A Cronometer alternative for food you can’t weigh.

Cronometer

Cronometer, in its own words: science-backed detail.

Cronometer calls itself science-backed and says you can follow up to 95 different nutrients and compounds, from a database of more than a million verified foods (its App Store listing says over 1.1 million). Scanning a barcode is free. You can also search, speak your meal, or take a photo, and it syncs with a long list of devices — Apple Health, Health Connect, Fitbit, Garmin, Oura, Whoop and more. It runs on the web, iPhone and Android.

Its Gold plan lists photo and voice entry, a fasting timer, deeper insights, no ads and its Crono Coach. On AI, Cronometer is unusually careful: it says the photo feature makes an educated guess at the ingredients and amounts in the picture, and the numbers themselves still come from its verified database, not from the AI.

Where precision runs out

A gram scale can’t follow you into a restaurant.

At home, Cronometer’s approach is hard to beat: weigh 180 g of salmon, pick the verified entry, done. At a restaurant, the inputs disappear. You don’t know how much butter went into the risotto, whether the dressing was a spoon or a ladle, or what the frying oil did to the karaage.

So a precise app has to pretend. You pick “risotto, restaurant” and the number arrives with three significant figures it hasn’t earned. Precision people tend to hate that more than anyone.

A preliminary NIH test presented in July 2026 ran 102 weighed meals from a metabolic kitchen through four photo apps — MyFitnessPal, Lose It!, Cal AI and Appediet. All four came in low, by about 250 to 345 calories a meal on average, and missed about 30 g of fat. It is a conference abstract, not yet peer reviewed, but the lesson holds: a photo can’t see the oil.

The other approach

A rough number that admits it.

PlateDiary takes the opposite position for meals out. With Calories turned on, one photo of the table gives each dish one number with a tilde — “~640 kcal”, rounded to the nearest 10 — and the app says up front that photo estimates usually run low. You accept it, or you correct it, and your correction is remembered for that dish at that place.

That last part is where a detail-minded person gets their precision back. Ask the café for its numbers once, or work out your usual bowl, type it in, and every visit after starts from your figure, not a fresh guess.

• Off unless you turn them on. With Calories off, PlateDiary is a food diary for eating out and shows no numbers at all.
• One photo of the table. Every dish and drink is cut out on your phone into its own save. A read gives each dish one rough “~” number, rounded to the nearest 10.
• Accept or correct. Accept makes the number yours; Edit lets you type your own, and PlateDiary remembers your fix for that dish at that place.
• No AI needed to type a number. Add your own number to any food or drink save, free.

Side by side

Cronometer and PlateDiary, honestly.

Choose

Choose Cronometer, PlateDiary — or both.

PlateDiary is not a full calorie tracker: there is no barcode scanner, no food database to search, no exercise, no water and no weight. We make PlateDiary, so weigh that in.

• Choose Cronometer if you cook and weigh most meals, care about vitamins and minerals, or want wearables and biometrics in one place.
• Choose PlateDiary if most of the food you care about is eaten out, you want a fair rough number per dish, and you want the night remembered too.
• Choose both if you’re precise at home and realistic at restaurants. Plenty of people are.
• Choose a professional if you manage a medical condition with food. A doctor or registered dietitian beats any app.

Try it

Five minutes with PlateDiary at your next dinner.

1. Turn Calories onSettings → PlateDiary AI → Calories. They are off unless you turn them on.
2. Snap the tableWhen the food arrives, take one photo. Every dish and drink is cut out on your phone, in about a second.
3. Read itTap Read. Small pictures of the cut-out dishes go up, with the place’s name as a hint — never the table photo, faces or your location. Everyone gets 10 free AI tries.
4. Correct what you knowAccept the “~” number or type your own. Your fix is remembered for that dish at that place.

In PlateDiary

A rough number for the dishes you save — only if you want one.

Sources

Where the facts come from