Cronometer vs Calsa: Free Basic Tier or Checkable Entries

Cronometer vs Calsa comes down to what you want the money for. Cronometer’s Basic plan costs $0, scans barcodes, tracks up to 95 nutrients and lets you export your raw data, while its Gold plan adds photo and voice logging. Calsa is a subscription with a trial. Photo logging, the scanner and export come with every plan. Everything here was read from public pages.

Cronometer vs Calsa: how do they compare in one table?

Calsa runs this blog, which makes me an interested reader of my own table, so check the Cronometer column against the pages linked in it. That column comes from the Gold page, the help center and the App Store listings. I never opened the paid screens. For Calsa I used its published feature list alone and name no prices.

	Cronometer	Calsa
Price	Gold on the App Store, with rows for four countries in the pricing section	Three plans, with price, trial length, first charge date and how to cancel shown before anything else
Free version	Basic at $0, for an unlimited time, with ads	No free version. Trial length and first charge date show before you pay
Trial	Length not stated on the Gold page or in the App Store text	Length shown before the first question
Nutrients	Up to 95 nutrients and other compounds, in Basic and Gold	Calories, protein, fat, carbs, fiber and sugar, with more nutrients on request
Barcode scanner	Basic and Gold	Every plan, UK and Australian products included
Photo logging	Gold	Every plan: names the foods, suggests grams, you confirm the portion
Voice	Gold, also through Siri	Type or say it, every plan
Database	A curated database of more than 1.1 million foods, including analyzed entries	Each entry shows where its calories come from and the math
Export	CSV from Account Settings, and raw data export is listed in Basic	Everything, on any plan
AI chat	Crono Coach, Gold	Every plan, labeled as AI, with memory you can see and delete
Fasting timer	Gold	Not on Calsa’s public feature list
Cancel	On the web, iOS or Android, wherever you subscribed	The way you subscribed, in one tap
Where it runs	iOS, Android and web, with Apple Health, Apple Watch, Fitbit, Garmin, Oura and Whoop connections	Web, iPhone, iPad and Android, no watch app

Two rows will surprise people. Cronometer’s scanner and export cost nothing, so the “paid plans include more” argument doesn’t hold for those two. It holds for photo and voice logging.

What does a normal day of logging look like in each app?

In Cronometer

On Basic you log foods, exercise, biometrics and notes, create your own foods, meals and recipes, and scan barcodes. The Gold page puts all of that in the $0 column, along with sync with other apps and devices and diary groups. The reports and charts on Basic stop at a seven-day window.

Gold changes the input side. It adds the Photo Log and the Voice Log, and the App Store text says the AI identifies foods and estimates portions. A recipe importer takes a URL. Timestamps, Repeat Items and a Macro Scheduler are Gold too. Print Reports, Custom Charts, Nutrition Scores and More Insights over any time frame sit behind the same paywall.

The App Store description calls these “four easy ways to log food”: photo, voice, barcode and database search. On Basic you get two of them.

In Calsa

Calsa has no tiers for input, so every way of logging works on every plan. Type or say what you ate with grams. Several foods fit in one line. A photo gets the foods named and grams suggested. You confirm the portion. For packaged food you scan the barcode, and a photo of the nutrition label covers anything the scan can’t find.

Search lets you pick several foods in one go, and the foods you usually eat at that meal come first. If you ate the same thing last Tuesday, open that day and tap “Copy to today”. Entries land in the meal that matches the time you ate, and a half-finished one is kept even when the app closes.

You can fix an entry afterward by typing a correction, and the entry changes after you tap. Logging also works without a connection.

Where do the numbers come from?

Cronometer’s listing describes “a curated database of more than 1.1 million” foods, “including analyzed entries”. The Gold page speaks of a database of over 1M lab-analyzed or verified foods. That’s a choice of depth over size. If you track iron or magnesium, lab analysis behind an entry is a real reason to pick it. The Cronometer review sorts out what each plan includes and who should pay.

Here Calsa goes a different way. Each entry shows where its calories come from and the math, the per-100-gram value times the grams you ate, and anything you haven’t confirmed is marked “estimate”. Past entries stay put: log the same entry twice and the number is identical. Calsa’s nutrient list starts at calories, protein, fat, carbs, fiber and sugar. It reaches further if you ask, but the public feature list gives no count to set against Cronometer’s 95.

How much does Cronometer cost, and what stays free?

Prices in four countries

On its own site, Cronometer lists Gold at $10.99 a month, or $59.99 a year, shown as $4.99 a month with a “Save 54%” label. The App Store rows below are what each storefront listed. Apple shows ten purchases per page and no billing period, so the names are all I have to go on.

Storefront	“Gold Monthly”	“Gold Annual”	Twelve months at the monthly price
United States	$10.99	$59.99	$131.88
United Kingdom	£9.99	£59.99	£119.88
Canada	$14.99	$79.99	$179.88
Australia	$18.99 and $17.99	$99.99	$227.88 at $18.99

Each storefront also lists a “Gold Subscription” and a “Cronometer Gold” row. In the US both read $10.99, in the UK £9.99 and in Canada $14.99. In Australia the “Gold Subscription” row reads $18.99 and the “Cronometer Gold” row $19.99. The store page doesn’t say why.

