Cal AI vs Calsa: Photo Scan or Source on Every Entry

Cal AI vs Calsa is a choice between a camera-first app and a tracker built around checkable numbers. Cal AI is a download that looks free in the store, gates its food-scan results behind a subscription and pitches a 3-day trial. Calsa shows its price before any question and prints a source on every entry. I read Cal AI’s pages, and I write for Calsa’s blog.

What does Cal AI cost, and does it have a free trial?

The App Store listing header reads “Free · In-App Purchases”, while its description says “FOOD SCANNING ANALYSIS RESULTS REQUIRE A SUBSCRIPTION”. The site FAQ adds that tapping the + button to log food opens the paywall. So the download costs nothing and the logging doesn’t. The home page ends with “CLAIM YOUR 3-DAY FREE TRIAL”. I found no pricing page on the site, and prices show up in the app after onboarding, so I couldn’t read a plan list there.

What I could read are the in-app purchases on each storefront. Apple shows ten rows per page. The rows carry names and prices but no billing period, so which one is monthly and which is yearly stays a mystery. Every price I read is below.

Storefront	Rows named “Unlimited”	Row named “Unlimited Plan”	“Streak Restore”
United States	$2.99, $5.99, $9.99, $19.99, $29.99	$19.99	$0.99
United Kingdom	£2.99, £5.99, £9.99, £19.99, £24.95, £29.99	£19.99	£0.99
Canada	$3.99, $7.99, $12.99, $18.00, $24.99, $29.00, $39.99	$24.99	$0.99
Australia	$4.99, $9.99, $14.99, $21.49, $29.99, $36.49, $49.99	$29.99	$1.99

Several amounts repeat on one page, and nothing on it explains the spread. A $2.99 row and a $29.99 row in the same list are roughly a tenfold gap in the US. Since a period is missing, I won’t divide any price into months. The practical test is the screen you see after the quiz. Read the period printed beside the price there before you start the trial. The FAQ also describes a Family Plan, and the store lists Streak Restore as a purchase of its own. For the free-download question in more depth, see is Cal AI free.

Three plans exist on the Calsa side: Calsa Start, Calsa and Calsa Premium. All of the tracking sits in every plan, and the plans differ in how much AI chat you get. The price, trial length, first charge date and cancel path show up before anything else, a reminder arrives before the trial ends, and your price stays put while you’re subscribed. I’m not printing Calsa’s amounts here because they live on its own pricing screen. Its refund windows are spelled out before you pay, and its plans are monthly or yearly only. Its checkout has no discount wheels, countdown timers or one-time offers.

How does a day of logging work in each app?

In Cal AI

The photo comes first. On the home page, the pitch is to snap a photo and let the phone’s depth sensor calculate food volume, after which the app returns calories, protein, carbs and fat. The same page lists a barcode scan, a typed description of the meal and a search of a database of over 1 million foods, by name or brand. The FAQ sums it up as photo scan, barcode scan or manual search. I found no mention of voice logging.

Around the log, the site lists weight, measurements and nutrition goals, “personalized AI suggestions”, water and daily exercise logging. The listing’s creative says “Answer lifestyle questions to build your plan”, so a quiz comes before the first scan. Steps come from Apple Health on iPhone and Google Fit on Android. The store page requires iOS 18.0 or later, and the FAQ says Android 10 or higher. The home page also lists dark mode as a new feature.

In Calsa

In Calsa the camera is one input among several. It names the foods in the picture and suggests grams, you confirm the portion, and oil and dressing get lines of their own. You can skip the camera altogether and type something like “chicken 150 g, rice 200 g” in one line, or say it. Search takes several foods at once. Your usual choices for that meal come first.

Packaged food goes through a barcode scan that includes UK and Australian products, and a photo of the nutrition label rescues a miss. Chain restaurant dishes carry the numbers the chain publishes. Recipes can be built from ingredients or from a photo. When you only know the calories, quick add takes that number and no AI is involved. Repeating a meal is “Copy to today” on any past day, and every entry lands in the meal that matches its time. Calsa also works offline, and your last seven days open without a connection. Weight, steps and active energy come in from Apple Health or Health Connect, and food and water go back out. Water counts by the glass, plus the fluid in everything you log, and the weekly recap gives your week in plain facts, including what you ate by the hour. A light or dark theme comes with it, and the date and time formats are the ones you’re used to.

The goal side is a short quiz that gives you a calorie target, or you can track without one. A target below the safe calorie floor isn’t saved, and Calsa tells you why. You can give weekdays different goals and mark a training day with one tap, and your weight shows as a smoothed trend instead of daily jumps, with the number hideable if you’d rather not see it. When the trend calls for it, Calsa suggests a new goal and the choice stays yours. Cal AI’s site says it offers “personalized AI suggestions” next to weight and measurements, and the pages I read don’t describe how those are built. Calsa puts your body, food and movement side by side on one progress screen, and reads body fat from your scale when Apple Health or Health Connect supplies it.

Calsa’s AI chat sees your diary, goal and weight trend, and its numbers come from the food database. Type a correction in plain words, such as a new weight for the rice, and the entry changes after you tap. The chat’s memory can be viewed, edited or deleted, and you can switch it off. Questions about Calsa itself are answered from Help without using up your messages. You can also mark allergens, foods you don’t eat and things to watch, and Calsa warns you when a food contains your allergen.

