Simple vs Calsa: Fasting Coach or Food Diary

Simple vs Calsa is a choice between a fasting app that also logs food and a paid food diary with no fasting at all. Simple suits you if the fasting timer and the coach are the reason you open the app. Calsa suits you if the record of what you ate, in grams, is the reason. I read Simple’s help center and four App Store listings for this comparison.

What does Simple cost, and what is free?

There is no price table on Simple’s side. Its FAQ on Premium and cancellation lists monthly, quarterly, 9-month and yearly plans, plus commitment plans of 3, 6 or 10 months, and says the exact prices appear on the paywall. The App Store shows purchase names with a price and no period. The table below is only what each storefront listed.

Storefront	“Simple Premium”	“Simple Pro”	Other item
United States	$29.99 and $59.99	4 rows, $14.99 to $49.99	Workbooks Bundle, $29.99
United Kingdom	£29.99 and £59.99	7 rows, £14.49 to £48.99	None listed
Canada	$39.99 and $79.99	7 rows, $19.99 to $66.99	Workbooks Bundle, $39.99
Australia	$49.99 and $99.99	8 rows, $23.99 to $81.99	None listed

Two things stand out. In all four countries the higher Premium row is one cent above exactly double the lower one. And the Canadian and Australian lists run to ten rows, the most Apple shows on a page, and rows with the same name and price collapse into one. Those two lists may be incomplete. The US Google Play page adds a range of its own, $9.99 to $239.99 per in-app item.

No page I opened says how Pro differs from Premium. The help article describes a Premium subscription and calls the workbooks an optional purchase, which leaves Pro unexplained. Check the period and the name on the payment sheet before you confirm anything.

Trials are vague too. The FAQ says Simple occasionally offers introductory periods at a reduced price and that the details of a free trial, if there is one, show at signup. It states no fixed length. Calsa sells monthly or yearly plans only, and the first period costs the same as the later ones. Its price, trial length, first charge date and cancel path come before any question, and a reminder arrives before the trial ends.

The plans page is clearer about what you get without paying. To use that version you download the app and close the paywall when it appears.

	Version at no cost	Premium
Coach replies from Avo	Up to two a day	Unlimited
Avo Vision camera scan	Once a day	Unlimited
Blinky and Success Score	No	Yes
Streak tracking and Avo check-ins	No	Yes
Workout plans and educational library	No	Yes
Personalized insights	No	Yes

One line on that page puzzled me. It lists Blinky and the Success Score as paid and adds a note, “no detailed breakdown and macros of logged meals”. The overview of features says the Tracker tab has a food tracker with a nutrition breakdown per meal, and also that the version at no cost gets no personalized feedback on meals or weight. I can’t tell from the pages which version shows the per-meal macros. Worth checking on day one.

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

Calsa publishes this blog, so check my table against Simple’s own pages. The Simple column comes from its help center and store listings. The Calsa column lists only features that are built today.

	Simple	Calsa
Version at no cost	Logging, two coach replies and one camera scan a day	None listed
Plan lengths	Monthly, quarterly, 9-month, yearly and commitment plans	Monthly or yearly
Trial	No fixed length stated	Length shown before any question
Ways to log food	Camera scan, photo upload, typed text with portions, AI chat. Barcode and voice not stated	Type or say it with grams, photo, barcode, nutrition-label photo, quick add of just the calories
Source of the numbers	Not stated on the pages I read	Source and math on every entry, “per 100 g × grams”. Unconfirmed amounts marked “estimate”
Fasting	Fasting tracker	Not in the feature list
Coach or chat	Avo, a named coach	AI chat, labelled as AI, never posing as a professional
Streaks and scores	Streaks, Blinky, Success Score in Premium	None, so a break costs nothing
Workouts	Workout plans in Premium	No manual workout entry. Activity comes from Apple Health or Health Connect
Data export	None found in the help articles	Everything, on any plan
Platforms	iPhone, Apple Watch, Android, web app	Web, iPhone, iPad, Android. No watch app
Cancel	App Store, Google Play or website, 24 hours before renewal	The way you subscribed, with no screen arguing you out of it

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

A day in Simple

The Tracker tab holds the fasting tracker, the food tracker, hydration, steps, a weight tracker and a wellbeing (symptoms) tracker, and the Avo chat has a tab of its own. If you fast, the fasting tracker and the food tracker share that one tab.

Food goes in as text or as a picture. The logging help tells you to enter specific foods with portion sizes, lets you pick breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack, and lets you edit an entry afterwards. It also says the tracker doesn’t interpret macros you type in directly. For pictures there is Avo Vision, which reads a meal, a menu, groceries or a pantry shelf, and a body scan and photo upload sit next to it. Barcode scanning and voice logging aren’t mentioned on any page I read.