Paying monthly in the US costs $71.89 more over a year than the $59.99 annual row. In the UK the gap is £59.89, in Canada $99.89 and in Australia $127.89, using the $18.99 row.

The trial

I found no Gold trial length on the Gold page or in the App Store text. Don’t plan around one. If the checkout screen shows a trial, write down its end date, because the Basic plan is the fallback that costs nothing.

Free and paid side by side

Feature	Basic ($0)	Gold
Food, exercise, biometrics and notes logging	Yes	Yes
Up to 95 nutrients and other compounds	Yes	Yes
Custom targets for macros and micronutrients	Yes	Yes
Barcode scanner	Yes	Yes
Custom foods, meals and recipes	Yes	Yes
Reports and charts	7-day window	Any time frame for More Insights
Export of raw data	Yes	Yes
Photo Log, Voice Log, Recipe Importer	No	Yes
Fasting Timer, Timestamps, Macro Scheduler	No	Yes
Crono Coach	No	Yes
Advertisements	Shown	Removed

The Basic column comes from the Subscription Types article, which says Basic can be used for an unlimited time and lists “No Advertisements” as a Gold benefit. That’s how I know Basic shows ads. The Gold page also lists unlimited historical data. I found no page that says what Basic does with entries older than its window, so export before you downgrade.

Where is Calsa stronger than Cronometer?

Here the gap is narrower than it looks, and I’d rather say so. Cronometer’s barcode scanner and export are free. What Calsa puts in every plan that Cronometer keeps in Gold is photo logging, voice entry and an AI chat.

Goals by weekday show it best. Calsa gives every plan different goals for different days and a one-tap mark for a training day. Cronometer’s Macro Scheduler is a Gold feature, but the pages I read don’t say what it schedules. Change calories or macros and the other adjusts to match.

Ads are the second difference. Cronometer’s Basic plan shows them. Calsa has no third-party ads, tracking SDKs or pixels anywhere, so your data never goes to advertisers.

The chats differ in kind. Cronometer describes Crono Coach as an in-app assistant that turns your own data, goals and settings into short personalized guidance, and it’s Gold. Calsa’s chat is in every plan, is labeled as AI and never messages you first. It sees your diary, goal and weight trend, and its numbers come from the food database. You can see, edit or delete what it remembers, or switch memory off. Ask it for a recipe that fits what’s left of your day and you can save the result as your own.

Then there’s how Calsa treats a bad week. It has no streaks. You can hide calories, nutrients and weight and bring them back later, and a goal below the safe calorie floor isn’t saved. Plain-word notes say “in range” or “below goal” instead of a color verdict. If you’re allergic to something, mark it, and Calsa warns you when a food contains it.

Where is Calsa weaker, and who should stay with Cronometer?

Where Calsa is weaker: Cronometer’s Basic plan can be used for an unlimited time without a charge, and Calsa is a trial followed by a paid plan. Cronometer tracks up to 95 nutrients and other compounds. Calsa’s public list names six and gives no count for the rest. There’s no manual workout entry in Calsa, while Cronometer logs exercise, biometrics and notes. Calsa’s public list has no fasting timer, and it has no watch app and no direct Garmin or Fitbit link. Data from those devices reaches it through Apple Health or Health Connect if they sync there. It also has no weekly meal plans.

Choose something else if you want micronutrient depth, a $0 plan with a barcode scanner, a fasting timer or a direct link to a Garmin or Oura. Cronometer lists all of those.

Picture a few readers. One tracks iron, magnesium and B vitamins because a dietitian asked, and wants lab-analyzed entries. Cronometer fits, and Basic may be enough. Another trains with a Garmin watch and wants workouts and sleep pulled in without a middleman, which Cronometer’s listing names and Calsa doesn’t offer.

A third person wants to pay nothing, can live with ads and a seven-day chart window, and still wants a scanner. That’s Basic. The fourth is a reader who fasts and wants the timer inside the food diary, where Gold keeps it.

Another reader fits Calsa. You photograph or dictate most meals and don’t want those inputs behind an upgrade. You’d like a chat that answers from your own diary. And you quit a tracker once because a lapsed streak felt like failing.

If you can’t decide, log the same three days in both and compare each result with its label. The other checks I’d run work on any tracker, and the Cronometer vs MyFitnessPal comparison covers a third option.

How do you move from Cronometer to Calsa?

Start with the data. You don’t need Gold for it. In Account Settings, open Account Data and choose Export Data. Per the help article, you get a .csv file of diary entries, exercises, biometrics, notes and nutrition summaries for the date range you choose. The Subscription Types article lists exporting all raw data as a Basic feature. So Gold isn’t required.

Cancel where you subscribed, following the cancellation steps. On the web: More, Account, Subscriptions, then “Do Not Auto-Renew” in the drop-down. On iOS: Settings, your Apple ID, Media and Purchases, Subscriptions, Cronometer. Android users open Google Play, tap the profile icon, then Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions. The terms mention a refund window for cancellation, but I didn’t capture the exact clause, so read it before you count on a refund.

Your history can come into Calsa as a CSV file, with a preview before anything is saved. I haven’t opened a Cronometer export, so I can’t say what the preview will read from it. Try it on your real file. More comparisons in this category are on the choosing a calorie app page, and MacroFactor vs Cronometer covers another switch.

Give the new app a week of the same meals as the old one before you cancel Gold.