Noom vs Calsa: Coaching Program or Plain Tracker

Noom vs Calsa is a program against a tracker. Noom sells a subscription built around lessons, coaching and a food log, with an optional medication service, and its site mentions a free trial without a length. Calsa only tracks. It has an AI chat but no coach, no lessons and no social feed, and it shows price, trial and cancel path before any question. I read Noom’s pages, and I write for Calsa’s blog.

What does Noom cost, and is there a free version?

Start with Noom’s own table. On its plan pricing page, the price of Noom Weight falls with the plan length, before taxes and discounts. I added the last column by dividing.

Plan length (US website)	Price	Per month
1 month	$70	$70.00
2 months	$129	$64.50
3 months	$159	$53.00
4 months	$169	$42.25
5 months	$174	$34.80
6 months	$179	$29.83
7 months	$184	$26.29
8 months	$189	$23.63
9 months	$195	$21.67
10 months	$199	$19.90
11 months	$205	$18.64
12 months (Annual Plan)	$209	$17.42

Twelve one-month plans would cost $840, which is $631 more than the Annual Plan. The App Store listing says “Plans start at $17 a month” and its footnote ties that to the $209 annual plan. Noom Med, the medication service, is described as starting at $69 a month for the first month’s fee, with medication not included.

The store pages tell a different story. Each storefront lists ten purchases named “Noom Program”, and none shows a period. These are the prices I read, duplicates removed.

Storefront	“Noom Program” rows, lowest to highest
United States	$44.99, $98.99, $129.99, $159.99, $199.99
United Kingdom	£40.99, £41.99, £94.99, £124.99, £154.99, £189.99
Canada	$58.99, $59.99, $124.99, $164.99, $204.99, $259.99
Australia	$64.99, $69.99, $149.99, $189.99, $199.99, $239.99, $309.99

None of the US App Store rows matches a website price exactly, and the pages don’t explain why. I can’t say which row is which plan. Read the price and the period on your own checkout screen.

As for the trial, noom.com says that in most cases you can start with a free trial, and it gives no length on the pages I opened. A free version exists as well. Noom’s free features article says you get one by creating a free account, or automatically when a paid subscription ends. Depending on your location and app version, it may include select lessons, movement tracking and meal logging. An earlier version of that article names different items, among them body scan, Future Me, step tracking with rewards and “Green Food Logging with Daily Goals (only available in the U.S.)”. The two versions disagree on countries and features, and neither shows a date. If a free tier is what you’re after, check what your own account gets.

On the Calsa side, the three plans, Calsa Start, Calsa and Calsa Premium, each include all of the tracking. Calsa sells monthly or yearly plans only, so there’s no ladder of plan lengths like Noom’s table, and refund windows are spelled out before you pay. The AI chat is what changes. The price, the trial length, the date of your first charge and the cancel path come before anything else, a reminder arrives before the trial ends, and your price holds while you stay subscribed. Calsa’s amounts aren’t printed here, since they live on its own pricing screen.

What do you get for the money?

With Noom you’re buying a program. The store description lists daily psychology lessons, supportive communities called Circles, Noom Move classes (it says 1,000+ fitness, stretching and meditation classes), meal plans and dietitian-backed recipes, step tracking with rewards, face and body scans and optional 1:1 coaching. It also lists AI food logging against 1M+ food items, with calorie and macro tracking. The support article says paid programs “offer deeper guidance and personalized coaching”, though it doesn’t itemize what is paid-only.

A second product sits next to it, called Noom Med. It includes online doctors, health coaches and access to GLP-1 medication if you’re eligible, and the store text says a prescribed medication ships within 7 days. Noom Weight, by contrast, “Supports intermittent fasting & behavior-based food logging”, in the listing’s words. Which part of that bundle you’d use, and which sits idle, decides whether the price is fair. For other people’s experience with the program, see Noom reviews.

Calsa sells a tracker. All of its tracking is in every plan: logging by text, voice, photo, barcode or label, a goal from a short quiz, weight trend, weekly recap, water and fluids, allergen warnings. The AI chat answers from your diary, goal and weight trend, and its numbers come from the food database. The chat is labeled as AI, never messages you first and gives no diagnoses or treatment advice. It never pretends to be a professional. Higher plans add menu and fridge help, weekly and monthly reviews and answers read aloud, and you can always see how many chat messages you have left, and a top-up pack never expires.

The chat can see the day or entry on your screen and takes spoken questions, and questions about Calsa itself are answered from Help without using up your messages. Calsa’s checkout has no discount wheels, countdown timers or one-time offers. When food or tracking feels hard, help comes first and no prices are shown, and Calsa publishes the protocol it follows. Help can be searched by topic, and a public status page shows whether the service is up. Nothing you typed is lost during an outage.

How does logging a day compare?

In Noom

Noom’s food logging is described in thin terms. The listing says “AI food logging with 1M+ food items, calorie & macro tracking”, and it describes Noom Weight as supporting behavior-based food logging. The pages I opened don’t name photo, barcode or voice logging, so I can’t say whether they exist. Noom syncs with Apple Health, Fitbit, Garmin and Withings, per the same listing. Lessons arrive daily, and Move classes sit alongside the log.

On the free side, “Meal Logging” is listed depending on location, and the earlier article limits “Green Food Logging with Daily Goals” to the U.S. The sign-up path is a quiz at noom.com, the site has “Start your trial” buttons, and the home page also advertises a GLP-1 program with a personalized plan.