Premium adds a daily check-in that produces a plan for the day. The App Store text lists a Home Screen widget, Apple Health and an Apple Watch app, and the Google Play page lists Google Fit or Fitbit sync. The US listing also claims 800,000 active subscribers, which is Simple’s own number and I can’t check it.

A day in Calsa

You type or say what you ate, with grams: “oatmeal 250 g, banana”. One line can hold several foods, and if you’d rather talk, your phone turns speech into text. The entry lands in the right meal based on the time you ate it, and your day shows split by meal, with what’s left updated after every entry.

A photo works too. Calsa names the foods and suggests grams, you confirm the portion, and oil or dressing gets a line of its own. A packaged food takes a barcode scan, and UK and Australian products are included. If a barcode has no match, you photograph the nutrition label. When you only know the calories, quick add takes just that number, with no AI involved.

Repeats are quick. Open any day and tap “Copy to today” to repeat a meal, the whole day or only the foods you pick. Half-finished entries survive a closed app, and logging works offline, with your last 7 days open too. Weight comes in from Apple Health or Health Connect, along with steps and active energy, and your food and water go back out.

Where do the numbers come from?

The pages don’t say. I found no article naming a food database, and the logging help says typed-in macros aren’t interpreted. That leaves the AI and the portion you typed as the visible inputs. It may be perfectly good, but I can’t point you to the source of a number in Simple, which is the thing I’d want to see.

In Calsa every entry shows where its calories come from and the math behind them, “per 100 g × grams” (the help page shows an example). Amounts you haven’t confirmed are marked “estimate”. The same entry gives the same number every time, and a past day never changes without telling you. Spot a wrong shared food and you can report it, and the entry is corrected after review.

A quick test works for any app. Take a packaged food from your cupboard, log it in Simple and in Calsa, and hold the label next to both entries. Where the two disagree with the label, you’ll see which app tells you why.

Where is Calsa stronger than Simple?

Leaving is the clearest gap. I found no data export in Simple’s help articles, and its deletion page says deletion is permanent, whether you use Profile and Delete Account or email. Calsa lets you download all your data whatever plan you’re on. When a subscription ends, you can still read, export and delete everything, and your history is there if you come back.

The chat is the second gap. Simple’s Avo is a named coach with two replies a day until you pay. Calsa’s chat is labelled as AI and never poses as a professional. It sees your diary, your goal and your weight trend, and its numbers come from the food database. You can see, edit or delete what the chat remembers, or switch memory off. Plans differ in the chat only. Every one has all of the tracking. You can always see how many messages you have left, and a top-up pack never expires.

Then there’s pressure. Simple’s Premium includes streak tracking and a mascot that reacts to your habits. Calsa has no streaks, badges or confetti, and reminders go quiet if you miss a week. Log one entry to be back, or start with your weight. You can also hide calories, nutrients and weight and bring them back any time, which matters if numbers stress you.

Billing differs as well. You see the price, trial length, first charge date and how to cancel before anything else. Your price doesn’t change while your subscription is active. Refund windows are spelled out before you pay, and one subscription covers web, iPhone and Android.

Where is Calsa weaker, and who should choose Simple?

The fast is what Simple is built around, and Calsa’s feature list has no fasting at all.

Where Calsa is weaker: Its feature list has no version at no cost, so there’s nothing to fall back on if you only want to log fasts and meals. It has no fasting tracker and no workout plans, and manual workout entry is out too, since activity arrives through Apple Health or Health Connect. It has no watch app, no direct Garmin or Fitbit link and no mascot.

Choose something else if you want a fasting timer, a version at no cost for logging fasts and meals, workout plans, an Apple Watch app, or a coach character and a daily score keeping you company.

Four readers come to mind. Someone who fasts 16 hours a day and wants the window and the meal log in one tab belongs in Simple. Someone who has never paid for a food app and wants to see whether logging sticks should start with Simple’s version at no cost, then decide. A reader who weighs portions and wants to see why an entry says what it says will like Calsa better. And a reader who wants to export a year of meals before deciding on anything should check the export first, since Simple’s pages mention none.

Not sure where you stand? My Simple app weight loss review goes through the help pages in more detail. How to choose a calorie counter app lists the tests I’d run on any logger, and more head-to-head pieces sit under choosing a calorie app.

How do you switch from Simple to Calsa?

Keep Simple until you’ve logged a week in both. When you’re ready, cancel where you paid, at least 24 hours before renewal, because deleting the app cancels nothing. The cancel page gives three paths. On the App Store it’s Settings, your name, Subscriptions, Simple. On Google Play it’s Payments & subscriptions. For a website purchase, open Manage subscription and turn off auto-renewal.

Your history needs more care. Simple offers no export that I found, and deleting the account is permanent. Before you delete it, copy out the weights and meals you want to keep. Calsa’s import takes a CSV file and shows a preview before anything is saved, so you can check the file first.

Then open Calsa, log what you actually eat for a week with grams, and compare the entries one by one against your Simple days.