Nutracheck vs Calsa: UK Lite Plan or Sourced Numbers

Nutracheck vs Calsa is a choice between a UK-focused tracker with a forum, a watch app and a Lite plan at £0, and a tracker with photo, voice and typed logging in every plan and a source on each entry. Nutracheck opens with a seven-day trial that doesn’t charge you on its own. Calsa has a trial, then a subscription. I read Nutracheck’s pages and four App Store storefronts.

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

Calsa publishes this blog, so read my side-by-side as an interested party’s. Everything about Nutracheck below comes from its UK price page, its member FAQ and its US App Store listing. I never opened its paid screens. Where a page says nothing, the table says so.

	Nutracheck	Calsa
Price	1-month and 12-month memberships, on the UK website and as several differently named rows on each App Store storefront	Three plans: Calsa Start, Calsa and Calsa Premium. Price, trial length and first charge date come before any question
Trial	7 days. The FAQ says you aren’t charged at the end	Length shown on screen before any question, with a reminder before it ends
Plan at £0	Lite: unlimited food searches, 5 items a day in the diary	Not listed. A trial comes first, then a subscription
Food database	Pages cite 350,000 and 600,000 foods, UK-focused, with photos	UK and Australian products are included in barcode scans
Logging methods	Keyword search, barcode, photo search, manual	Typed line, voice, photo, barcode, label photo, search, quick add
Voice logging	Not mentioned on the pages I read	Every plan
Source behind a number	Not shown on the pages I read	Each entry shows where its calories come from and the math
Exercise	A database of 1,000+ activities, plus device sync	Steps and activity come from Apple Health or Health Connect. No manual workout entry
Watch and widgets	Apple Watch app and widgets	None
Community	Forum, challenges and a Club weigh-in	None: no public profiles, no messages between users
AI chat	Not mentioned on the pages I read	In every plan, labeled as AI
Export	No export article found in the member FAQ	Everything, on any plan
Platforms	iPhone, Android and web	Web, iPhone and Android

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

Take a Tuesday: coffee with milk, a bowl of cereal and a banana before work, a sandwich from a supermarket, and a curry cooked in the evening.

Logging in Nutracheck

The store listing says the app tracks calories and seven key nutrients: carbs, protein, fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and fiber. Entries come from keyword search, a barcode scan, photo search or manual entry. It also lists a recipe and meal builder, exercise tracking with device sync, an Apple Watch app with widgets, and a community with a forum and challenges.

Lite is where the day gets tight. Per the member FAQ, searches stay unlimited but only 5 items a day can go into the diary. Coffee with milk, cereal, a banana and the sandwich make four items. A curry adds two more, and the diary stops at the fifth. Whether the barcode scanner works in Lite isn’t stated on the pages I opened.

Logging in Calsa

Breakfast is one typed line, “coffee with milk, cereal 60 g, banana”, and you can say it instead. That is the same job as Nutracheck’s keyword search done in a single line, with grams. A photo of the plate works too. Calsa names the foods and suggests grams, and you confirm the portion.

The supermarket sandwich is a barcode scan, and UK and Australian products are included. When nothing matches, a photo of the nutrition label does the job. A curry cooked at home becomes a recipe built from its ingredients or from a photo of it, in raw or cooked weight, and foods you add stay private to your account.

Fixing a slip takes seconds. You change the grams in place, or select several entries to move, repeat or delete together, with undo. “Copy to today” repeats a meal, a whole day or only the foods you pick. Units are yours to set: kcal or kJ, grams or ounces, and kg, lb or stone. The last 7 days open offline.

Where does the food data come from?

Nutracheck’s own pages disagree on size. The home page says search covers over 350,000 UK foods with photos, while the price page says over 600,000. Nothing explains the gap, and I wouldn’t read the bigger number as better data. The pages I read don’t say where Nutracheck’s database entries come from.

Every Calsa entry shows its source with the math, “per 100 g × grams”, and anything you haven’t confirmed carries the word “estimate”. A repeat entry gives the same figure and past days don’t shift without a notice. Spot a wrong shared food and you report it, then the entry changes after review.

Try 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 lists more checks like it.

What about AI?

Nothing on the pages I read describes an AI chat or coach in Nutracheck. The store text mentions photo search. Calsa has a chat that reads your diary, goal and weight trend and takes its numbers from the food database. Memory is open to you: see, edit or delete what it remembers, or turn it off. Labeled as AI, the chat never messages you first and gives no diagnoses. All tracking is in every plan. The plans differ in what the chat can do.

How much do Nutracheck and Calsa cost in the US, UK, Canada and Australia?

On the UK website a 12-month membership is £39.99, renewing annually, and a 1-month membership is £6.99, renewing monthly. The App Store lists many more rows with names that vary from “1 Month App-Only” to “12 months Membership”. These are every row I read.

