FatSecret barcode scanner: what you get for nothing

What is free

More than most people expect:

• Barcode scanning, unlimited
• Calories and full macros — protein, carbohydrate and fat
• Complete diary history, not a rolling seven days
• Weight tracking and charts
• Recipe entry and saved meals
• Exercise logging

There is a Premium tier, but the free version is a genuinely usable calorie counter rather than a demonstration of one. That is unusual now.

What it costs you

Advertising. This is the business model. Banner ads throughout, and they are not subtle. If you find ads in a health app grating, this will grate.

The interface. Functional and dated. Information density is high and the visual design is a decade behind Lifesum or Yazio. Some people prefer this — there is less decoration between you and the numbers — but nobody would call it attractive.

Community features you did not ask for. A social layer runs through the app. Useful if you want it, noise if you do not, and not entirely avoidable.

The database

Large and reasonably well curated — better than MyFitnessPal's heavily user-submitted database on entry quality, not as rigorous as Cronometer's. Coverage is strong in the US, UK and Australia, and thinner elsewhere.

FatSecret also licenses its database to other companies, which means there is a commercial incentive to keep quality up. That shows in fewer obviously wrong entries than the worst of the user-submitted databases.

Scanning specifically

The scanner is quick and reliable. Decoding is fast, lookups return promptly, and the portion controls afterwards are sensible — it defaults to a real serving rather than dumping a per-100 g figure on you.

The main irritation is that scanning sits a couple of taps deeper in the interface than it should, given it is the feature most people open the app for.

FatSecret versus MyFitnessPal

For scanning and macros without paying, FatSecret wins clearly. For ecosystem breadth, MyFitnessPal still does.

Where a browser scanner fits

FatSecret is a good installed app. If you want a diary on your phone with notifications and an exercise log, it is among the best free options and this page is not trying to talk you out of it.

What it cannot do is answer a question in ten seconds without an install and an account. That is the gap a browser scanner fills: open a URL, point at a barcode, read the panel, close the tab. No ads and nothing left behind.

Plenty of people sensibly use both — an installed app for the daily diary, a browser scanner for checking something in a shop on a borrowed phone. Try the browser version and see which job it does for you.