MyFitnessPal starts with a search box.Navilo Health starts with your camera.

MyFitnessPal has been the default calorie tracker for well over a decade, and it earned that. Its food database is the biggest in the world, its barcode scanner recognises supermarket own-brands almost anywhere, and it plugs into just about every wearable and fitness app you own. If you have ever tracked calories, you have probably tracked them here.

Navilo Health goes at the same problem from the other end. Instead of a search box with millions of entries behind it, we start with the camera: snap the plate, get items back with calories, protein, carbs and fat, correct anything that looks off.

In March 2026 MyFitnessPal announced it had bought Cal AI, the photo-calorie app that had been climbing right next to it in the app store charts. The deal had quietly closed the December before. MyFitnessPal’s CEO said they had been watching Cal AI rise for a while and talking to its teenage founders on and off for most of a year.

It tells you something about where the category is heading. The biggest tracker in the world looked at a camera-first app and decided it was worth owning rather than competing with. Cal AI stays a separate app for now, though it already uses MyFitnessPal’s food database. If photo logging is the part that appeals to you, our Cal AI comparison covers that side in more detail.

Navilo Health vs Cal AI

Coverage is the whole argument for MyFitnessPal. If you eat packaged food, chain restaurant meals or brands specific to your country, MyFitnessPal will usually have the exact item with verified numbers. No AI estimate beats a manufacturer label, and we are not going to argue otherwise.

Maturity, too: recipe importing, wearable syncing, a long history you can export, and a community that has answered every question about it twice. It’s a dependable piece of software with a decade and a half of polish on it.

The cost of a database-first design is time. Most people who quit calorie tracking don’t quit because the numbers were wrong; they quit because logging dinner took four searches, two portion conversions and a guess about the olive oil. Meal Scan exists to fix that, but it sits behind a $79.99 a year Premium wall and is less sure of itself on a mixed plate than the camera-first apps are.

The other gap is everything around food. MyFitnessPal logs workouts and leans on integrations for steps and activity, but GPS run tracking, sleep and fasting are thin or borrowed from apps you connect. And there’s no AI coach to ask why the weight stalled this month.

Navilo keeps logging to a photo and builds the day around it. A run comes back with a map, splits and pace, sitting beside the meal that fuelled it. A short night of sleep shows up next to the snacks it caused, and the fasting timer and water share the same screen. The AI coach reads all of it, so answers come from your own numbers instead of a general article, and a streak freeze saves the day you inevitably miss.

MyFitnessPal Premium is $79.99 a year, the most expensive plan on our comparison page, and the free tier has been trimmed over the years. You are paying largely for faster logging and reports on the food side.

Navilo starts free with an optional Premium tier, and the photo scan, coach, runs, sleep, fasting, water and meal plans all live in one app sharing one history.

One thing worth weighing before you move: we can’t import your MyFitnessPal log. You can export it from them, but our history would start on the day you switch, and for someone with eight years of weight entries and meals in there, that is a real cost, not a footnote.

What most people do is keep both installed for a few weeks. Log in Navilo, leave the old account sitting where it is, and if the camera-first habit sticks, the old history stops mattering. If it doesn’t stick, you have lost nothing.

Gaining muscle mostly comes down to two numbers you have to hit week after week: enough protein, and a small calorie surplus. MyFitnessPal is genuinely good at this part. If you eat a lot of packaged food, scanning a barcode and seeing the exact protein from the label is hard to beat, and its macro goals are easy to set.

Where it gets thinner is the gym itself. MyFitnessPal can log exercise, but it treats it mostly as calories burned, not as sets, reps and weights you want to beat next time. Most lifters end up with a separate workout app, and the protein and the training never sit in the same place.

Navilo keeps both in one day. Snap your meals and protein adds up without weighing every bite, then log the session with sets, reps and weight, and see personal records and progress over time. Weight and progress photos sit in the same history, so you can tell whether the surplus is turning into muscle or just into weight.

Read our guide to protein, training and surplus for muscle gain

Database accuracy matters most to you: lots of packaged and restaurant food, a wearable to sync, and years of history you would rather keep where it is.

The friction is your problem, and food is only part of your day. We trade some database scale for camera-first logging, a coach, GPS runs, sleep and fasting, and a free starting point.