Free Nutrition & Cooking Calculators: Plan Your Diet Without Paying a Coach (2026)
By Daniel · · 7 min read

You don’t need a paid coach or a subscription app just to work out how much to eat. The maths behind a diet plan — calories, macros, hydration, portion sizes — is well understood, and you can get every number you need from a handful of free calculators.
We built a full set of them, free and with no sign-up, at swoodie.app/tools. This guide walks through them in the order you’d actually use them — from “how many calories should I eat?” all the way to “how do I halve this recipe?”
Step 1 — Find your calorie target
Everything starts with energy balance. First find your maintenance level, then adjust it for your goal.
- TDEE Calculator — your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (maintenance calories) and resting metabolism (BMR), using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. This is the number everything else builds on.
- Calorie Deficit Calculator — pick a pace and it gives you the daily calories to lose weight, plus a realistic estimate of how long it’ll take to reach your goal.
- BMI Calculator — a quick sense-check of where your weight sits and a healthy range for your height. (It’s a blunt tool — it can’t tell muscle from fat — so treat it as a starting point, not a verdict.)
Step 2 — Dial in your macros
Calories decide whether you lose or gain; macros decide how good you feel and whether you keep muscle while you do it.
- Protein Intake Calculator — protein is the macro most people under-eat. This sets a daily target (in grams) based on your weight and goal.
- Keto Macro Calculator — eating low-carb? This splits your calories into net carbs, protein, and fat for a keto approach.
Step 3 — Account for exercise and hydration
- Calories Burned Calculator — estimate what you burn across 30+ activities. Useful for context, though remember you can’t reliably out-train a big calorie surplus.
- Water Intake Calculator — a daily water target based on your weight, activity, and climate.
Step 4 — Time your eating (optional)
If you fast, the hard part is remembering when your window opens and closes.
- Intermittent Fasting Calculator — enter when you stop eating and it shows exactly when you can eat again for 16:8, 18:6, OMAD, and custom protocols. More on the approach in intermittent fasting with Swoodie.
Step 5 — Actually cook the food
The numbers are useless if the recipe fights you. These remove the friction in the kitchen:
- Cooking Measurement Converter — cups to grams, ounces, millilitres and back, with ingredient density baked in (a cup of flour and a cup of sugar do not weigh the same).
- Oven Temperature Converter — °C, °F, gas mark, and fan-oven temperatures in one place.
- Recipe Scaler — halve, double, or resize any recipe to the number of servings you actually need.
- Safe Cooking Temperatures — the safe internal temperature for chicken, beef, pork, and fish in °F and °C, so you cook it through without drying it out.
From numbers to meals
Free calculators give you the targets; the daily grind is hitting them. That is the part Swoodie automates — it works out your TDEE and macros from your profile, then logs every meal against them when you scan a plate or a barcode, generates recipes that fit your remaining budget, and builds a weekly plan with a shopping list. If weight loss is the goal, the weight-loss guide ties the whole workflow together.
Bookmark the full set at swoodie.app/tools — all free, no account, no ads.
These tools give general estimates for healthy adults and are not medical advice. For therapeutic diets or medical conditions, consult a registered dietitian or doctor.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid app to track calories and macros?
No. Free calculators give you every number you need to start: your TDEE (maintenance calories), a deficit target to lose weight, and your protein and macro goals. A paid app like Swoodie mainly saves you the daily effort — auto-logging meals from a photo or barcode and planning recipes around your targets — but the underlying maths is free.
How accurate are free calorie and TDEE calculators?
Formula-based estimates (using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation) are typically within 5–15% of your true energy expenditure. They are an excellent starting point — track your weight for 2–3 weeks and adjust your calories up or down based on the actual trend.
Which free tools do I need to start losing weight?
Three: a TDEE calculator to find maintenance, a calorie deficit calculator to set your daily target, and a protein intake calculator so you keep muscle while you lose fat. A BMI calculator is a useful quick sense-check. All four are free at swoodie.app/tools.
What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the calories you burn at complete rest. TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) multiplies that BMR by an activity factor to account for movement and exercise, so TDEE is always higher and is the number you actually plan your diet around.
Written by
Daniel
Founder of Swoodie
Hi, I'm Daniel — the person behind Swoodie. I'm based in Poland and have been working on Swoodie solo since January 2026. I write about nutrition tracking, intermittent fasting, recipe planning, and cooking together with a partner — everything tested in my own kitchen with the app I'm building.
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