Calorie counter app

How counting calories works

Every food has an energy value, shown in kilocalories (kcal) or kilojoules (kJ). One kcal is 4.184 kJ, so a 1,350 kcal day is about 5,648 kJ. A counter looks up each food per 100 g, scales it to the amount you ate and adds the day up. Protein and carbohydrate count 4 kcal per gram and fat 9 kcal per gram, the standard factors we use on how we calculate.

The part that moves is the target. A common way to estimate it is to work out resting energy from age, height, weight and sex (the Mifflin St Jeor equation), then multiply by an activity factor. Our calorie calculator and TDEE calculator do exactly that and show their working.

A worked example with two real sets of numbers

Take a 35 year old woman, 165 cm and 68 kg, with light activity (one to three days a week). Her resting energy comes to about 1,375 kcal and her total daily energy to about 1,891 kcal. To keep her weight she would eat close to 1,900 kcal. For a gentle loss of about 0.5 kg a week the usual rule takes 550 kcal off, which gives a target of 1,350 kcal, above the 1,200 kcal floor we never go below for women.

Now a 42 year old man, 180 cm and 90 kg, light activity. Resting energy is about 1,820 kcal and total daily energy about 2,503. With the same 550 kcal off, his target is 1,950 kcal, above the 1,500 kcal floor for men. The point of the two examples is the gap: the same rule gives 1,350 and 1,950, so a number copied from someone else's plan is a poor target.

Estimates for healthy adults from the formulas in our calculators, worked on 23 October 2026. Not personal advice.

How counting works in the Daily Journal

This is what the free account does today, in the order you would use it.

1. 1
   Open the Food page

   Tap Food in the bottom menu. You see today's totals and a box to type into.

2. 2
   Type what you ate

   Write it the way you would say it: 5 eggs, 200g chicken, 200g potato. The page matches each part to a food and an amount and offers the closest food if it cannot find an exact one.

3. 3
   Read the day

   Calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre add up as you go, with an all nutrients table underneath.

4. 4
   Add your own foods

   If a food is missing you can ask for it to be added. New foods go into the list without an app update.

5. 5
   Look at the whole day

   Home and Tracking show food next to your sleep, movement, mood and gratitude, so you can see which days felt good.

What is in the app today, and what is not

We would rather say plainly what is missing than imply it. This is the position on 23 October 2026.

What paid calorie counter apps charge

Read from each app's own page or its Australian App Store listing on 20 October 2026. Tiers are monthly, yearly or lifetime plans, so the range is a spread of plans, not one price.

ChatGPT, asked on 22 October 2026 which calorie counters people name, listed MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, Lose It, FatSecret and Easy Diet Diary. Prices change, so check the app's own page.

Why people pay for a calorie counter

Reading the paid tiers, the same few features sit behind the paywall: a barcode scanner, no adverts, custom macro and nutrient goals, detailed charts, and recipe import. People pay when logging gets tedious and the paid version makes it faster. If the free version is quick enough, most of that spend is avoidable.

That is why we start with speed of entry. Typing 5 eggs and 200g chicken takes a few seconds. If sign-ups tell us they miss the scanner or want macro goals, those are the next things we would build, and your vote is the sign-up itself.

• Check what the free tier really limits before you pay for any app
• Compare monthly and yearly for the same app: Cronometer Gold is A$18.99 monthly or A$99.99 annual, which works out near A$8.33 a month
• A subscription you stop using is the most expensive one

Counting without losing your head

Counting works best as a short habit rather than a test you can fail. Log the biggest items first, estimate the rest and move on. A rough entry made every day beats a perfect entry made on Sunday from memory.

Watch the trend, not the single day. A big dinner does not undo a week. If you find yourself anxious about numbers, or you have ever had a difficult relationship with food, stop counting and talk to a doctor. Our health disclaimer says who should not use calorie tools at all.

Tools and guides to pair with a calorie counter

Questions people ask

Related guides, prices and tools

Where these figures come from

• Competitor prices: each app's own pricing page or its Australian App Store listing, read on 20 October 2026 and saved in our competitor file. MyFitnessPal and Cronometer own pages are named where they showed a price.
• Which apps people name: ChatGPT, asked on 22 October 2026. Names only, not a ranking.
• Resting energy: Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST and others, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990, as coded in our calculators. Activity factors and the 550 kcal a day for about 0.5 kg a week rule are commonly used estimates.
• 1 kcal = 4.184 kJ. Protein and carbohydrate 4 kcal per gram, fat 9 kcal per gram (Atwater factors).
• Food table: USDA SR Legacy, 246 foods in the Food page on 23 October 2026.

Updated 23 October 2026. A figure that was not read from a file is written as unknown. Prices change: check the supplier's own page before you rely on one. We are not affiliated with any app named here.