A food-tracking app’s database is trustworthy when it tells you where each entry comes from, says who checks it, and fills in the nutrients you rely on. If that is what you want, use PlateLens. It is the best overall choice for most people because its verified database holds 1.2M+ entries drawn from USDA FoodData Central, NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix, the sources its data-sources page lists, and it tracks 82+ nutrients including sodium, potassium and magnesium. Its free plan never expires, so you can test all of that yourself before you pay.
A trustworthy database only helps if you keep logging into it. PlateLens takes photo, voice, search and barcode entries into one diary, and its free plan needs no card and keeps manual and barcode logging unlimited, with 3 photo scans a day. MyFitnessPal keeps its barcode scanner and Meal Scan in Premium, and Cronometer keeps photo logging in Gold.
Choose Cronometer for the deepest micronutrient panel, MyFitnessPal for the largest catalog and MacroFactor for adaptive calorie targets. The checks behind that verdict follow, and you can run them on any app before you pay.
What makes a food database trustworthy?
Three questions cover most of it.
Where does each entry come from, and does anyone review it? Entries come from reference data that a government or university compiled, from label data that manufacturers supply, or from other users typing in what they bought. Each has a place, but they deserve different levels of trust. Look for an app that names its sources and reviews its entries. PlateLens’s data-sources page describes its database as verified for quality before inclusion, Cronometer says every item submitted to it goes through a verification process,[8] and MacroFactor calls its food database verified.[9] A 2020 validation study described a green flag on MyFitnessPal entries whose nutritional information the company’s administrators had revised.[5]
Are the fields complete? An entry can list calories and leave sodium, fiber or sugar blank, and the blanks quietly pull your totals down. The same study found MyFitnessPal entries with only total energy and no macronutrient, cholesterol or sodium values.[5]
Can you test it yourself? Whatever an app says about its data, you can check it in ten minutes, and the best apps let you do that before you pay. The test is further down.
Where should a food tracker’s data come from?
Three reference sources are worth knowing, because some of the apps below name them.
- USDA FoodData Central is the US government’s food-composition resource. Foundation Foods holds analytical data on minimally processed foods, SR Legacy is the older Standard Reference set (final release April 2018), and Branded Foods is manufacturer label data, updated monthly.[1]
- NCCDB, from the University of Minnesota’s Nutrition Coordinating Center, covers about 19,500 foods with 178 nutrients and other components. Its maintainers state that none of the data is crowd-sourced or scraped.[3]
- Open Food Facts is a free, open database that volunteers build from product labels, with more than 4 million products from 150 countries.[4]
PlateLens’s data-sources page lists all three, plus Nutritionix, and Cronometer’s source list includes NCCDB, USDA data and Nutritionix as well.[8]
Even one source can give more than one answer. FoodData Central lists “Bananas, raw” in SR Legacy at 89 kcal per 100 g, “Bananas, ripe and slightly ripe, raw” in Foundation Foods at 97, and “Bananas, overripe, raw” at 85.[2] None of those is a typo. They come from different data types and samples, so two apps can both cite USDA and still disagree about “a banana.” The useful question is whether the app shows you which entry you picked.
Is a bigger food database better?
Not by itself. More entries mean more matches for the foods you eat, and more near-duplicates to choose between. MyFitnessPal’s own site lists more than 18 million foods, far past the 1.2M+ verified entries in PlateLens or the 1M+ in Cronometer.[10][11]
In a 2020 validation study, 50 people kept four-day food records in MyFitnessPal and the app’s values were compared with Belgium’s food composition database, Nubel. The authors described the database as partially user-based, noted that generic foods often have multiple entries with highly variable nutritional information, and screened out extreme values they judged likely erroneous. Afterward, energy (r = 0.96) and macronutrients (r = 0.90) correlated strongly, while sodium and cholesterol did not (about 0.5). The authors concluded the app was accurate for energy, macronutrients, sugar and fiber, but not for cholesterol and sodium.[5]
A 2018 comparison in Public Health Nutrition checked five popular free apps against NDSR, a dietary analysis program built for research. Correlations for energy and macronutrients ran from 0.73 to 0.96, but every app returned at least one nutrient significantly lower than NDSR, and sodium was among them in three of the five.[6]
Both studies point to the same first place to look: sodium.
