Calorie Counter by Cronometer Reviews

by Chokokhan

Pretty explanatory. Also, I feel this is one of those concepts that was amazing in the beginning and went downhill in time. I’ve used Cronometer from its early browser days- excellent since then at what it does. Since they expanded and grew, the made poor choices along the way. Firstly, the team is downright incompetent. Customer service/ support team is probably founder’s extended family/ friends or just unqualified for the job. Absolute garbage at handling questions, feature requests. Take a look on the support forums if you don’t believe me. Downright embarrassing. Secondly, whoever is in charge of CalorieCounter probably learned coding in 2 months from online tutorials- which is not bad, just not good enough to charge money for. After years of requests from basic functionality like time stamps, they finally introduced the feature a couple of years back and immediate made it paid. I walked them through 2 errors they had made, but eventually just gave up when I realized they’ll never figure out how to properly integrate their app with apple health.

All in all it’s my preferred app since I loathed the big fitness tracker apps, but it’s basic database search functionality for micronutrients- the thing everyone used Cronometer for, has been there since day one. Everything else is just trash. Hopefully the founder decides to hire the right people soon, preferably talented professionals this time.

by Nittcrack7

I've been using CalorieCounter for a couple years now and it's helped me lose a significant amount of weight in that time. While it's great, there are a few features that are missing or wrong.

1. A lot of the calorie counts for food entries are plain wrong, and are usually lower what the actual calorie count is. It requires me to do a math problem every time I want to log something. This is frustrating because it applies to common foods too. The solution to this would be for the food entries (at least the most popular ones) to go through a reoccurring review to make sure that they're accurate.

2. Today, I was logging a recipe that I had created. One of the items in that recipe was only measured in fluid ounces. When I go to log a portion of that meal, I realized that the weight was entirely off! It hadn't considered the item that was in fluid ounces when it totaled the entire weight of the recipe. When I looked closer, CalorieCounter just said "grams unknown".
All it would take is for CalorieCounter to do a simple conversion from fl oz to grams. Now I am paranoid about the accuracy of every recipe I create in that app.

As I come closer to my weight goal, it becomes apparent that every calorie counts, and if I cannot depend on CalorieCounter to be accurate, then I no longer have reason to use it.

by Onthefarshore

CalorieCounter is one of my most used and most useful apps! I like it so much, I paid for the subscription and have no regrets. It has enabled me to meet each and every macro and micronutrient it tracks (and it tracks many!) saving me the cost of expensive vitamins and supplements I no longer need, because clearly see I’m getting them all throughout the day in the foods I eat. I also love and continue to learn from the “suggest a food” feature. I do have one suggestion for CalorieCounter developers. Please add an import recipe function. I used a different app previously, and while the nutritional information it provided was by far more limited and less useful than this one, it provided the ability to import recipes. That’s a huge timesaver and a feature I keep wishing CalorieCounter had. If you add that capability I will give CalorieCounter 5 stars and you’ll have a fan for life. :)

by F P N

My partner and I love CalorieCounter, we use it to track our daily intake and plot it against recommended values, in particular vitamins and nutrients that other apps don’t check. I recommend CalorieCounter as the best app for micronutrient tracking.

There are a couple draw backs in the free version for us. One is the lack of an apple watch app/complication. I’d pay for the gold service to get information on my watch since no apps track the vitamins and micronutrients as well. I like that information in an easy format on my apple watch. The other drawback is that you have to subscribe to share recipes. Cronometer doesn’t support subscription sharing which is something I would purchase just for sending my saved foods to my partner. We don’t have a need for the other features offered in the gold plan, so the price is a bit too high for us to consider two subscriptions just to send a recipe to save one of us the time of typing in the ingredients.

