, and very well liked.

Cal AI's App Store listing sums it up in three steps: answer lifestyle questions to build your plan, "snap a photo of your meal", and get your nutritional breakdown. Its site adds a barcode scan and describing a meal in words, and reports calories, protein, carbs and fat. It holds 4.8 stars from more than 368,000 ratings on the US App Store, and it is on Android as well as iPhone.

It is free to download, but its listing says food scanning results require a subscription, with in-app purchases Apple lists from $0.99 to $29.99. For a lunch you bought, a restaurant meal or a packet of something, a photo or a barcode is hard to beat.

A recipe already knows what went in.

A photo has to judge two things it cannot fully see: how much is on the plate, and what is hidden in it, like the oil in the pan or the butter in the sauce. When you cook from a recipe, both were written down before you started.

That is the idea behind WhatsCook.ing. It writes a week of meals from your goals, your tastes and what is in your kitchen, and each recipe's nutrition is worked out from its ingredients. When at least half of a recipe's ingredients match the app's USDA FoodData Central reference table, its calories and macros are checked against it, and any figure more than a quarter off is corrected.

When you cook a planned meal, one tap logs it, from the meal itself or with a swipe on Home. Anything else, a drink, a snack or a meal out, logs from a photo or a few typed words. So photos still have a place; they are just not the only way in.

What WhatsCook.ing does, and what it costs.

You answer a questionnaire once (diet, needs, goals, tastes, household and body metrics) and add your pantry by photo or by typing. The app writes a week of meals, with a picture for every recipe. Every logged meal is read for calories, protein and ten other nutrients, scored across four pillars and folded into BioAge, an estimate in years built from your age and the nutrition of the meals you log. BioAge is a nutrition-derived estimate, not a medical measurement. The shopping list leads with the foods that close your nutrient gaps.

It is $29.99 a month or $179.99 a year on the US App Store, after a 7-day free trial through your Apple Account. Cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends and you pay nothing.

Where it is the wrong pick.

• Most of your food is bought, not cooked. Cal AI, Cronometer or MyFitnessPal will log a takeaway, a sandwich or a protein bar more quickly.
• You want a barcode scanner. WhatsCook.ing has none, and it does not import your own recipes.
• You use Android. It is an iPhone app; Cal AI runs on both.
• You want every nutrient to a decimal. Cronometer reports 95+ vitamins and minerals, for less money.

Three pages that go deeper.

Recipe managers, trackers and planners in one guide: which meal planning apps track nutrition. For vitamins and minerals, how to track iron, calcium and vitamin D without a food diary. And ten apps in one table on the comparison page.

Every figure above, and where it came from.

Ratings, prices and features are what Apple showed on the US App Store on 5 October 2026: Cal AI, Cronometer, MyFitnessPal and WhatsCook.ing. Cal AI's barcode scan, typed descriptions, depth sensor and Android app are from its site, read the same day. Prices at checkout are what you pay, so check them there.