fatsecret vs Calsa: Free Diary or Numbers You Can Check

fatsecret vs Calsa comes down to what you pay for and what you can see behind a number. fatsecret keeps a diary, a barcode scanner, reports and a community at no cost, and its Premium page lists photo logging and meal plans as Premium. Calsa is a paid subscription after a trial, with photo, voice and typed logging in every plan and a source on each entry. I read fatsecret’s pages and four App Store storefronts.

fatsecret vs Calsa: how do they compare line by line?

Calsa publishes this blog, so treat my side-by-side as an interested party’s. Everything about fatsecret below comes from its US App Store listing, its Premium page and its help center. I never opened its paid screens. Where a page is silent, the table says so.

	fatsecret	Calsa
Price	Monthly, quarterly and annual Premium rows on the App Store, several prices per name. The Premium page gives no figures	Three plans: Calsa Start, Calsa and Calsa Premium. Price, trial length and first charge date come before any question
Free version	Diary, macro tracking, barcode scanner, reports, community, achievements and streaks	Not listed. A trial comes first, then a subscription
Trial	Length not stated on the pages I read	Shown on screen before any question
Photo logging	Smart Food Scan, listed under Premium	Every plan. It names the foods, suggests grams, and you confirm the portion
Spoken or typed meals	Smart Assistant, listed under Premium	Every plan
Barcode scanner	In the free column	Every plan, UK and Australian products included
Source behind a number	Not shown on the pages I read	Each entry shows where its calories come from and the math
Water	Water tracker under Premium	Every plan, with the fluid in the food you log counted too
Streaks and community	Achievements, streaks and a community	None: no streaks, no public profiles, no messages between users
Activity	Exercise diary, plus sync with Samsung Health, Fitbit, Apple Health, Google Health and Garmin	Steps and activity come from Apple Health or Health Connect. No manual workout entry
Meal plans	Premium, dietitian-designed, in listed countries	None
Export	Reports as PDF or CSV	Everything, on any plan
Cancelling	Through the App Store or Google Play	The way you subscribed, in one tap
Platforms	iPhone, Android and web	Web, iPhone and Android

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

Take a plain breakfast of oatmeal and a banana, then lunch from a packet, then a dinner you cooked.

Logging in fatsecret

You tap Add Food and search. The help page on adding food lists the routes: search across generic and branded foods, My Food for recent and most eaten items, Saved Meals, Recipes, the CookBook, and the two Premium routes, Smart Assistant and Smart Food Scan.

Lunch from a packet goes through the barcode scanner. The scanner help article gives five steps: Add Food, the camera icon, the barcode icon, scan, Add. That route is in the free column.

Dinner is where Premium matters. The Smart Assistant article says you speak or type a meal and the app suggests matching foods and adds them. The Smart Food Scan article says it identifies each food on a photo, estimates portion sizes, shows calories and nutrition, and adds the result in one tap. The store text lists “image recognition of foods” among the free features, while the Premium page lists Smart Food Scan as Premium. The two disagree, so check the paywall in the app before you rely on photo logging.

Logging in Calsa

That breakfast is one line, “oatmeal 250 g, banana”, the Calsa counterpart of fatsecret’s Smart Assistant but in every plan. Several foods fit in a line, and you can say it instead of typing, because your phone turns speech into text. A photo of the plate works too. Calsa names the foods and suggests grams, you confirm the portion, and oil or dressing gets its own line.

For the packet lunch you scan the barcode. If there is no match, you photograph the nutrition label instead. Search lets you pick several foods at once and puts the ones you usually eat at that meal first. Quick add takes just calories, with no AI involved.

Mistakes are cheap to fix. You change the grams in place, or select several entries and move, repeat or delete them together, with undo. “Copy to today” repeats a meal, a whole day or the foods you pick. Each entry lands in the right meal based on its time, a half-finished entry survives the app closing, and the last 7 days open without a connection.

Where do the numbers come from?

The fatsecret pages I read don’t say which database sits behind an entry, so I can’t tell you. Calsa shows the source of every number and the math, “per 100 g × grams”, and an amount you haven’t confirmed is marked “estimate”. Log the same entry twice and you get the same number, and past days don’t change without telling you. A wrong shared food can be reported, and the entry changes after review.

Run one test on either app. Pick five packaged foods from your cupboard, log each by barcode, and compare the calories per 100 g on the entry with the pack. The guide to choosing a calorie counter app has more checks like it.

What AI does each app have?

On the AI side, fatsecret aims at logging: Smart Assistant and Smart Food Scan, both under Premium. No chat or coach appears on the pages I read. Calsa has a chat that sees your diary, goal and weight trend and takes its numbers from the food database. You can see, edit or delete what it remembers, or switch memory off. It is labeled as AI, never messages you first and gives no diagnoses.

Every Calsa plan has all of the tracking, and the plans differ in what the chat does. Calsa and Calsa Premium add things like a weekly review and ideas drawn from your diary, and Calsa Premium adds a monthly review and answers read aloud. A counter always shows how many chat messages you have left.

How much do fatsecret and Calsa cost, and what comes without paying?

fatsecret sells monthly, quarterly and annual subscriptions, and each storefront lists several rows under the same names. These are every price I read, each storefront linked to its page.

