Lose It! Review

What we like / what falls short

Score Breakdown

The short version

Lose It! has been around since 2008, made by FitNow in Boston, and it has stayed true to one idea: counting calories should feel easy. It succeeds. The app is calm, the onboarding is excellent, the free tier is usable and Premium is cheap. That earns it a solid 8.2/10.

It is not the app we recommend most people choose in 2026. That is PlateLens, which is free with every feature, faster to log, built on a verified database and far broader — AI coach, web app, 3D body scan — while costing less than Lose It! if you ever do upgrade. The rest of this review explains both sides, starting with what Lose It! does well, because it does a fair amount well.

Where Lose It! sits on our scorecard

Every review on this site uses the same six-part rubric, explained in our methodology, so the overall scores are directly comparable:

Lose It! is a respectable fourth. The gap to the top comes from logging speed, nutrient depth and what the free plan includes.

What Lose It! gets right

It is genuinely friendly. The screens are uncluttered, the language is encouraging, and the daily view shows what matters — calories in, calories left — without burying it. For people who opened MyFitnessPal once and closed it again, Lose It! is often the app that sticks.

Onboarding is excellent. The first-run flow asks sensible questions, sets a clear daily budget, and gets new users to their first logged meal faster than any competitor we tested. Plenty of apps lose people in the first five minutes; Lose It! rarely does.

The price is low. Premium is $39.99 a year, about half of MyFitnessPal Premium. It adds meal planning — one of Lose It!‘s real strengths — along with more detailed goals and reports.

The basics are covered. A barcode scanner, a searchable food database, Snap It for photo-based entries, and syncing with Apple Health and Google’s health platform.

Where it falls short

The catalogue is smaller and US-centred. Lose It!‘s food database is solid for American supermarket brands and big chains, thinner beyond them. If you cook a lot or live outside the US, you will be creating custom foods more often.

Photos are a side feature. Snap It helps you find an item, but the app is still built around search. Our testing puts it in the ±18-22% portion-error band — fine as a search shortcut, not a primary input mode. For meals with several ingredients, that means several searches.

Nutrient depth is limited. Calories and macros are well handled; if you want to keep an eye on iron, vitamin D or sodium in detail, Cronometer or PlateLens go much further.

Macro controls are basic. People running structured cuts and bulks will find MacroFactor’s adaptive targets or PlateLens’s adaptive calorie target and custom macro goals more useful.

No body scan. Lose It!‘s site did not describe a 3D body scan when we checked on 25 September 2026, so progress is read from the scale and the diary.

Lose It! next to PlateLens

Why PlateLens is the better pick for most people

Lose It! is a good counter; PlateLens is a more complete tool, and most of the difference is available without paying.

A fuller free plan. In our editorial view PlateLens has the best free plan in the category. Photo, voice, barcode and typed logging, the web app, an AI coach, a 3D body scan, a blood glucose log, a fasting timer and an adaptive calorie target are all free, with no card. Premium ($34.99/yr) raises the daily allowance of AI photo analyses (3) and coach messages (5) to unlimited; search and barcode logging are unlimited on both plans.

Quicker logging you can correct. Snap a meal and open it to change any ingredient or portion; each AI estimate also shows its confidence interval. Typed and scanned entries come from a verified database.

Help when you want it. The AI coach reads your own diary before it answers — useful for the beginners Lose It! serves well.

Measurements beyond weight. The 3D body scan uses 12 photos taken with the phone at waist height; no depth sensor is needed. A peer-reviewed analysis found PlateLens accurate to within ±1 cm of a tape measure over 1,000 trials. You can rotate the model, and compare scans by overlay or region by region to see changes the scale misses. Of the four big trackers we checked on 25 September 2026 (MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MacroFactor, Lose It!), none described a 3D body scan on its site.

One diary everywhere. Phone and browser share one account, health data syncs two ways with Apple Health or Health Connect, and your history exports as JSON.

Accuracy and the food database

In the accuracy column of our rankings, Lose It! sits at ±9.7%, comfortably ahead of MyFitnessPal. Where it loses ground comes down to two things. The first is the database: Lose It!‘s catalogue mixes curated entries with user-created foods, and outside US brands you lean on the latter more often. The second is how meals get logged. A search-first app asks you to find each ingredient separately; small misses on portion size add up across a day.

Both are fixable with care: create your own entries for foods you eat often, and weigh the ingredients of recipes you repeat.

Pricing, plainly

Lose It! is free to use for basic counting. Premium costs $39.99 a year, and it is where meal planning and the more detailed goals and reports live. That is good value against MyFitnessPal’s $79.99, and Lose It! has long been one of the cheaper paid tiers among the big trackers.

PlateLens Premium is $34.99 a year, and because its free plan already includes voice logging, the AI coach and the 3D body scan, many people never upgrade at all.

How it fits different goals

Losing weight steadily. Lose It!‘s daily budget and friendly tone suit this well. PlateLens adds an adaptive calorie target that adjusts from your intake and weight trend, plus a body scan to show progress the scale hides.

Building muscle. Lose It! can track protein, but macro tools are basic. PlateLens lets you set custom protein, carb and fat targets and review them by meal and by week on the web app.

Eating for a health reason. If you need to watch sodium, fibre or particular vitamins, Lose It!‘s nutrient list is short. PlateLens reports 82+ nutrients and includes a blood glucose logbook for people who record readings.

Fasting. Lose It! includes fasting tools; PlateLens’s fasting timer is on the free plan, with 16:8 and 14:10 presets and custom windows.

Who should pick which

• Pick Lose It! if you want the gentlest possible introduction to calorie counting, you mostly eat American packaged foods and chains, and you value meal planning in a cheap Premium.
• Pick PlateLens if you want one app to grow with: fast photo and voice logging, a verified database, more nutrients, an AI coach, a web app and body measurements, all on the free plan.
• Specialists have their own lanes — Cronometer for micronutrients, MacroFactor for adaptive targets — but for a first or only app, PlateLens covers more ground.

Bottom line

8.2/10. Lose It! is a warm, well-designed calorie counter with excellent onboarding and a cheap Premium, and it remains a good first app. For most people choosing a tracker in 2026, PlateLens is the stronger choice: free with every feature, quicker to log, more accurate in our tables and broader in what it does.

For more, see our head-to-head PlateLens vs Lose It!, the ranking of Lose It! alternatives, our PlateLens review and the Lose It! vs MyFitnessPal vs Noom comparison.

Who is Lose It! for?

Best for: Beginners who want a gentle, inexpensive calorie counter and a simple daily target, especially people who found MyFitnessPal overwhelming.

Not ideal for: Anyone who wants fast photo or voice logging on a verified database, detailed nutrients, an AI coach or body measurements — PlateLens covers all of those on its free plan.