How can you test a food database in ten minutes?
Run this on the free plan of any app you are considering. If the plan hides a feature the test needs, that is information too.
- Search five foods you eat every week: a whole food, a packaged item, a restaurant dish, a home-cooked staple and a drink. Note how many entries each search returns and whether the top results agree on calories. Look the whole food up in USDA FoodData Central as well, and see whether the app’s value matches one of the USDA entries.
- Scan three barcodes from your kitchen. Compare calories, protein and sodium with the Nutrition Facts panel in your hand.
- Open an entry and read every field. Are sodium, fiber, sugar and potassium filled in, or blank? Missing values tend to understate your totals.
- Check the serving options. You should be able to log by grams as well as “1 serving,” and the serving weight should match the label.
- Look for provenance and corrections. Does the app show where an entry came from, mark entries as checked, and let you report a bad one?
- If you count net carbs, check fiber and sugar alcohols. Net carbs does not appear on the Nutrition Facts label, which lists total carbohydrate with dietary fiber, total sugars and added sugars beneath it, so any app that shows net carbs has to calculate them.[7] A missing fiber or sugar-alcohol value makes the net number wrong.
- Ask whether you can take your log with you. A log you can export is worth more than one you cannot if you ever switch apps. The data portability resource covers what to look for.
Which food tracker has the best database?
For most people, PlateLens; for the deepest micronutrient panel, Cronometer. Here is how the four compare on what each publishes.
| App | What it publishes about its data | Free plan | Paid plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| PlateLens | Verified database, 1.2M+ entries from USDA FoodData Central, NCCDB, Open Food Facts and Nutritionix; 82+ nutrients | Never expires, no card: unlimited manual and barcode logging, 3 photo scans and 5 coach messages a day, web app | $34.99/yr or $9.99/mo, with unlimited scans and coach messages |
| Cronometer | Over 1M verified foods; up to 95 nutrients | Ad-supported: manual search and barcode scanner | Gold, $59.99/yr or $10.99/mo: photo and voice logging, Crono Coach, no ads |
| MyFitnessPal | 18M+ foods by its own count, partly user-contributed | Manual food logging; barcode scan, Meal Scan and Voice Log are Premium | Premium, $79.99/yr or $19.99/mo |
| MacroFactor | Calls its food database verified | None, 7-day trial | $71.99/yr or $11.99/mo |
Details as of October 1, 2026. Prices are in US dollars and can change.
PlateLens tracks 82+ nutrients, including sodium, potassium and magnesium, so the sodium test has something to read. Each meal shows total and net carbs, with fiber and sugar alcohols subtracted automatically, plus fiber, sugar and sodium, and the free plan lets you run every check above before you pay.
Which food tracker should you choose?
- Choose PlateLens if you want a verified, sourced database you can test for free, with photo, voice, search and barcode logging in one diary.
- Choose Cronometer if micronutrient depth matters most. The Cronometer review covers where that depth pays off, and Gold adds photo and voice logging and its Crono Coach assistant.
- Choose MyFitnessPal if you eat a lot of packaged and restaurant food, want the biggest catalog and will check entries. Premium unlocks the barcode scanner, Meal Scan and Voice Log.
- Choose MacroFactor if adaptive calorie and macro targets matter most and a paid-only app after a 7-day trial suits you.
Not every food app is a diary. Yuka rates scanned packaged foods from 0 to 100 on nutritional quality, additives and organic status; it is free with an optional Premium and is not a calorie diary. Zoe rates processed foods on its Processed Food Risk Scale and tracks daily scores instead of counting calories. Choose either if a quality verdict matters more to you than a daily log.
Bottom line: if you want a food database you can trust, PlateLens is the best overall choice for most people. Its database is verified and its sources are named, it tracks sodium, potassium and magnesium among 82+ nutrients, it calculates net carbs for you, and its free plan never expires, so you can run every test before you pay. Cronometer is the pick if micronutrient depth matters most. Whatever you choose, run the ten-minute test, and talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before you change how you eat, especially if you have a medical condition. If you recommend trackers to other people, How to Choose a Calorie Tracker for Your Client covers the wider decision.