Their customer support has been great when I reported incorrect nutrition information in their database. Within a few hours, they corrected some products that had incorrect vitamin data and I was able to update my diary and see the changes before the day was over, which is important to me because I want to make sure I’m getting the recommended daily value of micronutrients in addition to the macros.

by AVan2620

This is the most accurate calorie tracker I’ve come across. I like that it’s not over flooded with inaccurate user entries. I like they finally added a dark mode. My favorite part is creating a recipe, and CalorieCounter will automatically add the weight for the whole recipe so you can get it a good calorie count when measuring out your food. You don’t have to do a lot of math yourself to figure it out, CalorieCounter does it for you. This is my go to app for tracking calories. I hope they continue to implement new features and maintain what makes CalorieCounter great at the same time. Keep up the good work.

Ps a widget would be cool to quickly add or scan something. Also a quick add feature for adding only calories quickly without having to log it.

by Medieval_Poet

I love the faster and easier use in finding ingredients in CalorieCounter to list macros BUT there are three things I find annoying. 1.) At times a save doesn’t immediately save what I just added to a recipe (uber annoying!). 2.) Other times a save somehow doubles my recipe with the ingredient listings shown twice so then I have to go back and delete the duplicates. 3.) In the process of deleting these duplicates, hitting the “x” often ends up opening the ingredient screen rather than deleting the ingredient. I think the “clickable” area for the button needs to altered so there isn’t app confusion in deleting the listing rather than opening the listing. OR, change the ability to delete a listing with a swipe or a check box on the left or right in the programming end so deleting ingredients doesn’t become frustrating.

Otherwise, I like that CalorieCounter already calculates net carbs.

by PrincessSoturi

Edit: The cronometer team replied to my email and this review very quickly with a good explanation that not every gram of each macro has the same amount of calories. A quick google search basically says that the general rule is 4-4-9, but cronometer is right that this general rule isn’t the most precise. I’m glad to hear this, because this is my favorite tracker app. Thanks for getting back to me so fast!

This is a glaring weakness in CalorieCounter . I like that the sources for foods are barcodes and legit data sources, unlike myfitnesspal. I believe the macros are right. But the calories are incorrect! It’s 9 calories from each gram of fat, 4 calories per gram of carbs, and 4 calories per gram of protein. When you add up those categories from the macro columns, the “calorie” row has clearly undercounted.

Why this is happening is unclear to me, but it’s a major weakness in CalorieCounter .

by PerfectPregnancy

I’ve always had a low BMI and after getting pregnant consulted with a nutritionist. I needed more protein in my diet so I started eating meat after being a pescatarian for a year. Unfortunately, CalorieCounter they had me using was clunky and not very intuitive. At 18 weeks pregnant I was not gaining enough weight still so I searched for my own app and found this one. It’s absolutely perfect! It takes into account that I’m pregnant and let’s me adjust how much weight I want to gain per week if I want. It tracks the important stuff that I need to make sure my little man is getting everything he needs! And it’s soooo simple! I’ve created recipes with my daily shakes and was able to scan in all my vitamins. The copy and paste feature is perfect and the barcode feature is fantastic. I’ve been using for two weeks and have only had one item that the barcode didn’t recognize. I’ve never written a review on an app before but as of yesterday (after using CalorieCounter for only two weeks) I am on track with my weight where I should be at 20 weeks pregnant and I couldn’t be happier that I found CalorieCounter! Thank you for making something so easy to help people track their diet for whatever purpose they choose!!

by New Appuser

I really appreciate how responsive the people are at Cronometer. I’ve emailed about 4-5x to ask questions about features or make a suggestion, and I’ve received kind and VERY thorough responses each time. One rep even went into my account and set up a custom graph for me to track my nutrition. I really appreciate the very humane and educated approach they have with their customers!! The customer service makes all the difference when paying for an app like this. FYI, I bought the Gold version after using MFP and another keto app for several years. I’m glad I made the switch to Cronometer. Very intuitive app. I like the way they treat their customers. Happy to support this company.

by Dewswim

I didn’t want to start a diet at all. It stressed me out thinking about counting calories. This has completely changed the way I look at my meals for the day. I’m able to see how many nutrients I’m getting and where I need to fill in the gaps in real time. I can then decide what I want for a snack and it isn’t telling me that I should not eat a cookie! Instead I can see how many calories to eat to stay in my goal. It updates after I do exercise so I can adjust throughout the day how many calories I’m going to eat. I love the wheels. I also I’ve that I can weigh my food and easily see how many calories it is exactly for what my portion is. It is very user friendly and I like the graphics a lot! I’ve gained a lot of insight into my health and it’s helped me understand where I need to fill in some gaps. Highly recommend!

