Ori

Choosing an app

Apps Like MyFitnessPal, But Simpler

5 min read
A woman sitting cross-legged on a couch at home, looking at her phone.
Photo by Brooke Balentine on Unsplash.

If you want a simpler version of MyFitnessPal, there are a few directions you can go. Keep full tracking but let the app work out your targets, the way MacroFactor does. Drop the numbers entirely for a photo diary, the way See How You Eat does. Or keep a target that moves and hide the numbers, which is our approach with Ori.

“Simpler” means different things to different people, and picking the wrong kind of simpler is how you end up abandoning a second app three weeks later. So it’s worth knowing which bit tired you out.

In brief

  • MyFitnessPal is built around a very large food database and detailed logging. If that's what you want, it's a great choice and hard to beat.
  • If you want a target that adapts, MacroFactor is a genuine step up, and you keep all the detail.
  • If the logging effort wore you out, faster logging may fix it, though on most apps, ours included, the quicker logging tools sit behind a paid plan.
  • If the numbers themselves are the problem, you need an app that hides them, not one that logs them faster.

Who MyFitnessPal is actually built for

MyFitnessPal has been the default calorie tracker for the best part of two decades, and it earned that. It’s a genuinely excellent app, and for a lot of people it’s still the right one.

On its homepage it calls itself “the world’s #1 nutrition tracking app” and invites you to “join over 280 million people”. The same page lists 20.5 million foods, 2,000+ in-app recipes and 30+ cuisines, alongside barcode scanning, photo-based Meal Scan logging, voice logging, an AI Nutrition Coach, GLP-1 dose logging, and syncing with “40+ apps and devices”.

That’s an enormous amount of app, and it’s built for someone who wants all of it. Someone who likes seeing their macros, wants restaurant items and packaged foods covered properly, and is happy to log carefully in exchange for accuracy.

If that’s you, our honest advice is to stay put.

What usually makes someone look for something else

Three complaints come up again and again, and people use the same word, “simpler”, for all of them.

The logging is too much work. Searching, weighing, portioning, entering every item. This is the one we hear most, and it matches what the research on why people stop tracking tends to find: people quit over effort and tedium more than over disappointing results. It’s also the easiest to fix without leaving, though the faster logging tools usually cost money.

The target doesn’t keep up. You set it up once, it gives you a number, and the number stays put while your body doesn’t. That cuts both ways. Someone in a deficit stalls at a figure that was right two months ago, and someone trying to gain sits at an intake that stopped being a surplus a while back. Most apps do recalculate when your weight changes, so this isn’t a case of “it never adapts”. It’s that the adapting is coarse, and how much you’re told about it varies a lot.

The numbers themselves are the problem. Not the effort and not the accuracy, but being shown a calorie figure and a weight figure every day and having your mood follow them around. Faster logging does nothing for this one.

Which of the three it is decides where you should go next.

The options, and who each one suits

Every feature and price below was checked against that app’s own website or store listing on 11 September 2026, viewed from the UK. Pricing dates fast and varies by country, so treat any figure here as accurate on that date and no later, and check the current listing yourself before committing to anything, Ori included.

MacroFactor — for the person whose problem is the target. Its site describes an “adaptive algorithm” that “learns from your data to deliver far more accurate targets”, plus an optional expenditure modifier it calls “an optional add-on that helps you get a little extra performance in specific scenarios”. The homepage also mentions logging from a picture of your receipt. It invites you to “start your free trial” without naming a price there, so check the store listing for your country. You still see all your numbers in detail, which is the whole point of it. It’s one of the most carefully built trackers out there, and the team behind it clearly know their stuff.

See How You Eat — for the person who wants the numbers gone altogether. It describes itself as a visual meal tracker where you “log meals with simple photos instead of calorie counts”, focused on “habits, not calories”. There’s no target to hit because there are no calories. If you want awareness without arithmetic, this is the cleanest version of that idea, and they deserve credit for not bolting numbers back on. Their page doesn’t state a price, so check the store listing.

Ori — for the person who still wants a target and some direction, but doesn’t want to be shown the figures. We build Ori, so take the next few lines as the makers describing their own app rather than an independent review. Weight goes in through Look Away Weighing, where your phone camera reads your existing bathroom scale so you never see the reading. Stealth Health hides calorie and weight numbers across the app and replaces them with plain language, and the weekly target moves with your own weight trend. Same paywall caveat as everyone else here: the basics are free, but Look Away Weighing and photo logging are paid.

Staying with MyFitnessPal — for the person whose problem was logging effort. On MyFitnessPal’s own pricing page, “barcode scan and meal scan” and “voice logging and multi-day logging” both sit under the paid plans. Viewed from the UK on 11 September 2026, that page showed Premium at £64.99 a year and Premium+ at £79.99 a year or £19.99 a month. Prices are served by region and they change, so treat those as a snapshot of that date. A free trial is offered, though their own FAQ says eligibility depends on whether you’ve had one before. So faster logging is a subscription decision rather than a settings change, and the same is true of us and of most of this category.

Should you just stay where you are?

For a lot of people, yes.

Switching costs more than you’d think. You lose your logging history, your saved meals and recipes, and the habit you’d built around opening one particular app. If the thing that tired you out can be fixed inside the app you already have, switching mostly buys you the same problem with worse muscle memory.

Moving makes sense when the mismatch is built in rather than fixable. Looking at MyFitnessPal’s and MacroFactor’s own feature pages, we couldn’t find a setting on either that hides your calorie figures and your weight from you while still using them. If that’s the specific thing wearing you down, persevering with a faster logger won’t change it. We’ve only checked those two, and settings change, so have a look at yours before taking our word for it.

Where Ori fits

Ori isn’t trying to out-database MyFitnessPal, and it would lose badly if it tried. We built it for the third complaint, where the number itself is the thing that spoils your day.

That means hiding both of the numbers that usually run the show. Look Away Weighing keeps the weigh-in figure out of sight while still using it, and Stealth Health swaps the calorie figures for plain language. If you’re eating in a deficit, that’s “you’ve got room for something with dinner” instead of a remainder to burn off. If you’re trying to gain, and plenty of people are, it’s “you’re a bit short today, a handful of nuts would cover it” instead of a number you keep failing to reach. The target still moves as your body does. You just don’t have to watch it happen.

One group Ori isn’t for: if you’re tracking under medical supervision, or managing a condition where someone needs to see your actual figures, hiding the numbers from yourself is the wrong tool, and your clinician’s advice beats anything we can tell you.

And if you read all that and thought “but I want to see my macros”, then MyFitnessPal or MacroFactor is your app. We’d rather you went and enjoyed one of them than paid us for something built to hide the part you like.

Sources

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A gentle safety note

Ori supports general wellness. It is not medical care. If you have a history of disordered eating, are pregnant or breastfeeding, take medicines that affect weight or appetite, or have a clinical nutrition need, speak with a qualified healthcare professional before changing your intake or weight goal.

Read Ori's Health Disclaimer