Yazio vs MyFitnessPal: which one should you pick in 2026?

At heart, both apps do the same job: you search for what you ate, pick the portion, and the app adds up calories and macronutrients against a daily goal. Both are free to download, available in 20 languages, and paid for by a subscription: Yazio PRO on one side, MyFitnessPal Premium on the other. The real differences are what each one keeps free, how you pay and how big the food database is.

Neither app publishes a single price list for every country: the price shows in the app when you pay and depends on the country, the length of the plan and current promotions. The App Store listings still show the in-app purchases offered in each country. One basic difference stands out: Yazio has no monthly plan. Its press fact sheet describes a time-limited subscription of 3 or 12 months, the App Store also shows 6 months in some countries, and you pay the full amount at once. MyFitnessPal is paid monthly or yearly.

Without paying, both apps give you a real food diary. With Yazio, the free version counts calories and macros, tracks activities, water and weight, lets you create your own foods and recipes and shows the daily analysis. 16:8 fasting, its most popular plan, stays free, and the barcode scanner is presented with the app’s core features, outside the official list of PRO features. We map that line in detail in our guide Is Yazio free?.

With MyFitnessPal, the free version gives you the database of more than 20.5 million foods, exercise and measurement tracking, your own recipes and links to partner apps (more than 35 apps and devices). Macro goals are set as a percentage of calories. On the other hand, the barcode scanner has been paid since October 1, 2022, and intermittent fasting belongs to Premium.

One thing they share: both App Store listings state that the app contains ads. They go away with PRO or Premium.

This is the feature everyone wants in 2026: snap your plate instead of searching for every ingredient. Yazio launched AI meal recognition in June 2025. Its Help Center is clear: the feature was initially free for all users and is now part of Yazio PRO. Yazio also warns that it only gives a “rough estimate” and asks you to correct ingredients and amounts.

At MyFitnessPal, Meal Scan is Premium-only and works only with the app set to English, on an iPhone with iOS 18 or an Android 13 phone or newer. Since February 2026, iPhone subscribers can also upload a photo taken earlier. Voice Log, which lets you say a whole meal out loud, follows the same rules: Premium and an app set to English. If you keep your phone in another language, both features are out of reach.

Yazio grew up around intermittent fasting, and it shows. The app offers 20 fasting plans, from 16:8 to 5:2; 16:8 is free, all the others need PRO. MyFitnessPal also tracks fasting, but only with Premium.

For macros, the logic flips. MyFitnessPal lets you set percentage-based goals for free, then charges for goals in grams, different by day or split by meal, quick-add macros and Net Carbs mode. Yazio shows calories, carbs, protein and fat for free, and keeps for PRO the breakdown of fatty acids, fiber, sugar, salt, vitamins and minerals, along with stats over a week, a month and up to two years.

In the kitchen, Yazio PRO unlocks more than 3,000 recipes created by its nutrition experts, with grocery lists. MyFitnessPal keeps its meal planner for Premium+, sold at $99.99 a year in the US; no Premium+ offer appears among the in-app purchases on the App Store listings we checked.

Both apps are rated very well everywhere, with a slight edge for Yazio in Europe. In Germany, its home country, Yazio has 447,769 ratings, while MyFitnessPal tops 2.3 million ratings in the US.

Pick Yazio if budget matters, if you practice or want to try 16:8 fasting, and if you mostly eat packaged food you can scan. It is also the better option if you want ready-to-cook recipes.

Pick MyFitnessPal if you want the largest food database, prefer to pay month by month, already have a watch or smart scale to connect, or keep your phone in English and plan to rely on Meal Scan and voice logging.

Either way, you cancel where you paid: the App Store, Google Play or the publisher’s website. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription, Yazio’s Help Center points out, and MyFitnessPal advises canceling more than 24 hours before renewal. And if what you want most is to log a meal with a photo or a sentence, without a subscription, Ember, which publishes this guide, includes up to two AI analyses a day in its free version. We compare it with Yazio on our Ember vs Yazio page.