by Spartanicus55

I was a long time user of the (now very old and largely defunct) DietPower software. As the years rolled by, I tried most of the other online health and fitness apps, and none of them were a suitable replacement. They often had terrible food entry, were very noisy, and were often more focused on support groups than they were on the primary task of just logging food and exercise! After a decade of trying most of the other apps and being dissatisfied, Cronometer was worth the wait!

The food logging is nearly perfect - the searches are fast and intuitive, and the barcode scanner is fantastic too. The ability to easily copy old records (even whole meals) to today’s food diary makes data entry lightning fast.

Exercise entry is simple and there are categories for nearly everything- and all are easy to find. The calculations for calories burned is straightforward, and the entries allow you to enter custom values if you track them in another app such as Runkeeper. Integration with devices looks excellent (though I’ve not used that feature yet).

Best of all, the interface on both CalorieCounter and the website is clean, uncluttered, and very intuitive.

I have nothing but gratitude to the folks at Cronometer for getting it so *right*! Strongly recommend!!

by MichelleCardinal19

This is the best macro tracking app that I’ve ever used and I’ve tried many of them.
I love the Energy and Macronutrient target bars, as they are very easy to read (nice color coding and I like that they are bars and not circular graphs). I was also able to manually enter my own Calorie/Macro targets which is great. Also, having the Micronutrient breakdown is a huge bonus. The last app that I used did not have this feature and it is so helpful to be able to visualize my vitamin and mineral consumption.
The search feature is amazing! The database is extremely large and I’ve had zero issues finding the foods that I’m looking for. I absolutely love the barcode scan feature.
The diary is great; Having it right below the targets is really convenient and easy to read. It allows you to scroll through past days or to drag/drop foods if you need to organize your entries.
Honestly, I could go on and on about all of the reasons why I love CalorieCounter but what I love most is that it is simply a place where I can track my foods and it’s not full of a million unnecessary bells and whistles. This is an especially great app for those who are familiar with tracking macros and want something simple; but it is just as easy to use for someone who is just starting out. Thank you for this wonderful app, I am so glad to have found it!

by VNWIE

A lot of diet and fitness apps allow you to count calories, macros, exercise, and water, but there is no app I have used that compares to Cronometer in its ability to track micronutrients (at least in free versions). With Cronometer, you not only can track how many calories you consume each day and what your daily macronutrient distribution is, but you can see what your daily intake is of vitamins and minerals in comparison to the RDI. You can also change what micronutrients are highlighted in your daily summary, and you can even manipulate the minimum and maximum intake for each micronutrient based on your own personal needs. Also, the simple user interface really makes logging food easy and straightforward. As someone who cares not only about tracking their caloric intake, but seeing the nutrients I am getting in that intake, CalorieCounter is very useful and the best I have used.

by Pogo27

I use both CalorieCounter and desktop page and have found it took almost all the guess work out of the keto diet. I have found it's default guidelines to be comfortable for me, and my favorite thing is getting a close look at what I'm missing nutritionally. I suspect a few deficiencies in my diet and after tracking my habits I was sure what to supplement and what to eat more of. It's a good overall look at daily habits and trends and very very helpful for keto. I trust Dr. Mercola on many health topics so this almost feels like he's personally coaching me, because I trust that he had his developers use a well thought approach to the calculations involved with this. I have no complaints about finding product or inputting info. I don't expect perfection, it's a constantly changing market. I have been pleasantly surprised that many name brands I use are there. I find CalorieCounter much more helpful and informative than my fitness pal. It's more personalized.

