Tired of logging every meal in Lose It!? Here is another way.
Lose It! asks you to record what you already ate. Macro Recipe plans what you cook so the numbers come out right in the first place — no diary, no barcode, no streak to keep.
Updated September 2026
Lose It! is one of the most widely used calorie trackers on iOS: a food diary, a barcode scanner, a photo food-recognition feature, and weekly trend reports once you have logged for long enough. For people who want to see exactly what they ate, it does that job well.
The trade-off is the logging itself. Every bite has to be found in a database or scanned, every day, for the numbers to mean anything. This page looks at what Lose It! does well, where users say it falls short, and what a weekly menu built around your goal — with one grocery list and an estimated budget — looks like instead. It is written by the team behind Macro Recipe, so read it with that in mind.
What Lose It! does well
Lose It! has a mature, very large food database — the App Store listing cites more than 57 million users — plus fast barcode scanning and photo-based food recognition, which make logging a packaged product quick once you know the app.
It is widely described as one of the cleanest, simplest calorie-tracking apps for people new to tracking, and reviewers who stick with it for months point to the weekly averages, macro breakdowns and pattern reports as the real payoff of logging consistently.
A free tier covers core logging and barcode scanning, so trying it costs nothing up front; Premium adds macro tracking and deeper reports on top.
Who it is for
Lose It! fits someone who wants a precise record of everything they eat — every snack, every restaurant meal, every half-finished plate — searchable and reportable over months. If your goal is awareness of your own eating pattern, a diary is the right tool for that.
It also fits someone who already knows how to cook and shop and only wants the numbers layered on top of a routine they are not looking to change.
Where it stops — the complaints
Recent reviews describe the logging flow itself getting harder, not easier: "Latest update has made it so difficult to even log your food."
Support comes up repeatedly as a weak point: "Chatbot is useless, it says it can help and then says that it can't", and "Reached out 4 times in the last 3 months and received ZERO response."
Billing and cancellation draw complaints too: "Not able to cancel during trial. Not able to cancel after trial." Users also report a feature reduced without much notice — "Can only see 3 macronutrients at a time" — and a free tier that carries more ads while macro tracking sits behind the paywall.
None of these complaints are about the food database itself. They are about the daily grind of logging, and what happens when you need help or want to leave.
What Macro Recipe does the same
Both apps start from a goal — lose weight, maintain, or build muscle — and both turn it into daily calorie and protein numbers. Neither app is a guess: you set your goal once and the numbers follow from it.
Both respect a diet or an allergy: what you are served is filtered to fit, so you are not left checking every entry by hand the way an open food database requires.
What it does differently
Macro Recipe does not ask what you ate — it decides what you will cook. You get a weekly menu of real recipes, portioned so each day lands near your estimated calorie and protein target, built before the week starts rather than reconstructed meal by meal afterward.
Everything in that menu lands in 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.
If you like to cook once and eat several times, a batch cooking mode groups the week's preparation into a single session — something a food diary has no equivalent for, since it has nothing to do with cooking at all.
What it does not do
There is no barcode scanner, no food diary, no daily logging and no streak to keep. Macro Recipe is not a tracker in the Lose It! sense at all: if you want to record a restaurant meal or a packaged snack that is not part of your menu, there is nowhere to log it here.
It is not free the way Lose It!'s core logging is. Your first menu is free and there is a 3-day trial; after that it is a paid subscription.
It is on iPhone today, and it does not carry Lose It!'s years of food-database entries or your logging history — nobody can bring that over, since a menu app and a diary app start from different questions.
Switching in practice: what to keep, how a first week looks
Keep your goal and, if you know it, your daily calorie and protein target — Macro Recipe asks for the same starting point Lose It! does, then builds the week around it instead of leaving you to hit it meal by meal.
Keep your diet and any foods you exclude; you will be asked for them once, the same way you set them up in Lose It!.
A first week looks like this: answer a short set of questions about your goal, diet and kitchen, get a menu of real dishes for the week with an estimated grocery cost, shop off one list, and cook from step-by-step recipes. There is nothing to log afterward — the numbers were built into what you cooked.
Price, compared
Lose It!'s free tier covers core logging and barcode scanning. Its own App Store in-app-purchase listing shows Premium around $9.99, with a first year at $39.99 and renewal at $29.99; more recent third-party write-ups report a 2026 increase to $79.99 a year with the monthly plan discontinued, alongside promotional annual offers as low as $23.99. Treat the App Store figures as the listed tiers and the $79.99 figure as the more likely current renewal price — sources disagree, and neither is a price Macro Recipe sets.
Macro Recipe's first menu is free, with a 3-day trial, then 9.99 € a month or 69.99 € a year. Grocery cost on top of that is always an estimate, never a fixed number, because it depends on where and how you shop.
What three days of a weekly menu look like
An indicative example for someone aiming at roughly 1,800 kcal and 120 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 Lose It! alternative?
Macro Recipe's first weekly menu is free, with a 3-day trial after that, then a paid subscription — 9.99 € a month or 69.99 € a year. Lose It!'s core logging and barcode scanning are free too; the difference is what you get for free, a diary versus a menu and grocery list.
Why is Lose It! so expensive now?
Third-party 2026 pricing write-ups report Lose It! raised its annual Premium price to $79.99 and discontinued the monthly plan, while the App Store's own listing still shows lower legacy tiers in places — the two sources disagree, so treat $79.99/year as the more likely current renewal price.
How do I cancel my Lose It! subscription?
Cancel from your App Store or Google Play account settings, the same place the subscription was purchased — Lose It! does not control billing directly on either platform. Reviewers report difficulty cancelling inside the app itself, so go through your phone's subscription settings rather than looking for a cancel button in Lose It!.
Does Macro Recipe import my Lose It! data?
No. Macro Recipe does not import data from Lose It! or any other app. You start by answering a short set of questions about your goal, diet and kitchen, the same starting point Lose It! asks for when you first set up tracking.
Is Macro Recipe a calorie tracker like Lose It!?
No. Macro Recipe has no food diary, no barcode scanner and no daily logging. It plans a weekly menu of real recipes portioned to your estimated calorie and protein goal, so there is nothing to log after you cook.
First menu free · 3-day trial · on iPhone