Storefront	One-month rows	Twelve-month rows	Rows named Membership, subscription or App plus Website
United States	$6.99	$29.99, $39.99	none listed
United Kingdom	£3.99, £5.99, £6.99	£23.99, £27.99, £34.99	Membership £29.99, subscription £24.99
Canada	$5.49, $7.99, $9.99	$39.99, $41.99, $49.99	Membership $39.99, subscription $34.99
Australia	$9.99	$40.99, $49.99, $59.99	Membership $49.99, subscription $39.99, App plus Website $9.99

The storefront doesn’t map rows to “App-Only”, “Membership” or “subscription”. Canada and Australia list local dollars. The price page doesn’t say why the UK website’s annual membership costs more than every UK store row for a year, so the line on your own payment screen is the one that binds.

Twelve months at the website’s £6.99 monthly price come to £83.88, so the £39.99 annual membership is £43.89 cheaper, or £3.33 a month. UK store rows for a year work out to between £2.00 and £2.92 a month. In the US, a year of the $6.99 monthly row is also $83.88, against $29.99 or $39.99 for the 12-month rows.

Calsa plans come monthly or yearly. The first period costs the same as the ones after it, and your price doesn’t change while the subscription is active. Calsa’s price, trial length and first charge date appear before the first question, so I haven’t copied a figure that could go stale.

What does Lite cover, and what does the paid membership add?

After the trial, the member FAQ says you can continue as a Lite member at no cost: unlimited food searches and 5 diary items a day. The store text calls it the free Lite version “with daily diary limits”.

The price page lists what the paid membership adds: unlimited use on mobile, tablet and desktop, a database of over 600,000 foods with photos, an exercise database of 1,000+ activities, reports, recipes and meal ideas, diary customization, the Club weigh-in on the website, a UK help team and no adverts.

In Calsa, a subscription covers every part of the tracking: 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.

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

For Nutracheck I found no export article. The member FAQ topics I checked were account, adding food, calorie target, forum, Apple Watch, my meals, weighing in and cancellation, and none was about export. That shows an absence on those pages and doesn’t prove the feature is missing, so ask the UK help team if the file matters to you.

Any Calsa plan includes a download of all your data, and the account can be deleted from the app or the web, with the timelines spelled out.

Cancelling a Nutracheck membership bought in the app runs through More, My Profile & Account, Account & Billing and Cancel Membership, per the FAQ, which also links instructions for iPhone, iPad and Android on a computer. A trial needs no cancelling, because it closes by itself.

In Calsa you cancel the way you subscribed, in one tap. No screen tries to talk you out of it. A reminder arrives before the trial ends and before a renewal, and refund windows are spelled out before you pay.

Where is Calsa weaker, and who should pick Nutracheck?

Where Calsa is weaker: Nutracheck’s trial ends without a charge and leaves a Lite plan at £0, while Calsa has a trial and then a subscription. Nutracheck also lists an Apple Watch app with widgets, a forum with challenges, a Club weigh-in and an exercise database of 1,000+ activities. Calsa has no watch app, no forum, no Club weigh-in, no manual workout entry and no meal plans.

Choose something else if you want a plan at £0 for lookups, a watch app, a forum, manual exercise logging or a database built around UK foods.

Which reader fits which app?

Anyone who wants to try a tracker for a week and not be charged automatically at the end has a clear choice. Nutracheck’s trial doesn’t charge on its own, and the Lite plan keeps working afterward for lookups.

A person who logs a few simple items a day may never reach the 5-item limit. Heavier loggers hit it before dinner.

Photo, voice and a chat that knows your diary sit in every Calsa plan. They suit someone who logs in a hurry and wants each number to show its source.

Shoppers outside the UK should test Nutracheck on their own groceries first, since the home page frames the database around UK foods. Calsa’s barcode scans include UK and Australian products.

Minimum targets are covered too: the member FAQ has an article on the calorie target whose title names a minimum of 1,400 calories a day. In Calsa a goal below the safe calorie floor isn’t saved, and the app tells you why.

More pairings sit under choosing a calorie app, and the Nutracheck reviews article goes deeper into its trial and Lite limits.

How do you move from Nutracheck to Calsa?

Start with your history. Since I found no export article, ask the UK help team whether a file exists. If one does, Calsa imports history from a CSV file and shows a preview before anything is saved, so import one week and read the preview before you bring in the rest.

If there is no file, start fresh. Log one entry and you’re back, or begin with your weight, and the trend builds from there. Run both apps on the same days for a week and compare your totals.

A Nutracheck trial closes by itself, and a paid membership bought in the app is cancelled from Account & Billing. Calsa keeps one account on web, iPhone and Android, and a reminder comes before it renews.