Storefront	“Monthly Subscription”	“Quarterly Subscription”	“Annual Subscription”
United States	$10.49, $14.99	$19.99, $20.00, $28.99	$38.99, $59.99
United Kingdom	£7.69, £10.99	£15.00, £21.99	£29.00, £31.49, £44.99
Canada	$13.99, $19.99	$27.49, $39.49	$52.99, $56.99, $81.90
Australia	$15.49, $21.99	$29.49, $41.99	$57.00, $61.00, $87.90

Neither the storefronts nor the Premium page explains why one name carries two or three prices. The Premium page says only that prices vary by region. Canadian and Australian rows are in those countries’ dollars.

The arithmetic is easy to lose. A US annual row costs $38.99 ÷ 12 = $3.25 a month at the low price and $59.99 ÷ 12 = $5.00 at the high one. Twelve months of the cheapest monthly row come to 12 × $10.49 = $125.88. Four quarters at the lowest US quarterly row, $19.99 each, add up to $79.96, which is $19.97 more than the top annual row at $59.99.

No trial length appears on the Premium page, its FAQ or the store text. Calsa shows its price, trial length and first charge date before any question, so I won’t copy a figure that may change. It sells monthly and yearly plans only, the first period costs the same as the later ones, and your price stays put while the subscription is active.

What is free in each app, and what is not?

The free side of fatsecret is wide. Per the Premium page, the free column has macro tracking, the barcode scanner, the community, achievements and streaks, and reports, and the weekly review is “Limited” there and “In Depth” in Premium. The store text adds an exercise diary, a weight tracker, goals, reminders, Apple Health sync and an Apple Watch app. Premium adds Smart Assistant, Smart Food Scan, a meal planner, dietitian-designed meal plans, a water tracker, a Learning Center, one-tap recipe logging, custom meals and copy food. I found nothing on whether the free version shows ads.

Calsa has a trial and then a subscription. What the subscription buys is the full tracking in every plan: photo, voice, barcode, label reading, your own recipes and foods, goals by weekday, the weight trend and the Apple Health or Health Connect link. When a subscription ends you can still read, export and delete everything, and your history waits if you come back.

What happens to your data, and how do you cancel?

Export in fatsecret is a report. The export help page says you open the Food Diary on iOS or Android, choose a period, a report type and a format, PDF or CSV, then share it. The Premium comparison lists reports as free, and the help page doesn’t call export Premium-only. How deleting a fatsecret account works is something I didn’t check, so I won’t describe it.

Downloading all your data works on any Calsa plan, and you can delete the account from the app or the web, with the timelines spelled out.

Cancelling a fatsecret subscription goes through the store. The Premium page points to Google Play subscriptions or, on iPhone, Settings, Apple ID, Subscriptions. The App Store text adds: “It is not possible to refund or cancel a subscription during the period.” So the day to cancel is before the renewal date, not on it. I found no help article about cancelling beyond the Premium page FAQ.

A Calsa subscription ends the way it started, in one tap, with no screen trying to talk you out of it. Refund windows are spelled out before you pay, and a reminder arrives before the trial ends and before a renewal.

Where is Calsa weaker, and who should pick fatsecret?

Where Calsa is weaker: fatsecret’s diary, scanner, reports and community cost nothing, and Calsa asks for a subscription after a trial, with no community at all. fatsecret also lists an exercise diary, direct sync with Samsung Health, Fitbit, Apple Health, Google Health and Garmin, an Apple Watch app and meal plans made with dietitians. Calsa has no manual workout entry, no watch app and no meal plans.

Choose something else if you want a diary at no cost, a community with badges and streaks, an Apple Watch app, a manual exercise diary, ready-made meal plans or a direct Garmin or Fitbit link.

Which reader fits which app?

Someone who logs a few times a week and mostly wants calories and macros should start with fatsecret. The free tier covers that, and finding out costs nothing.

A person who photographs most meals and wants that built in from the start fits Calsa better, because the photo step is in every plan. So does anyone who wants a number to show its source before they trust it.

Runners and cyclists with a Garmin or Fitbit get a direct link in fatsecret. In Calsa their data arrives through Apple Health or Health Connect. Only if the watch syncs there.

Streaks and a community keep some people going, and fatsecret has both. Others quit the day a streak breaks. For them a tracker where a break costs nothing, which is what Calsa builds, removes the reason to quit.

More pairings sit under choosing a calorie app, and my fatsecret app review goes deeper into its free tier.

How do you move from fatsecret to Calsa?

Export first. In the Food Diary, pick a long period, choose CSV and share the file to yourself. The report is the only export route I found in fatsecret’s help center.

Whether a fatsecret CSV opens cleanly in other software, I haven’t tested. Calsa imports history from a CSV file and shows a preview before anything is saved, so a mismatch shows up before it costs you any logging. Import one week as a trial run, then decide about the rest.

Keep fatsecret running for a week while you log in both apps. If you pay for Premium, set a reminder a few days before the renewal date, since the store text bars cancelling mid-period. Calsa runs on one account across web, iPhone and Android, with a reminder before it renews.