MyFitnessPal vs Yazio vs Swoodie 2026: Which Calorie Counter Wins?

Three of the most-searched calorie counter apps in 2026 are MyFitnessPal, Yazio, and Swoodie. On the App Store they look interchangeable: log food, see calories, hit a goal. In daily use they pull in different directions, and picking the one that fights your routine is how tracking apps end up uninstalled by February.

This is the honest head-to-head: what each app does well, where each one quietly costs you, and which fits the way you actually eat. No app here is bad — they are built for different people.

The 60-second verdict

• Pick MyFitnessPal if you eat out often and want the largest restaurant database, and you don’t mind AI scanning and meal planning sitting behind Premium and Premium+.
• Pick Yazio if intermittent fasting is the centre of your routine and you want the most mature IF tracker, and don’t mind logging meals by hand.
• Pick Swoodie if you want to try AI photo scanning free, want recipes and a meal planner in the same app, or you cook with a partner.

How we compared them

Every figure below is from each app’s own listing and public pricing, checked in May 2026. We weighted the comparison toward what the free tier actually gives you (because that is where most people stay) and toward the total cost over time, because a $40 gap each year is the part the App Store screenshot never shows you.

Free tier: what you actually get

The free tier is where most people live, so it matters more than the paid one. The trend across the category has been quietly subtracting from it.

• MyFitnessPal: calorie logging, search-based food entry, and ads. AI Meal Scan and meal planning sit behind Premium and Premium+, and there is no AI photo scanning at any free tier.
• Yazio: basic logging, a barcode scanner, an intermittent-fasting timer, and ads. AI photo recognition and recipes beyond a small starter set sit behind Yazio Pro.
• Swoodie: the full 8,000+ recipe library, basic calorie logging and the nutrition dashboard — free, with no account required. AI photo scanning and the barcode scanner come as a 5-use free trial (one-time, no card). The v1.4 fasting tracker (six protocols, live timer, history) is also free; Fasting Coach quips from Ollie and Fast Together (sync your window with a partner) are Premium. Swipe Together sessions are free to join.

The practical test is whether you can use the app for a month without hitting a wall. With Yazio you can, if you log by hand. With MyFitnessPal you can, with ads and no scanner. With Swoodie the recipe and tracking core never expires; only the AI tools are gated.

AI photo calorie counting

This is the headline 2026 feature: snap a photo, get calories without typing a thing. It is also the clearest split between the three.

• MyFitnessPal: AI Meal Scan exists, but only on Premium ($79.99/year) — nothing on the free tier.
• Yazio: AI photo recognition exists, but only on Yazio Pro — the free tier logs by search-and-tap or barcode.
• Swoodie: 5 free trial scans to try it (one-time, no card), then unlimited on Premium.

Photo logging is not magic. It estimates, and it is least accurate on mixed dishes where the camera can’t see what’s inside. But for the everyday plate it removes the single biggest reason people quit tracking: the tedium of manual entry. An app that lets you try it before paying is doing you a favour.

Recipe generation and meal planning

If you want the app to also answer “what should I cook?”, the gap is wide.

• MyFitnessPal: a recipe scrapbook — you import, it stores — plus meal planning, but only on the higher Premium+ tier ($99.99/year). No AI recipe generation.
• Yazio: a small recipe library and generic meal plans behind Pro. No AI generation.
• Swoodie: Chef AI writes recipes from the ingredients you have, with cooking-style and dietary modifiers, and the AI meal planner builds 1-, 3- or 7-day plans with a single consolidated shopping list. Premium feature.

MyFitnessPal and Yazio treat recipes as storage; Swoodie treats them as something the app produces. If you regularly stare into the fridge with no plan, that difference is the whole point.

Couples and shared planning

Calorie tracking is built as a solo activity, but most people cook for at least one other person.

• MyFitnessPal: single-user.
• Yazio: single-user.
• Swoodie: Swipe Together — two phones, two people swipe through recipes, and only the dishes you both said yes to advance. It is the one feature here with no equivalent in either competitor.

