Trueburn

Every other tracker hands you a number from Mifflin-St Jeor times an activity multiplier and never changes it. Formulas are routinely wrong by 300–400 calories a day.

Trueburn runs a filter over your logged intake and your smoothed weight trend and solves for what you are actually burning, then adjusts your target every week.

What you eat, minus what you burn, is the change in your body mass

That equation runs both ways. Trueburn knows what you ate, because you logged it, and it knows how your weight is trending — so it can work backwards to what you burn. No formula, no guessing at an activity multiplier.

It needs about two weeks before it can say anything useful, and it tells you exactly how far along it is rather than pretending on day one.

The scale is mostly noise. The trend is the signal.

Water, salt, glycogen, time of day and what is still in your gut move the scale by a kilo or two overnight — far more than a week of real fat loss. Trueburn smooths that out and uses the trend. Your actual readings are still on the chart, as the faint dots.

It won't help you undereat

Trueburn will not set a target below 1,200 calories for women or 1,500 for men, will not aim for faster than about 1% of bodyweight per week, and will not accept a goal weight below a healthy BMI. When a limit applies it says so, rather than quietly changing your number.

Nothing goes red when you eat. There is no streak to break and no grade.

It works in a supermarket basement

The 13,348-food database is built into the app, so searching and logging need no signal at all. The one thing that needs a connection is looking up a barcode you have not scanned before — after that it is cached on your phone and works offline forever.

Free. All of it. Permanently.

No subscription, no trial, no free tier and nothing locked — the adaptive coach, the part other apps charge for, is included. The category leader charges $71.99 a year and has no free tier at all.

There is one optional tip in Settings if you want to chip in. It unlocks nothing, because nothing is locked.

No account, and no server to breach

Your data lives on your phone and syncs through your own iCloud. There is no sign-up, no analytics and no third-party code of any kind. We cannot lose your data in a breach because we never have it.

Trueburn is not a medical device and does not give medical advice. Targets are estimates from your own data. If you are pregnant, managing a health condition, recovering from an eating disorder, or under a doctor's care, talk to them before changing how you eat.