AlisLog vs Cal AI

Photograph the plate.
Keep the plate.

Cal AI made photo logging mainstream and deserves the credit for it — it was acquired by MyFitnessPal in March 2026. AlisLog photographs plates too, and then does three things differently: you can edit every estimate, there's no account, and your log never lands on anyone's server.

Cal AI
$29.99
per year
vs
AlisLog Premium
$19.99
per year · or $59.99 once, forever

Line by line.

Photo estimation is genuinely hard, and every app doing it — including this one — is working with real uncertainty. What differs is how honest the interface is about that.

Cal AI
AlisLog
Price
$29.99/yr
$2.99/mo · $19.99/yr · $59.99 once
Photo logging
The core of the product
Yes — resolved into separate items you can correct
Editing an estimate
Limited correction
Every item, every number, before it's saved
Account
Required
None
Where your log lives
Their servers
Your phone. There is no user database to breach
Barcode scanning
Secondary to the camera
Free and unlimited, with a curated fast-food layer
Free tier
Limited scans, then paywalled
Full tracking free forever; five AI lookups a day
Adaptive goals
Not the focus
Measured from your own intake and weight trend
One-time purchase
No
$59.99, the whole app, forever
Owned by
MyFitnessPal, since March 2026
One person, who answers the support email
Credit where it's due

Where Cal AI
is better.

It got very big very fast for reasons that are real.

01 The camera flow is the whole app Cal AI is built around one gesture and it shows. If photographing every meal is exactly how you want to track, a product designed entirely around that will feel more direct than one where the camera is one of four ways in.
02 Onboarding that converts Their first-run flow is a masterclass, and 15 million downloads say so. AlisLog deliberately asks four questions instead of twenty — better, if you dislike quiz theatre; less persuasive, if you want to be sold to.
03 Android, and a big company behind it AlisLog is iPhone only and independent. That cuts both ways, and this is the side where it cuts against.

The architecturedifference,plainly.

01
A photo estimate is a guess, and should look like one
Every photo-nutrition system is meaningfully off on mixed dishes, and all of them miss oil you didn't see go in. AlisLog resolves a photo into named items with editable numbers rather than one confident total, because a number you can correct is worth more than a number that looks certain.
02
There is no account, so there is no user database
In March 2026, security outlets including Cybernews, Hackread and SC Media reported an alleged breach of roughly 3.2 million Cal AI records, said to include names, dates of birth, emails, heights, weights and meal logs; the reported cause was a backend left readable without authentication. Those reports rest on the attacker's claims. It is raised here for one reason: AlisLog cannot fail that way, because it holds no accounts and no server-side log to expose. Not a promise — an absence.
03
Household sync is the exception, and it's encrypted
The one feature that does leave your phone encrypts on-device first. The relay stores ciphertext it cannot read, which is checkable in the privacy page.

Nothing to
sign up for.

Install it, point the camera at dinner, correct what it got wrong. No account, no card, no trial clock.