Pricing: and the real two-year cost

• MyFitnessPal: Premium is $19.99/month or $79.99/year; the meal planner sits on a separate Premium+ tier at $99.99/year.
• Yazio Pro: around $47.90/year.
• Swoodie Premium: $9.99/month or $39.99/year, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan.

Stretch that over two years and the spread is real. Swoodie Premium runs about $80, Yazio Pro about $96, and MyFitnessPal Premium about $160, or roughly $200 if you add Premium+ for the meal planner. The headline annual prices don’t tell the whole story; the gap compounds every year you keep paying.

Database accuracy

MyFitnessPal wins on raw database size — millions of entries — but many are user-submitted and inconsistent, so the same food can show three different calorie counts. Yazio keeps a smaller, more curated database, trading coverage for trust. Swoodie’s database is closer to Yazio’s in size; its answer to coverage is to lean on photo and barcode logging so you spend less time searching a database at all.

What switching actually costs you

The hidden cost of changing apps is your history. MyFitnessPal holds years of weight and food logs for long-time users, and there is no clean one-tap export into a competitor; leaving means leaving that trend line behind. If you have a deep MyFitnessPal history you genuinely value, that is a reason to stay that has nothing to do with features. If you are a few weeks in, or returning after a lapse, that anchor doesn’t exist and you should pick on fit, not sunk cost.

Where Swoodie falls short

To keep this honest: MyFitnessPal’s restaurant and packaged-food database is still the deepest in the category, and if most of your meals are eaten out, that coverage matters more than any AI feature. Yazio’s intermittent-fasting tracker is still more mature than Swoodie’s v1.4 newcomer. Yazio has years of UI polish around phases and reminders, and Yazio added its own AI photo scanning in 2026 (though, unlike Swoodie’s, it needs a Pro subscription to use). What Swoodie added in v1.4 is a free fasting tracker with the same six protocols, plus Fast Together (sync your fasting window with a friend or partner), which neither Yazio nor MyFitnessPal does. Swoodie’s edge is breadth — tracking plus cooking plus couples plus now fasting in one app — not beating either specialist at its single strongest job.

Which one for your goal?

• Strict weight loss with detailed macros: MyFitnessPal or Swoodie; Swoodie if you want photo-based logging instead of search.
• Intermittent fasting as the core routine: Yazio — the most mature IF tracker of the three.
• Fasting with a partner: Swoodie — Fast Together syncs your eating window with a friend or partner; neither Yazio nor MyFitnessPal has this.
• Couples cooking together: Swoodie — there is no real alternative; couples mode doesn’t exist in MyFitnessPal or Yazio.
• Cooking and tracking in one app: Swoodie.
• Largest food database for restaurant meals: MyFitnessPal.

Two quick scenarios

The returning tracker. You used MyFitnessPal years ago, fell off, and want back in without the manual-entry grind that made you quit. You have no history worth protecting. Start with Swoodie’s free AI scans (photo logging is the lowest-friction way back in) and decide on Premium once tracking is a habit again.

The couple splitting the mental load. Two people, two schedules, one recurring argument about dinner. MyFitnessPal and Yazio will each track one of you. Swipe Together is the only feature across these three that addresses the decision itself, not just the logging.

Where to read deeper comparisons

For one-on-one breakdowns: Swoodie vs MyFitnessPal and Swoodie vs Yazio. The full alternatives index covers 41 apps including Noom, Cronometer, Lose It!, MacroFactor, Lifesum, Foodvisor and FatSecret.

More on fasting: Zero vs Fastic vs Swoodie for pure intermittent-fasting trackers, Yazio vs Lifesum vs Simple vs Swoodie for fasting + wellness apps, and the intermittent fasting use case page.

On AI photo logging: how AI calorie counters work and Cal AI vs Foodvisor vs Swoodie.

Try Swoodie free on iOS or Google Play — no account needed; try AI photo scanning free, 5 uses, no card.