Compare · MealStack
MealStack, line by line.
Line by line, including what they do better. Checked against their own pages, . Pricing coming soon.
MealStack times your meals around your training. The day is built backward from when you train: the meal before it holds its time, and when the workout moves, the rest of the day re-flows around it.
Your tracker says what you ate. This says when. Keep a food tracker beside it if you like; the block at the end says how the two live together.
Line by line
| Feature | MealStack | MacroFactor | Cronometer | MyFitnessPal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Energy expenditure | No adaptive estimate. You set the target, or ask and a fixed formula does the arithmetic. | Yes: its "energy expenditure calculation detects changes in your metabolism." | A formula estimate: BMR, activity level, tracker activity, exercise and the thermic effect of food. | Goals can be set by hand. Step data can raise the day's calorie goal. |
| Food database | Food search and your own saved meals. No size claim: in our tests the barcode scan found 33 of 35 real products. | About 1,360,000 verified foods in search. Its own pages also claim about 4 million more in the barcode database. | "More than 1.1 million verified foods" (App Store); "over 1M verified foods" (site). | "20.5M+ foods." |
| Barcode scan | Yes. | Yes. There is no free tier (a paid app with a trial). | Yes, at no cost. | Premium only. |
| Apple Watch | Yes. Your next meal with Log it and Not yet · 20 min, the rest of today, and a complication with the next meal's time. Off until you turn it on in Settings › Apple Watch. | Watch app: log food by hour, weight and water. Has complications. | Watch app (watchOS 9 and up). Release notes mention logging food from the watch. | Watch app: add water, quick-add calories, see what's left. Calorie and macro complications. |
| Apple Health | Writes your macros to Apple Health at the time you actually ate. | Two-way, with a switch per data type. Reads weight, nutrition and activity; writes nutrition. | You choose what it reads and writes. Reads activity, biometrics, sleep and workouts; writes nutrition. | Food goes to Health. Exercise comes from Health (same day only). Weight goes both ways. Sleep comes from Health. |
| Privacy | Not on the App Store yet, so there is no label to quote. The plan, the log and the day stay on your phone. Nothing goes to Anthropic until you turn Stack AI on. Usage data only if you say yes. | App Store label: no "Data Used to Track You" section shown. Linked to you: health, fitness, purchases, email, name, photos, user ID, usage, diagnostics. Purposes include the developer's advertising and analytics. | App Store label: used to track you: contact info, identifiers, usage data. Not linked, used for third-party advertising: device ID, advertising data. | App Store label: used to track you: identifiers, usage data. Linked, used for third-party advertising: device ID, advertising data. |
Their cells quote or sum up their own website, help center or App Store page, linked in each cell. App Store privacy labels are each developer's own declarations. Where their pages don't say, we leave the row out rather than guess.
Using it with another tracker
MealStack asks once whether to write the meals you log to Apple Health (protein, carbohydrates, fat and calories, at the time you ate), and whether to read food and weight from other apps. Say yes to reading, and what another app logged today shows under Today's totals as "Logged in other apps. Not added to MealStack's totals." It reads totals only, never food names. If your other tracker also writes meals to Apple Health, log each meal in one app, or turn off MealStack's "Write the meals you log" switch, so Health doesn't count a meal twice.
What they do better
- MyFitnessPal claims the largest database, "20.5M+ foods." apps.apple.com
- MacroFactor's expenditure estimate adapts to "changes in your metabolism." apps.apple.com
- Cronometer scans barcodes at no cost. cronometer.com
- Cronometer runs on the web and Android as well as iOS. cronometer.com
- MacroFactor's watch app logs food, weight and water from the wrist. help.macrofactorapp.com
- Cronometer's database is curated and verified, and it lists micronutrients. apps.apple.com
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