by Dr. Ruch

My nutritionist told me to use Cronometer because I lost so much weight and they want me to put weight back on. My use of Cronometer has impressed my visiting nurse and my visiting dietitian because of how flexible it is and how much information you can control with Cronometer. Two young gentleman that work at a supplement and powder protein store and are also personal trainers were very impressed because you can also track your alcohol consumption and water intake with Cronometer, that’s just in the basic free software. I am a biologist by trade, I know to gain weight you have to eat more calories than you’re burning. To lose weight you have to burn more calories than you’re eating cronometer is a very easy way to track your calorie intake. You can enter the name of foods or if it’s a packaged product you can scan its barcode and most of the products you buy are already in the program. I am going to purchase Cronometer Gold which gives you more than the free program.

by Merrrriah

I just wanted a simple app that would allow me to see all my nutrition information about what I eat. I especially wanted to know what kind of micronutrients I was lacking in my daily eating routine and CalorieCounter has helped me make those changes that ensure that I’m getting all the nutrients my body needs. Allows you to set goals! So for me I try to stay under 26g of sugar a day and this really helps me see what foods I’m eating contain sugar even if I didn’t think they did. Also, you can see exactly what nutrients you are getting from the piece of food that gave it to you and how much it gave you! Ex) eggs gave me 10% of my daily need for folate
I guess the one negative I have is that it doesn’t allow you to group your meals together but honestly that doesn’t really bother me (:
This is just some of what you get with CalorieCounter for free! I haven’t paid for a subscription yet, but I might so I can link my Fitbit

by Brainy_redhead

When my doctor told me to track calories last year to lose weight and lower my BP, I told her tracking makes me crazy and I hate it. I resisted for almost a year. I had done WW and Noom before and always found their databases inaccurate- the same item would have multiple entries with wildly different calories. I didn’t have the bandwidth to track.

The worst was that I found myself not cooking because adding recipes was really hard. I hated adding each ingredient, etc.

I used the free version of Cronometer occasionally and felt like the database was much better than the others. But when I saw the recipe importer, I was delighted. And more importantly it works!!! I regularly cook recipes from The NY Times and Eating Well and I can import the ingredients. What a joy!!!! Sundays I import all my recipes for the week and add them to my days. So much easier to identify what I should eat for breakfast and lunch. Great app!

by Rainy1

So I have been using CalorieCounter for several weeks. I am losing weight and I am mentally healthy with my approach. I lost a lot of weight through a food provided program in 2019- very low calorie and about $600 month in food. I am losing my pandemic weight at the same pace without deprivation, boxed or frozen food and I am eating foods that I like everyday.

Here’s why? I log everything. I can create notes for each meal or just in general. It’s a bit like a journal around my eating. I get feedback on the nutritional quality of my foods. It’s helping me look for items that will complete my nutritional profile for the day. I love that.

Finally, there are a lot of food items in the database. It’s super easy to add items, import a recipe (love that) or create a recipe in the system. I did purchase the paid version which gives me a few additional options around reporting and nutrition tracking.

by Olivia T1d

The features on CalorieCounter are way better than any I have tried in the past, and they are FREE! Unless you want a diet plan, which in my opinion is fairly priced, you don’t spare a cent! You get to calculate your exercise, and it automatically subtracts from your goals. the calories aren’t overwhelmingly in your face for those with a history of emotions around food. It’s so simplified and accessible!
One of my favorite features is the recipe input-it makes it easy to calculate baked goods correctly for those of us who are bakers, and I was so happy to discover such a feature.
I am a type one diabetic trying to calculate and track carbs to get a better understanding and control of my blood sugar. I am also somebody who has struggled with weight for a lot of my life as well as body image issues, but I am using CalorieCounter for my benefit, not to impress others.
Finally, there are many more foods listed, vitamin and mineral details, and a data tracker so you can look back and easily find the tools to progress. What a clean design! I feel so lucky to have come across it!