Where do the numbers come from in each app?

Cal AI gives one figure for itself, and it’s a percentage. The FAQ puts the app at about 80%. It doesn’t say what the percentage measures, how it was found or whether it covers barcodes and search. I can’t set it against anything, so I leave it as the company’s number. The site describes the database as over 1 million foods, and I found no page that shows the origin of an individual entry.

Calsa takes a narrower route. Each entry shows where its calories come from and the math, “per 100 g × grams”. A portion you haven’t confirmed is marked “estimate”, so a photo guess doesn’t pass as a measured amount. Enter the same entry twice and you get the same number. Calsa won’t change a past day without telling you, and if a shared food looks wrong you can send a correction that changes the shared entry after review.

A third check costs nothing. Photograph one meal you weighed yourself, such as 200 g of cooked rice and a spoon of oil, and see whether the oil gets a line of its own. A test with a scale in the picture settles more than any percentage. For other people’s reports on the app, see Cal AI reviews.

Cal AI vs Calsa: how do they compare side by side?

The Cal AI column comes from the pages linked above, and the Calsa column from Calsa’s feature list.

	Cal AI	Calsa
Download	Free in the store; results need a subscription	Price and trial shown before any question
Trial	“3-DAY FREE TRIAL” on the site	Length shown before any question, with a reminder before it ends
Photo logging	Depth sensor estimates volume	Names foods, suggests grams, you confirm the portion
Other ways to log	Barcode, typed description, search of 1M+ foods	Type or say it, barcode, label photo, search, quick add, recipes
Source behind a number	Percentage claim in the FAQ; per-entry source not described	Source and the math on every entry; unconfirmed amounts say “estimate”
Streaks	Streak Restore sold for $0.99 in the US	No streaks or badges
Import	MyFitnessPal import: “Not yet”	CSV import with a preview
Cancel	Phone settings only, not inside the app	The way you subscribed
Export	A PDF export; no CSV mentioned	Everything, in any plan
Platforms	iPhone, iOS 18.0 or later; Android 10 or higher	Web, iPhone, iPad and Android on one subscription

Two rows matter more to me than the rest. On streaks, Cal AI sells a restore and Calsa has nothing to restore, so a week away costs you nothing there. And on cancelling, the difference is where you do it: Cal AI sends you to your phone’s subscription settings, while Calsa lets you cancel the way you signed up.

Where is Calsa weaker, and who should pick Cal AI?

Where Calsa is weaker: Cal AI built its pitch around one gesture, a photo that reads volume with the depth sensor, and Calsa’s feature list doesn’t mention a depth sensor. Calsa has no manual workout logging, while Cal AI lists daily exercise logging. It has no watch app yet and no weekly meal plans or shopping lists. Calsa’s feature list has no family plan, though its invite option gives you 30 extra days once a friend’s subscription is paid.

Choose something else if you want a photo-first app, a sensor-based volume estimate, exercise entry by hand, a family plan or a database that advertises over 1 million foods.

A few readers, to make that concrete. Someone who eats mostly plated meals at home and wants to log by pointing a camera will like Cal AI’s pitch, provided the paywall screen shows a period and price they accept. A person who logs packaged and restaurant food by barcode, label or chain menu has more tools in Calsa. Anyone who dislikes streaks will want to know that Cal AI sells a way to restore them and Calsa has none to lose. Somebody moving off a long MyFitnessPal history should read the import rows before anything else, because the Cal AI FAQ says that import isn’t supported yet. If you compare photo logging with a search-based logger, Cal AI vs MyFitnessPal shows that pairing.

How do you cancel Cal AI, export your data and switch to Calsa?

The Cal AI FAQ is blunt. You can’t cancel from inside the app. On iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions, CalAI and Cancel Subscription. On Android, go to Google Play, your profile icon, Payments & subscriptions, Subscriptions, CalAI and Cancel. Deleting the app doesn’t cancel anything. A Manage Subscription page is linked in the site header, and I haven’t opened it.

Export is thinner. The FAQ has an entry titled “My PDF export isn’t working”, and it says the export goes out through the Mail app on iOS, so a PDF export exists. I found no CSV. The FAQ says your data is stored in the cloud under your account. Save the PDF before you cancel, and check that it opens.

Importing is where the two apps part ways. Calsa takes history as a CSV file and shows a preview before anything is saved, but a PDF isn’t a CSV. You’d start fresh or retype the few days that matter. Answer the short quiz for a calorie goal, or track without one. Run both apps side by side for a week, then cancel Cal AI in your phone’s settings. Test your usual breakfast in each before you decide, and the checks in how to choose a calorie counter app cover the rest. More comparisons sit under choosing a calorie app.

When a Calsa subscription ends, you can still read, export and delete everything, and your history waits if you return. You can delete the account from the app or the web.

Calsa’s own cancel takes one tap, the same way you subscribed, with no screen trying to talk you out of it.

Calsa lays out its terms before the first question, so you can hold them against Cal AI’s paywall screen.