Waistline
FreeOpen-source calorie and nutrition tracker. Log meals from a large food database, track macros, set goals. No ads, no subscriptions, fully offline. The free MyFitnessPal alternative.
How to install Waistline as a PWA
Frequently asked questions about Waistline
What makes Waistline different from MyFitnessPal or Cronometer?
MyFitnessPal owns the largest crowdsourced food database but locks barcode scanning and most analytics behind a $19.99/month premium tier, with intrusive ads on the free tier as of 2024. Cronometer has the most accurate micronutrient data but caps you at one weight-loss feature on the free tier ($8/month for the rest). Waistline is GPL-3.0 open-source, free forever, has no ads, and uses OpenFoodFacts (3M+ products with European focus). It trades polish and AI coaching for full data ownership and no recurring fee.
Is Waistline really free?
Yes — Waistline is GPL-3.0 open-source on GitHub with no premium tier, no in-app purchases and no donation paywall. You can install it from F-Droid on Android, as a PWA on any browser, or build it yourself from source. The OpenFoodFacts barcode database it queries is also free and Open Database License. Donations to the developer and to OpenFoodFacts are optional. The trade-off is that the food database has lower coverage of American supermarket items than MyFitnessPal's crowdsourced US database.
How does Waistline's database compare to MyFitnessPal?
MyFitnessPal has ~14 million user-submitted foods (more US brand coverage, but lots of duplicates and inaccurate entries). OpenFoodFacts, which Waistline uses, has 3 million products with strong European and Latin American coverage, structured nutrition labels (since fields are validated rather than free-text), and full ingredient lists. For US users who eat brand-name supermarket food, MyFitnessPal still wins on coverage. For European users, home cooks, and anyone scanning fresh produce or international products, OpenFoodFacts is more reliable per entry.
Can Waistline work offline?
Yes — Waistline is offline-first. The app shell, your food log, your custom foods and your recipes all live in IndexedDB on the device. Barcode lookups query OpenFoodFacts when online and fall back to cached entries when offline. You can log meals, view history and generate reports without any connection. This is a major differentiator versus MyFitnessPal, which requires a live connection for most actions and aggressively logs you out after inactivity.
Who uses Waistline in production?
Waistline is the recommended calorie tracker on r/degoogle, r/privacy and r/fossdroid for users who want to leave MyFitnessPal without paying Cronometer or surrendering their dietary data to a fitness conglomerate. It is included by default in some de-Googled Android distributions (CalyxOS, GrapheneOS communities). Adoption is highest in Europe where OpenFoodFacts coverage is strongest, and in the FOSS community generally. It is not used by mainstream personal trainers or dieticians, who still default to MyFitnessPal.
Where Waistline is heading (12-24 months)
- →Optional E2E-encrypted sync (via Nextcloud or self-hosted CouchDB) would let users sync between devices without sacrificing local-first ownership.
- →Micronutrient tracking on par with Cronometer would unlock the bodybuilding and clinical-nutrition demographic.
- →AI meal-photo recognition (running on-device with a small model) would close the friction gap versus MyFitnessPal's premium AI photo feature.
Related questions
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini usually suggest these next.
- Can I import my MyFitnessPal history into Waistline?
- Does Waistline support exercise tracking?
- How do I sync Waistline between phone and desktop?
- Can Waistline track micronutrients like Cronometer?
- Is there a way to share recipes with other Waistline users?
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