by Sunshine 8-10

I am 75 yrs. old and have about 10 lbs to lose as the Coronavirus epidemic has been tough. We have been basically locked down since early March since I was fighting it off in early March. I have an excellent immune system & could tell I was fighting something it’d never fought before. It took a good month & a half before I knew I had won my battle, but was shocked that it took more than 3 mos. to get my strength back. Needless to say, with less activity & a bit of depression that I couldn’t be as active as normal—I started eating more “feel good foods”! Here came the lbs marching in. I had used Cronometer in the past to lose weight, but thought my old iPad couldn’t handle so much memory. It was slowing down, so deleted all I could on it. Wrong! I have it back on now and am slowly losing the damage done. It is very easy to use, really helps you know how much nutritious foods you are eating, and it’s free unless you want more. I’m very pleased with it
& if you need support, it’s there. Excellent tool for weight loss or maintenance. I’d give it 10 stars if I could.

by Just Killen' Time

I tried CalorieCounter (gold) on the encouragement of a nutritionist. The only nice thing about it was the ability to scan the barcode on some items. The oracle is neigh on useless. It’s a lot of work. You can’t download outside recipes. When entering recipes or ingredients, or foods; not all of the measurements are available. It’s all decimals and it wouldn’t always register the entire amount I entered. For example; .25 would change to .2. 1/8 was impossible such as 1/8 of a tsp. That’s 0.125 and it wouldn’t stay .125. If you don’t have a food scale, forget it. Some basic items didn’t exist, only a brand of something. (Anaheim peppers. Only Michelle’s is available. I didn’t buy Michelle’s Anaheim peppers!)
Can’t get a refund. Didn’t even use it for a month. Purchased through App Store so Cronometer will not refund my money. Apple says this subscription doesn’t qualify for a refund.
Worst purchase ever.

by Lzmz

I do like that CalorieCounter has so much nutritional info provided. BUT it looks messy and needs to look a bit more “clean”. I use my net diary pro as well to log exercise and foods. The charts on my net diary are easy to read, easier to log foods, more scanned items available, AND my calories are off by 350 between the two apps!! That’s a GREAT variance! And I put it the exact same foods on both- yes counting macros, net carbs and so forth. I feel more comfortable with net diary pro but my provider wants me to use this one.

I would like to continue using Cronometer but please make it easier to use when selecting foods, more items read with barcode, the charts easier to understand or throw in pointers on using certain features, the orange color is too bold. Clicking from one thing to another or how to add food etc is lengthy.

I appreciate the details of CalorieCounter, but it needs A LOT of user friendly clean ups.

by Stringy1

I love Cronometer as it has a lot of features that I appreciate as a nutrition conscious vegetarian. However, using CalorieCounter can sometimes be frustrating.

For example, the food database seems to be Euro-centric as many of the foods are much more popular in Western Europe than in North America, and measurements are in grams and mL which requires translation for those who are used to oz and cups. Also, it’s hard to find popular “vegan friendly” chains in the restaurant database.

My personal frustration is with the Oracle. On CalorieCounter , I cannot filter recommendations to exclude animal products (but I can on the website). I’d rather not have to wade through goose liver and whale blubber to find food that can help me reach my nutritional goals.

by Mikeradu

The main reason for trying out CalorieCounter is the fact that I’m trying the high fat/ ketogenic diet and this is the only app out there which I’ve found that can track net cabs directly. I live in Asia (Singapore).

First, the database is extremely limited at least for those of us living in Asia. I understand that in the case of a free product you’re asking me to contribute with food, but if I’m paying for it, that should be your job to have completed already. Takeaway #1: if you live in Asia, save your money

Second, CalorieCounter (in its free version) really has A LOT of adds compared to, say, MyFitnessPal. Incidentally, from a pure database perspective, the free version of MyFitnessPal is A LOT more comprehensive, while it doesn’t make CalorieCounter look like a add-laden website on which I wouldn’t spend 10 seconds
Takeaway #2: use only if you can tolerate adds everywhere (even when you enter food!)

Overall, I’m very disappointed. If the objective was to build an app to really help those who want to transition to a better diet, the developer should strike to provide a balance between value offered and level of ads used until the database is robust. Once it is, charging a fee is totally reasonable for a VERY USEFUL app.

I hope there will be positive changes in the future.

