MyNetDiary vs Calsa: Tiered Plans or Sourced Numbers

MyNetDiary vs Calsa is a choice between a tiered app that gives away a lot and a paid diary that shows the source of every number. MyNetDiary’s tier at no cost has a barcode scanner, voice logging and no ads, and Premium costs $8.99 a month on its website. Pick MyNetDiary if you want that tier, a watch app or health trackers. Pick Calsa if you want to see the math behind each entry.

How does MyNetDiary vs Calsa look side by side?

Everything about MyNetDiary below comes from its website, terms and App Store listings, which I read. I never opened its paid screens. Calsa publishes this blog and sells against MyNetDiary’s paid tiers, so check each cell against the page it links to before you trust my reading.

	MyNetDiary	Calsa
Starting point	A tier at no cost with no account needed (free-tier page), then Premium and Premium Plus	Paid from the start, with price, trial length and cancel path shown before any question
Price	Premium $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year; Premium Plus $14.99 or $99.99; lifetime $179.99	Three plans, monthly or yearly, and every plan has all of the tracking
Ways to log	Search, barcode and voice at no cost; photo (Meal Scan) in Premium	Type or say it with grams, photo, barcode, nutrition-label photo, quick add, chain restaurants
Food database	2,165,000 foods across the US, Canada, UK and Australia, per its database page	Each entry shows its source and the math, per-100-gram value × grams
Health trackers	Blood pressure, glucose, A1C, ketones, medications (Premium)	None; no diagnoses or treatment advice
Watch	Apple Watch app at no cost	No watch app yet
AI	AI Coach and menu scan in Premium Plus	An AI chat labeled as AI, in every plan, with a limit on messages
Data export	Premium lists printable and exportable reports	Everything, on any plan

The structure differs more than any single feature. MyNetDiary climbs in steps: a long list at no cost, then Premium, then Premium Plus with an AI layer on top. Calsa has no step like that. It has no free tier, and every plan has all of the tracking. Only the AI chat changes.

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

A day in MyNetDiary

On the tier at no cost, you can search for a food, scan a barcode or speak an entry. The App Store listing lists an unlimited diary, macro and protein tracking, water and exercise tracking, custom foods and recipes, and a calorie calculator on that side. It also names an Apple Watch app, Apple Health sync and logging streaks. The listing also says it works offline.

Premium adds Meal Scan for photos, intermittent fasting, a meal planner and recipe import. It also brings sync with Fitbit, Garmin and Withings, and Autologging. The listing puts Apple Health in numbers, writing 51 data types and reading 14. If you want a community, the listing names an in-app one and Professional Connect, both at no cost.

The free-tier page says no account is needed to start. That’s a low-friction first day. Whether it stays that way once your data matters is another question.

A day in Calsa

Type or say what you ate in one line, grams included, and several foods fit in it. Speech becomes text on your phone, nothing more. A photo names the foods and suggests grams, you confirm the portion, and oil or dressing gets a line of its own.

Barcode scans work in any plan, and UK and Australian products are included. No match? Photograph the label. Quick add takes only a calorie number, with no AI involved.

Repeat days are quick. Open an old one, tap “Copy to today”, and pick a meal, the whole day or single foods. Entries land in the right meal by the time you ate them, and the Today screen shows what’s left after every entry.

Where AI shows up

MyNetDiary’s AI sits in Premium Plus, which the listing calls the AI Coach. It lists daily guidance, AI voice logging, meal suggestions matched to your calorie budget and an AI restaurant menu scan. A separate app, PlateAI, launched in August 2025 with the same AI features.

One thing I couldn’t settle. The free-tier page lists voice logging at no cost, while another page puts AI voice logging under Premium Plus. Check which one the app gives you before you pay.

Calsa’s chat is labeled as AI. It sees your diary, goal and weight trend, and its numbers come from the food database. Memory is yours to inspect, edit, delete or switch off. Menu and fridge help, the weekly review and ideas for the week come with the Calsa and Calsa Premium plans, and the monthly review is Premium only. The chat never messages you first and gives no diagnoses.

Where do the numbers come from, and what should you check?

MyNetDiary says its staff reviews the foods in its database. The listing puts the count at over 2 million and says up to 108 nutrients sit on each entry, and the database page breaks 2,165,000 foods into 241,000 restaurant items and 1,922,000 packaged ones. A team reviews 2,500 to 3,500 foods a day, by the company’s own statement. I haven’t tested how closely those entries match labels, and I can’t vouch for the description.

You can test it. Scan three packaged foods you eat often and compare each result with the printed label. Then do the same with one restaurant item. How to choose a calorie counter app lists the other checks worth running.

Calsa shows its work on each entry. It lists where the calories come from and the math, the per-100-gram value times your grams, and anything you haven’t confirmed carries the label “estimate”. Calories, protein, fat, carbs, fiber and sugar are on screen, with more nutrients if you ask. That’s fewer fields than the 108 MyNetDiary lists per entry.

