A FatSecret alternative for the nights you eat out.

FatSecret

FatSecret, in its own words.

On the App Store and Google Play the app is called Calorie Counter by fatsecret, and its listing says it is free. The feature list is long: a food diary to plan and keep track of what you eat, image recognition of foods, meals and products so you can take a photo with the camera, a barcode scanner with auto-complete, an exercise diary, a weight tracker, a calendar of calories eaten and burned, reporting with daily targets, a photo album of your meals, a journal and reminders.

It is also social: the listing promises a community “ready to provide support”, with comments and followers. On iPhone it works with Apple Health and Apple Watch; on Android it lists Google Fit, Samsung Health and Fitbit. You sign in with Apple, Facebook or Google, and your account syncs online. Its paid tier adds meal plans from its dietitian, advanced meal planning, extra meal headings and water.

Why people look

Why people search for a FatSecret alternative.

• Restaurant food is a search. Unless it’s a chain, you hunt for the closest entry, guess the portion and repeat for every plate.
• Shared plates break the maths. A table of five dishes for four people turns into fractions.
• It’s a whole-day system. Diary, exercise, weight, water and a community is a lot if you only care about meals out.
• An account for your food. Some people would rather their meals stayed on the phone.

One night, two apps

The same Thai dinner in each app.

Thursday at a Thai place in Melbourne with Sam and Jess: green curry, pad see ew, a som tam, a basket of sticky rice and a Thai iced tea each.

In a diary app you search for each dish, pick between entries that disagree, set a serving, then divide by three for the shared plates. By the time you reach the sticky rice the curry is cold.

In PlateDiary you take one photo when the food lands. The dishes and drinks become saves. With Calories on, tap Read and each dish gets one rough number; the moment shows the total across your saves. Had a third of the curry? Tap Edit and type your share.

Side by side

FatSecret and PlateDiary, honestly.

About photos

A photo is a first guess, in any app.

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.

FatSecret wasn’t in that test, but the same physics applies to every photo feature, ours included: the sauce, the oil and the second spoon of coconut cream are invisible. That is why PlateDiary shows one rough “~” number and asks you to accept it or fix it, and why the app itself says photo estimates usually run low. More in how accurate AI calorie counters are.

Be honest

Who should stay with FatSecret.

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.

• You want one free app for food, exercise and weight.
• You scan a lot of packaged food.
• The community keeps you going.
• You want meal plans, or to share your diary with a professional.
• You want your numbers in Apple Health or Google Fit.

The eating-out option

What PlateDiary’s Calories actually are.

Plenty of people keep both: FatSecret for breakfast at home and the protein bar, PlateDiary for the Thai dinner and the birthday brunch. The numbers don’t move between apps. What PlateDiary adds is the part a diary never kept — the place, the table and who you shared it with. See calories when eating out for the method.

• 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.
• The Calories page adds up your saved meals by day, week, 4 weeks, 12 weeks or year, in four tabs: Summary, When, Dishes and Where.
• No account. Nothing is written to Apple Health or Health Connect, and calorie values never go to analytics.

In PlateDiary

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

Sources

Where the facts come from