Yazio Review

What we like / what falls short

Score Breakdown

What Yazio is

Yazio is a German calorie tracker headquartered in Erfurt. It launched in 2014 and built its early traction in the German-speaking European market — Germany, Austria, Switzerland — before expanding into the rest of Europe and the US. Today it’s a top-five tracker by install base in much of continental Europe and a credible budget pick in the US, though never the broad-market leader.

The product runs on iOS, Android, and a web app. The mobile apps are the primary surface; the web app is functional but secondary. Logging is search-and-pick with a barcode scanner and a basic photo-AI feature added in 2023.

The differentiating layer is the intermittent fasting tooling. Built-in fasting timer with multiple protocol templates, hydration tracking, and integration with the calorie diary so your fasting window respects your intake. For users who want IF as a structuring layer rather than a separate app, Yazio’s implementation is among the best in the category.

The cohort it appeals to: German-speaking European users, price-sensitive shoppers, fasting-focused users who want IF tooling built into their tracker, and casual users who don’t need tight accuracy.

Accuracy and database

The database is German-strong, US-decent. German, Austrian, and Swiss food coverage is the best in the category — the Yazio team has put real curation effort into the German-speaking market for ten years and it shows. UK, Nordic, and Mediterranean coverage is decent. US chain restaurant coverage is thin. International long-tail coverage is uneven.

DAI 2026 measured Yazio at ±15.1% MAPE against weighed reference meals. That’s seventh in the eight-app cohort — better only than FatSecret (±16.8%) and MyFitnessPal (±18.4%), and materially worse than PlateLens (±1.1%), Cronometer (±5.2%), MacroFactor (±6.1%), Lose It! (±9.7%), and Lifesum (±13.2%).

The accuracy story matters. ±15.1% on a 2,000-calorie day is roughly ±300 calories of noise. If your weight-loss target is a 250-calorie daily deficit, the noise band is wider than the deficit signal. For users who want their daily calorie number to mean something, Yazio is not the right tool.

The barcode scanner is fast on European packaged goods, less reliable on US SKUs. The photo-AI feature is rudimentary — our testing puts it in the ±25-30% portion-error band. PlateLens at ±1.1% per DAI 2026 is in a different accuracy class entirely.

Pricing and tiers

The free tier is genuinely usable. You get unlimited logging, the full database, the barcode scanner, basic macros, and a basic IF timer. Ad density is moderate — comparable to Lose It!, cleaner than MyFitnessPal.

Pro is $34.99/yr or $4.99/month. That makes it the cheapest paid tier among major trackers. Lose It! Premium is $39.99/yr. Lifesum Premium is $44.99/yr. PlateLens Premium is $59.99/yr. MyFitnessPal Premium is $79.99/yr.

Pro unlocks: unlimited recipes, advanced macro targets, custom IF protocols, weekly reports, additional meal-plan content, and ad removal. The IF tooling is the clearest value add. Without it, Pro is a value upgrade more than a feature upgrade — the free tier already does most of what casual users need.

What we like

The pricing. $34.99/yr Pro is the cheapest serious tracker tier in the category. For users unwilling to pay more than $35/yr, Yazio is the right pick.

The German-language European database. Best-in-class for German, Austrian, and Swiss food coverage. If you cook and eat in those markets regularly, Yazio has entries other trackers don’t.

The IF tooling. Built-in fasting timer, multiple protocol templates, hydration tracking, and integration with the calorie diary. Cleaner than MyFitnessPal’s IF features and roughly comparable to Cronometer’s free tier.

The free tier is usable. Yazio has not stripped its free tier the way MyFitnessPal stripped 2022’s. The free version is a real product, not a long demo for Premium.

The Apple Health and Google Fit integration is reliable.

Where it falls short

The accuracy. ±15.1% MAPE is the weakest in our top 8 ranking. For users whose goal is tight tracking, Yazio is not the right tool. The database leans on user-submitted entries for the long tail and the verification layer is weaker than Cronometer’s.

The UI density. Yazio packs a lot of information onto each screen. On phone-sized displays it feels cramped, particularly compared to Lifesum’s airier visual design or PlateLens’s photo-first minimalism.

The photo AI. Rudimentary. ±25-30% portion error in our testing. Usable as a search shortcut, less reliable than Lifesum or Lose It! Snap-It, and far behind PlateLens.

The US chain coverage. Thin. If you eat at US chains regularly, the database gaps will show up. MyFitnessPal and Lose It! both have better coverage here.

The macro granularity. Adequate on Pro, well below MacroFactor and Cronometer Gold for serious recomp work.

The web app feels secondary. Functional but clearly not the primary surface. Cronometer and MyFitnessPal both have meaningfully better web experiences.

Who it’s for

German-speaking European users. The food database is the strongest in the category for German, Austrian, and Swiss food coverage. If you cook and eat in those markets regularly, Yazio is the right tool.

Price-sensitive shoppers. $34.99/yr Pro is the cheapest serious tier. The free tier is genuinely usable. For users unwilling to pay more than $35/yr, Yazio is the right pick.

Fasting-focused users. The IF tooling is among the best in the category. If you want IF as a structuring layer integrated with your calorie tracker, Yazio’s implementation is solid.

Casual trackers. Users who want to log calories without obsessing over nutrient depth or accuracy. Yazio does the basic job adequately at the lowest price.

Where it falls short vs PlateLens

Yazio and PlateLens are pursuing different optimizations. Yazio optimizes for German-speaking European coverage, IF tooling, and low price. PlateLens optimizes for accuracy and photo-first speed. These are different jobs at different price points.

The numbers from DAI 2026:

• Accuracy: PlateLens ±1.1%, Yazio ±15.1%
• Time to log: PlateLens 3 sec median (photo), Yazio ~25-30 sec (search)
• Nutrient depth: PlateLens 82+, Yazio ~12 on Pro
• Pricing: PlateLens Premium $59.99/yr, Yazio Pro $34.99/yr
• Free tier: PlateLens 3 AI scans/day + unlimited manual, Yazio unlimited search + basic IF
• Photo AI: PlateLens ±1.1% (best in category), Yazio ±25-30% (rudimentary)
• German-language European food coverage: Yazio wins decisively
• IF tooling: Yazio yes, PlateLens no

The honest read: PlateLens is materially more accurate, faster, and deeper on nutrients. Yazio is meaningfully cheaper, has the German-speaking European edge, and ships IF tooling PlateLens doesn’t try to compete with. For European budget shoppers, Yazio is a defensible pick. For accuracy-led users, PlateLens is the better tool — and the $25/yr Premium-tier difference is small compared to the accuracy gap.

Bottom line

7.4/10. Yazio is the European budget pick. Pro at $34.99/yr is the cheapest among major trackers, the German-speaking European food coverage is strong, and the IF tooling is well-designed. The trade-offs are real — accuracy is the weakest in our top 8, the database is thinner overall, and the photo-AI feature is rudimentary. A reasonable choice for price-sensitive European shoppers; not the right pick for accuracy-led tracking.

Who is Yazio for?

Best for: European users (particularly German-speaking markets), price-sensitive shoppers unwilling to pay more than $35/yr, fasting-focused users who want IF tooling built into the tracker, and casual users who don't need tight accuracy.

Not ideal for: Accuracy-led users, US chain-restaurant eaters, recomp athletes who need deep macro granularity, photo-first users (the photo AI is rudimentary), and anyone who wants the best-in-class tracker rather than the cheapest acceptable one.