In Calsa

A day in Calsa starts wherever you like. Type or say what you ate, for instance “omelet 180 g, toast”, and several foods fit in one line. Or take a photo, and Calsa names the foods and suggests grams while you confirm the portion. Packaged food scans by barcode, with UK and Australian products included, and a nutrition label photo covers a miss. Chain restaurant dishes carry the numbers the chain itself publishes.

Corrections are quick: change the grams, or select several entries to move, repeat or delete them together, and undo it. Copy a past day to today in one tap. Recipes can be built from ingredients or from a photo, with raw or cooked weight, and the foods you add stay private to your account. Entries drop into the right meal by time, a half-finished entry survives the app closing, and your last seven days open offline. Each entry shows its source and the math, “per 100 g × grams”, and an amount you haven’t confirmed says “estimate”. Weight, steps and active energy come from Apple Health or Health Connect. Calsa has no direct Garmin or Fitbit link, so those devices reach it only if they sync to one of those.

For weight, Calsa shows a smoothed trend, and you can hide the number. Maintenance is a goal of its own, for holding your weight once you get there. BMI appears as a figure beside the usual range, with no label or color verdict, and you can switch it off. No streaks, badges or food scores exist here, so a break costs nothing. Reminders are optional, with quiet hours, and they stay silent once you have logged. One entry puts you back. Calsa also lets you track without numbers, hiding calories, nutrients and weight and bringing them back whenever you want.

Noom vs Calsa: how do they compare side by side?

The Noom column comes from the pages linked above. The Calsa column comes from Calsa’s feature list.

	Noom	Calsa
What you buy	A program: lessons, Circles, Move classes, meal plans, optional 1:1 coaching	A tracker, with an AI chat that answers from your diary
Trial	“Free trial” in most cases; length not stated on the pages I opened	Length shown before any question, with a reminder before it ends
Free version	Create a free account; contents vary by location and app version	Not in Calsa’s feature list
Logging	AI food logging, 1M+ food items; photo, barcode and voice not named	Type or say it, photo, barcode, label photo, search, quick add, recipes
Source behind a number	Not described on the pages I read	Source and the math on every entry
Health apps	Apple Health, Fitbit, Garmin, Withings	Apple Health and Health Connect only
Medication	Noom Med, if eligible	None; no diagnoses or treatment advice
Community	Circles	None; no public profiles or messages
Cancel	App, web Subscription Portal or app store	The way you subscribed
Export	On request; typically within 30 days	Download everything, in any plan
Platforms	iPhone, Android and a web portal for the subscription	Web, iPhone, iPad and Android on one subscription

Two rows decide it for me: what you buy and what happens when you leave. Noom’s money goes to lessons, people and a medication service. Calsa’s goes to a tracker and a chat, and your data downloads whenever you want it.

Where is Calsa weaker, and who should pick Noom?

Where Calsa is weaker: nobody coaches you in Calsa, and it has no lessons, no community like Circles, no weekly meal plans and no Noom Move classes. It has no medication program, and its chat won’t give treatment advice. It has no direct Garmin or Fitbit link, no manual workout logging and no watch app yet.

Choose something else if you want a coach, daily lessons on habits, a community, a medication program or a weekly meal plan.

Four readers come to mind. One wants structure for the whole habit beyond the log, and would open the lessons daily. That reader should look at Noom first. Another has a doctor on board and wants prescriptions and counseling under one roof, which only Noom Med lists. A third counts calories alone and finds lessons noise, and for them the extra cost buys nothing. The fourth uses a Garmin or Fitbit and wants it linked directly, which Noom’s listing offers and Calsa doesn’t. If you’re weighing Noom against a plain tracker, Noom vs MyFitnessPal is the neighboring comparison, and Noom vs Weight Watchers sets it against WeightWatchers.

How do you cancel Noom, get your data out and switch to Calsa?

Noom lets you cancel in three places. The cancel page lists the app (profile picture top left, Settings, Manage Subscription), the web Subscription Portal at account.noom.com and your app store if you subscribed there. Access continues to the end of the billing cycle, and uninstalling cancels nothing. For Noom Weight, a refund may be possible if you ask within 14 days of purchase.

Your data leaves on request. The export page says to use Settings, Account, Manage Subscription in the app, or Subscription Management and Request My Data in the portal. It arrives “in a portable format within 30 days”. That wait is the reason to ask before you cancel, not after. What format you get isn’t stated on the pages I read. Calsa’s export, by contrast, covers everything in every plan, so a higher tier isn’t needed to take your data out.

History comes into Calsa as a CSV file, and a preview shows before anything is saved. I haven’t checked what Noom’s file looks like, so open the preview and fix anything that landed in the wrong column. Answer the short quiz for a calorie goal, or track without one. A goal under the safe calorie floor isn’t saved, and Calsa tells you why. Run both for a week if you’re unsure, then cancel Noom in the place you subscribed. The checks in how to choose a calorie counter app fit that week, and more comparisons sit under choosing a calorie app.

If you leave Calsa later, you can still read, export and delete everything, and your history stays if you return. Deleting the account works from the app or the web.

Calsa’s subscription covers web, iPhone and Android with one plan and reminds you before it renews. You can switch plans or update your card yourself, and you see the date the change takes effect.

Calsa lists its terms first, which gives you a fair way to hold Noom’s checkout screen up against them.