Looking for a Lifesum alternative because you're tired of logging every meal?
Lifesum asks you to log what you ate. Macro Recipe tells you what to cook so the numbers land on target on their own — no scanning, no daily log.
Updated September 2026
Lifesum is a calorie and macro tracker: you log meals by photo, voice, text or barcode, and it tells you what you ate. It has a 4.6-star rating from roughly 151,000 App Store reviews and an Editors' Choice badge, so for a lot of people the logging habit sticks.
For others it does not. The most common reason people go looking for a Lifesum alternative is not that tracking is hard to use — it is that tracking is a daily chore that never ends. This page covers what Lifesum does well, where users say it falls short, and what a weekly-menu app does instead: skip the logging and start from a plan that already hits your targets.
What Lifesum does well
Lifesum's logging is genuinely fast: you can add a meal by photo, voice, text search or barcode scan, which cuts a lot of the friction other trackers have with manual entry. That, plus a clean interface often described as “Scandinavian design”, is a big part of its 4.6/5 rating from about 151,000 App Store reviews and its Editors' Choice badge.
It also has a broad diet-plan library — keto, Mediterranean, fasting and more — and connects to wearables like Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch, so people already tracking steps or workouts can fold their food into the same picture.
Who Lifesum is for
Lifesum suits someone who has already decided what they are going to eat and wants a fast, low-friction way to record it — snapping a photo of a plate or scanning a barcode rather than typing everything out. It also suits someone who wants to browse a named diet plan (keto, fasting, Mediterranean) and follow its rules inside a tracking app.
It is less suited to someone whose actual bottleneck is deciding what to cook and buy in the first place. Lifesum tells you the numbers after the fact; it does not build the week's meals or the grocery list for you.
Where people say it falls short
Some reviewers report the core logging just does not hold: "the manual log feature is pointless as it doesn't save" (App Store review excerpt, ~April 2025).
Others flag a UI regression after an update: "you can't see calories by meal anymore" (App Store review excerpt, ~January 2025).
A recurring complaint is being steered toward assisted logging when they just want to scan or type a food manually — reviewers describe being "pushed ai on me to log my meals" (App Store review excerpt).
Beyond the app itself, the daily habit is the friction: logging is something you have to keep doing, every meal, for as long as you want the numbers to mean anything. Skip a few days and the log — and the motivation — falls apart.
What Macro Recipe does the same
Like Lifesum, Macro Recipe works from your goal — lose weight, maintain, or build muscle — and your calorie and protein targets, and it respects diets and allergies rather than leaving you to filter them out yourself.
It also gives you a place to see how a day or a week adds up against your target, with the gap declared honestly when a real recipe cannot land exactly on the number.
What Macro Recipe does differently
The starting point is a menu, not a log. Macro Recipe builds a full week of real recipes adapted to your goal and diet, with portions set so the day lands near your estimated calorie and protein targets — before you have cooked or eaten anything.
Everything in the week's menu rolls into one grocery list, quantities added up across recipes, with an estimated cost in your own currency so you know roughly what the week will run before you shop.
There is no barcode scanning, no photo logging, no daily food diary to keep up. You cook from the plan; there is nothing left over to track by hand.
What Macro Recipe does not do
It does not log arbitrary meals you eat outside the plan — no barcode scanner, no photo or voice food entry, no open-ended diary for whatever you happen to eat that day.
It has no diet-plan library to browse and no wearable integration. You set your diet and goal once; the app applies them, it does not give you a catalogue of named plans to pick between.
It is not free the way Lifesum's basic logging is. Your first menu is free with a 3-day trial, then it is a paid subscription — a different trade than a free tracker with a paid upgrade tier.
Switching in practice: what to keep from Lifesum
Keep your goal and your numbers — the calorie and protein target you settled on in Lifesum carries straight over as the starting point for a menu. Keep your diet rules and any excluded ingredients too; you will be asked for the same things again.
What you do not need to bring over is the habit of logging. In week one, instead of opening the app after each meal to record it, you open it once to get the week's menu and the grocery list, then cook from it. There is nothing to log afterwards because the plan already accounts for what you are eating.
Price, honestly
Lifesum's core logging is free, with Premium reported by third-party trackers at roughly $9.99/month or around $44.99/year (not confirmed on lifesum.com itself, which does not publish a pricing page — treat this as an estimate that can vary by country and app store).
Macro Recipe gives you one free weekly menu, then a 3-day trial, after which it is 9.99 €/month or 69.99 €/year. Both are estimated figures that can shift with local pricing — the honest comparison is a free tracker with a paid upgrade versus a free first menu with a paid plan from the second week on.
What three days of a weekly menu look like
An indicative example for someone aiming at roughly 1,700 kcal and 115 g of protein a day. Estimated figures; your own menu is built from your profile, your tastes and your budget.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free Lifesum alternative?
Macro Recipe's first weekly menu is free, with a 3-day trial after that, then a paid subscription — not free the way Lifesum's basic logging is. If you want to keep logging for free, Lifesum's free tier covers manual and barcode entry; Macro Recipe instead gives you a full week of recipes and a grocery list without any logging at all.
What is a good app like Lifesum but without daily logging?
Macro Recipe replaces the log with a plan: you set your goal, diet and allergies once, and get a week of real recipes with portions already sized to your calorie and protein targets, plus one grocery list. There is nothing to scan or record afterwards.
Why does Lifesum keep pushing me toward assisted logging?
Several App Store reviewers describe being steered toward an assisted logging flow when they wanted to scan or type a food manually. That is a Lifesum product choice; Macro Recipe does not log meals at all, so there is no logging flow to be pushed into.
Is Lifesum or Macro Recipe cheaper?
Lifesum's Premium is reported around $9.99/month by third-party pricing trackers (not published on lifesum.com itself, and it can vary by country). Macro Recipe is 9.99 €/month or 69.99 €/year after a free first menu and 3-day trial. Both figures are estimates — check the current price in your own app store before deciding.
Can Macro Recipe track what I already eat, like Lifesum does?
No. Macro Recipe does not have barcode scanning, photo logging or a food diary. It builds the week's menu and grocery list up front so the day's numbers land on target from the recipes themselves, instead of asking you to record meals afterwards.
First menu free · 3-day trial · on iPhone