Past days stay put in Calsa. Enter the same food twice and you get the same number, and if a shared entry is wrong you can send a correction. Chain restaurant dishes use the numbers the chain itself publishes.

What does MyNetDiary cost, and what does each tier include?

Prices on the website are in US dollars. Premium is $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year, and Premium Plus is $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year. A lifetime option is $179.99, paid once. All of that comes from the free-tier page.

The arithmetic is short. Twelve months of monthly Premium is 12 × $8.99 = $107.88, so the yearly plan saves $47.89. For Premium Plus the same sum is 12 × $14.99 = $179.88 against $99.99. Buying both yearly, the AI layer adds $40.00. Lifetime at $179.99 equals three years of yearly Premium, 3 × $59.99 = $179.97, so it pays off past year three.

Each storefront on the App Store lists four “MyNetDiary Premium” rows and one “Premium Plus” row, and no row names a period. I read them.

Storefront	“MyNetDiary Premium” rows	“Premium Plus” row
United States	$8.99, $29.99, $39.99, $59.99	$14.99
United Kingdom	£3.99, £11.99, £15.99, £23.99	£6.99
Canada	$8.99, $29.99, $39.99, $59.99	$14.99
Australia	$8.99, $29.99, $39.99, $59.99	$14.99

Two US rows, $8.99 and $59.99, match the website’s monthly and yearly Premium prices. Which row is which plan length, the storefront doesn’t say, and I won’t guess. Canada and Australia show the same four numbers as the US, and the UK shows a lower set. The Google Play page lists in-app items from $5.00 to $179.99 each. The row you buy is the one your own phone shows, so read the period and total on the purchase sheet.

What about a trial? The terms say the company may occasionally offer a free trial, with billing starting when it ends unless you cancel first. No page I opened states a length.

Here’s the split in one place.

Feature	At no cost	Premium	Premium Plus
Barcode scanner, voice logging	Yes	Yes	Yes
Photo logging (Meal Scan)	No	Yes	Yes
Intermittent fasting, meal planner	No	Yes	Yes
Fitbit, Garmin and Withings sync	No	Yes	Yes
Blood pressure, glucose, A1C, ketones, medications	No	Yes	Yes
AI Coach, AI menu scan, AI suggestions	No	No	Yes

Calsa’s three plans are Calsa Start, Calsa and Calsa Premium. Plans run monthly or yearly only, the first period costs the same as the later ones, and your price doesn’t change while the subscription is active. A reminder comes before a trial ends.

Where is Calsa stronger or weaker, and who should pick which?

This is the section to read twice, because I have a stake in it. What I say about Calsa is limited to built features. What I say about MyNetDiary sits on its pages.

Calsa shows the price, trial length and first charge date before any question, and cancelling works the way you subscribed. After a subscription ends you can still read, export and delete everything. Calsa has no streaks or badges, so a break costs nothing, and it lets you hide calories, nutrients and weight when a week gets heavy. No third-party ads or trackers run in any plan.

Where Calsa is weaker: MyNetDiary gives you a barcode scanner, voice logging and no ads at no cost, and Calsa asks for a subscription from the start. It has no manual workout entry, no watch app yet, no weekly meal plans, no fasting timer and no direct Garmin or Fitbit link. It has no blood pressure or glucose trackers and gives no medication doses or treatment advice.

Choose something else if you want a tier at no cost, a watch app, a meal planner, fasting timers or health trackers for glucose and blood pressure.

Three readers come to mind. A person who wants to log for a month before paying anything should start with MyNetDiary’s tier at no cost. Someone managing diabetes or blood pressure alongside food will find those trackers there and not in Calsa. A third reader, who has been burned by a number that changed or a price that jumped, may like Calsa’s stable past entries and locked price.

If your other candidate is MyFitnessPal, MyNetDiary vs MyFitnessPal puts the logging side by side with that app instead. The MyNetDiary review covers the free tier in detail.

How do you switch from MyNetDiary to Calsa, and how do you cancel?

Export first. The Premium page lists “printable and exportable reports”, and the upgrade page says Premium has six report types with printing and Excel export. I found no dedicated help page on export, so I can’t tell you how complete the file is. Calsa can import a history from a CSV file and shows a preview before anything is saved. If you get an Excel file, save it as CSV first, and expect to edit it.

Then cancel. The terms say to use the Account page in the member section of the website or the mobile apps. There is no minimum commitment. Fees are billed in advance and nonrefundable, lifetime purchases aren’t refundable, and Apple purchases can be refunded only by Apple. After cancelling, you can keep using the service at no cost. I found no help page for cancelling an App Store or Google Play subscription.

One Calsa subscription covers web, iPhone and Android. You can delete your account from the app or the web, with timelines spelled out first. Other pairings live on the choosing a calorie app page. Put your MyNetDiary renewal date in your calendar, then log one normal week in Calsa before it arrives.