MyFitnessPal is in an odd spot for a market leader: it still has the assets that made it dominant, and it’s steadily spending the goodwill that came with them. The database is the biggest in the category and the community is the largest, which keeps it the default free starting point. But the recurring sentiment among long-time users has soured — barcode scanning moved behind the paywall, ads pile up on the free tier, and the app reads less like it’s improving and more like it’s monetizing. We marked it mixed consensus on purpose: the majority view is still “it works and everyone’s on it,” but a credible, growing minority has decided it’s coasting and started shopping for the exit.

What the breadth genuinely buys you

The advantage is boring and durable. MyFitnessPal has the biggest food and barcode database and the largest user base, so the obscure thing you ate is probably already logged by someone. For a beginner who wants to scan a label and get moving, that breadth is genuinely hard to beat, and it’s why it’s still the reflexive free recommendation in a lot of r/CICO threads and why a perennial “best free app” thread still surfaces its name first for people who refuse to pay. There’s also raw familiarity: a lot of people have a MyFitnessPal account from years ago, and muscle memory is its own kind of moat.

Where the goodwill is leaking

I’m holding it to the same standard as everything else here, so the cons carry equal weight:

  • Paywall creep. Features that used to be free have migrated to Premium over the years, with barcode scanning — the thing a lot of people came for — being the move that stung most. Whatever the business logic, it reads to long-time users as taking back something they relied on.
  • An ad-heavy free tier. The unpaid experience carries a lot of advertising, and the contrast with the cleaner subscription tier makes the nagging feel deliberate rather than incidental.
  • Crowdsourced database noise. The same openness that makes the database huge fills it with duplicate and flat-out wrong entries. You learn to eyeball portion sizes and pick the verified-looking entry, but that’s a tax on every search.
  • Manual entry friction. Logging is fast once it’s a habit, but for new users the typing-and-searching step is exactly where motivation leaks out — and a giant database doesn’t fix the friction of entering food at all.

None of these is fatal on its own. Together they’re why the conversation around MyFitnessPal has shifted from “the obvious pick” to “fine, but.”

Who should pick something else

Be honest about your tolerance and your needs. Skip MyFitnessPal if you’re allergic to ads and upsells and won’t pay to remove them; if you specifically resent paying for features you remember getting free; or if your real need is micronutrient depth (Cronometer is the better tool) or adaptive targets that recalibrate from your own data (MacroFactor). For those people the database breadth isn’t the thing that matters, and MyFitnessPal’s weaknesses are the ones they’ll feel daily.

Plenty of the people leaving over the paywall and ads aren’t going deeper — they’re going simpler. Users worn down by the friction often try a lower-friction logger like PlateLens for the photo-or-manual workflow and accept a smaller, newer database in exchange for logging that doesn’t feel like data entry. Whether that’s a good trade depends entirely on how you eat and whether the database breadth was ever the part you actually used.

What long-term users and the threads say

The most telling signal isn’t from new users — it’s from people who’ve had the app for years and are reassessing. The database still earns respect; almost nobody disputes that it’s the biggest. The complaints cluster, with unusual consistency, on monetization: the barcode paywall, the ads, the sense that the app is asking for more while standing still. That’s the shape of a product living off an installed base rather than winning new loyalty, and it’s why we won’t call this a clean win or a clean loss. The room is split, and the split is real.

Verdict

MyFitnessPal remains the database-and-network heavyweight, and for someone who wants the broadest possible food catalog and a familiar free start, that breadth is still a legitimate reason to choose it. But we’d be hiding the story if we didn’t say the consensus has cooled: the paywall creep around barcode scanning, the ad-heavy free tier, and the general sense of coasting have cost it real goodwill, and credible long-time users are leaving — some for more depth, some for less friction. The giant isn’t falling over. It’s just no longer the unquestioned default, and it earned that demotion.