Is MyFitnessPal free?

Yes, for logging, and MyFitnessPal says so in one line: “The standard features of MyFitnessPal are free to use, and creating a basic account is free.” But on 1 October 2022 barcode scanning stopped being free. The company’s own announcement, with two dates and a stated reason, is still online. Plenty of companies reserve the right to move a feature behind a paywall. This one has done it, on the record.

Every price MyFitnessPal publishes, and where

Read on 15 September 2026, in the US, signed out and without an account.

Derived: a year of Premium bought monthly at $19.99 is $239.88 against $79.99 yearly, a saving of $159.89 or 66.65%. Premium+ at $24.99 is $299.88 against $99.99, saving $199.89 or 66.66%. Both round to the 67% MyFitnessPal claims; $6.67, $8.34 and the “~$0.28 per day” on the Premium+ page are correct to the cent, unlike Todoist, which understated its own discount. Premium+ costs $20.00 more than Premium over a year paid yearly and $60.00 more paid monthly, a comparison neither page draws.

The day the free tier got smaller

The barcode scanner’s help article says it outright: “As of October 1, 2022, Barcode Scan is available only with a Premium subscription.” It links to the original announcement, still published. Members who joined before 1 September 2022 kept free scanning until 1 October; anyone signing up on or after 1 September needed Premium immediately. For a month the same app had two free tiers depending on when you registered.

The post gave a reason. “Moving a feature from free to Premium is never an easy decision”, it said, and the change would “allow us to continue to offer and maintain a free version of the app”. It then listed what free users kept — a database it put at 14 million foods, meals and recipes, weight, hydration and exercise logging, and more than 35 fitness partners.

The Terms of Service, effective 18 March 2025, give a broader right. MyFitnessPal has “no obligation to provide any Updates or to continue to provide or enable any particular features or functionality of any Service”. It may change the Services at any time, including “terminating, eliminating, supplementing, modifying, adding, or discontinuing any Content, feature, data, or service” and “changing prices”. That is close to Strava’s clause and the opposite of Finch’s written promise that its core features will always be free. A feature moved behind a paywall with 30 days’ notice and a blog post beats one that quietly stops working.

The trial is seven days, or thirty

Play names its item “MyFitnessPal 12M Premium with Trial”, a “12-Month, Premium Subscription with Trial”: the same annual plan the website sells with a seven-day trial. Probably a store-specific offer, but nothing published says so; Duolingo states two trial lengths too. Assume seven. The terms add that once you cancel a Free Trial you cannot resume it “even if it was not used for the entire duration of the offer”.

What each surface prints, and what it leaves out

The help center never names a price: twenty-three billing articles, no dollar amount, and its tier comparison answers “Where can I see current pricing?” by sending you to the website. And the Premium page is reached through a link that calls it legacy. /premium shows Premium+. The smaller plan, with the only free column, is behind “See Premium plan”, and that address ends in legacy=true.

On the App Store listing the word subscription appears nowhere. The description mentions Premium three times and ends “Download today & start your free Premium trial”, with no price, trial length or auto-renewal paragraph, which Calm and Duolingo both include. The only dollar figure in the body is a customer review calling the app “worth $99 for the year”. There is no promoted purchase above the App Privacy panel.

What the free tier gets you

The website’s table has eight rows and gives free two: nutrition and weight tracking, and exercise tracking. The help center’s has thirty-three rows and gives free eight. They are food and exercise logging, measurements and past progress, your own foods, meals and recipes, and macronutrients. Then calorie and macro goals by percentage, diary sharing, partner apps and the printable report. Premium adds twenty-one rows and Premium+ four more, all meal planning.

The free tier is capped by speed rather than capacity: nothing expires, entries are unlimited, and the food database is open. What you pay for is fewer taps. MyFitnessPal’s own step-by-step for logging a food footnotes “Select your logging method” with “some options require a Premium subscription”.

Ads are the free tier's price, and the company says so

“The core of MyFitnessPal is free, and it stays that way because ads help pay for it. That is the honest trade.” The same article lists what a subscription removes: banner ads in the app and on the website, and sponsored posts on the website and in both apps. Ads in Forums and Groups go too, and so do ads in the Blog section of the apps. Links to MyFitnessPal’s own blog posts are not ads and stay. Google Play carries a Contains ads badge. Four of our own apps are ad-supported, and none explains the trade as well.

Three documents, three answers about location

Google’s form offers approximate and precise location as separate items, so the choice was a choice. Which document is wrong, we can’t tell. Otherwise, Apple names identifiers and usage data as used to track you. Linked to you are health and fitness data, contact info, user content, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics. Play adds photos, in-app messages, email address, fitness info and in-app search history. Both say data is encrypted in transit and deletion can be requested. Apple rates the app 16+ and Google Play Everyone, with “Users Interact, In-App Purchases”.

Leaving, and what it costs

Cancel on the platform you paid on; MyFitnessPal’s article says Apple and Google control their own purchases. Canceling takes effect at the end of the paid period and the account reverts to free.

• Deleting things does not cancel anything. Deleting your account “may not result in a cancellation of your subscription”, and neither does deleting the app.
• The last day is not the last day. Cancel less than 24 hours before a renewal and the help article says it may still renew.
• US readers have no cooling-off right. Purchases are “final and non-refundable, except at our sole discretion”, and the fourteen-day change of mind in the same clause applies only outside the United States.

The help center has no refund article. Its cancellation article is the most-voted one we opened: 769 of 3,076 readers marked it helpful.

The route almost nobody mentions

MyFitnessPal accepts FSA and HSA money for Premium and Premium+ through Truemed, for people using the app in connection with treatment for a diagnosed condition. A checkout questionnaire decides whether you qualify for a Letter of Medical Necessity, normally in two to five days, and access starts on pre-approval. It works on myfitnesspal.com only, and free trials are not available that way. A rejection leaves you the features for seven days. You re-qualify every year, even on a monthly plan.

What MyFitnessPal does better

• It announced the change it is criticized for, with a month of notice, two effective dates, a reason, and the post still online four years later.
• It names the trade in writing: ads pay for the free core.
• Its arithmetic survives checking, to the cent.
• It publishes a thirty-three-row feature table, free column included, in the help center.
• Downgrading costs you nothing. “No. Your logs, recipes, and progress history stay in your account.” Compare Todoist, where projects over the limit go view-only.
• It is far bigger than anything we have shipped. 4.7 across 2.4 million Apple ratings, 4.4 across 2.91 million on Google Play, over 100 million Play downloads, Editors’ Choice and second on Play’s top grossing health and fitness chart.

What we could not check

We did not create an account, so the in-app price was not compared with the web price, and only subscribing would settle which trial appears where. Every figure is the US one; MyFitnessPal says pricing varies by country. Neither store publishes the questionnaire answers behind 16+ and Everyone.

How to check any of this yourself

Start with the page you were not sent to. The default plans page sells Premium+ and has no free column. The fullest account of the free tier is the three-column table in the help center. On the stores, expand Apple’s In-App Purchases row and read Play’s In-app items and offers, which is the only store surface with a trial length. Then read the Terms of Service for the refund rule and the clause that lets any feature leave the free tier. With this company, you can see the date it was last used.