Thanks

by Dlynnf

I get that it’s free, so I’m ok with the ads. But I’m NOT ok with audible ads. Sometimes I want to record things in CalorieCounter when it’s NOT convenient to have sound unexpectedly blasting out of my phone speakers. CalorieCounter itself is great, but your ridiculous choice in advertising media just woke up my infant. I also previously purchased your paid version expecting to be able to share by daily diary, but all it did was remove the ads (any extra content/features apparently require a monthly subscription) so I “returned” it. I respectfully suggest you rethink your premium content tiering and the inclusion of audible advertising. The information provided by CalorieCounter (and its design) is five stars.

by Jahhebv

Love that it lets you set goals for macros and use net carbs. Also love the copy paste feature so you don’t have to enter the same foods every day. All my Fitbit data comes over as well so the two apps work well together. The food look up serving options on some foods is limited so sometimes have to use oz or tsp and convert when you really measured in a cup but cup is not listed as a serving option. I really prefer the previous version over this current one. They put the macro details (which I use often) further in CalorieCounter so it takes a couple more clicks and scrolling to get to them, Bummer. I also wish it had more trend graphs, but hey it’s free so I’m not going to complain too much!

by Saguaro Girl

I started Keto in July. Fitness Pal seemed pretty cool. Spent hours setting it up and entering recipes only to discover the macros were not reliable due to all the contributions by the community. I was so frustrated. Then I found a review of several apps (on the Keto Mojo website) and discovered I wasn’t the only one concerned about unreliability of the macros on both FP and Carbmanager (tried that too). Behold Cronometer! I love CalorieCounter. It draws from nutrition databases with minimal community contributions so much, much more reliability. There are many more free features. The user interface is easy to navigate. I’m very happy with Cronometer.

by Native Nutritional Therapy

I am a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and I think Chronometer is a great tool to help you keep track the food you consume. I love how you can measure the foods you eat in different ways. For example if I ate carrots I can measure them in grams, ounces, teaspoons, tablespoons or cups in any fraction. You can record if the carrots where whole and what size they were or if they where chopped, diced or shredded. Depending on what you choose for a measurement the macro and micro nutrients will change automatically. Very Helpful! The list of positive things about Chronometer could continue. Give it a try. Play around with it. Have fun. Grow Forward in Health.

by Pazel

CalorieCounter is in the toolbox with the digital scale, measuring spoons, and cups, to assist the nutritional management that has quickly become a daily routine. The 3.0 update streamlined the routine in a very user friendly way. The most used change is the ability to log multiple enteries in the diary. Well done. Next is the easy access to the daily nutritional summary....again, well done. The change that brought me to this review is the change in the look and layout of the screens. Clean, clear and a pleasure to behold. The 3.0 update has renewed my commitment to using CalorieCounter. Thanks to the developers and all involved.

by Gretchen57

After Under Armor took over My Fitness Pal, it’s provided less and cost more. (Why do corporations have to gouge for everything?)

CalorieCounter has tons of nutrient tracking, macro customization, etc etc. It’s not perfectly streamlined yet - I wish it would remember my quantity choices - but I find the wealth of options ( and the $5.99 subscription price) worth an extra click or two for some things. The learning curve for detailed tracking is a bit more involved, but it yields better data than I’ve ever had. I think I can streamline it more by taking advantage of custom foods.

That said, I can see my macros for the day the second I open CalorieCounter - along with tons of other information - much easier than any other app I’ve used. Also the “oracle” feature is really fantastic, to help me identify the foods that will be best for me to eat. There is also good information and support on how to track YOUR nutrients, and how to get the best nutritional data, including how your fitness tracker will affect your results. Looking forward to thoughtful improvements. I feel like I have complete control over my food choices with fewer mysteries, and I trust the data. Thank you!!

by Fuze99

I switched over from MyFitnessPal (after having used it off/on for years). Cronometer is infinitely better. The ability to track macros (for keto) and even vitamins/miners, and set your own targets for everything...fantastic! The ability to create custom foods, recipes, and scan barcodes...awesome! Even the ability to grab a collection of items in your food diary, and "create a recipe" from those items...well thought out. Cronometer is just infinitely better. And, incredibly stable so far. I just upgraded to the Gold membership.