Kaloro vs Cal AI — an honest comparison of AI calorie counters

By Necati Dogrul, developer of Kaloro · 12 September 2026

Disclosure: written by the developer of one of the two apps. Sections where Cal AI is stronger are stated explicitly, and there are several.

Short answer: Cal AI is the safer pick if you want the most popular photo calorie app, a barcode scanner and a huge community around it. Kaloro is the better pick if you cook at home, want to see and correct what the AI assumed about oil and portion, or want a Turkish-language app that knows Turkish food.

At a glance

	Kaloro	Cal AI
US App Store ratings (12 September 2026)	New (released 11 Sep 2026), few ratings	362,744 · 4.8★
Input methods	Photo, manual entry	Photo, barcode, text description, food database
When the photo is wrong	Shows assumed oil and portion; two chips to fix them	Edit the detected ingredient list
Home cooking / Turkish dishes	Recognised by name; Turkish interface	Generic recognition; no Turkish interface
Onboarding	Short profile setup; paywall can be closed	Long questionnaire ending at the paywall
Yearly price (US)	$29.99	Varies by offer; check in the app
Free trial	3 days on the weekly plan; one free scan without subscribing	Offered via onboarding; terms vary
Photo storage	Never stored; discarded in the same request	See Cal AI's privacy policy
Minimum iOS	iOS 17	iOS 18
Guardrails	No target below 1,200/1,500 kcal, no faster than 0.75 kg/week, 18+ only	Not stated in the listing

Where Cal AI is genuinely better

Scale and track record. Hundreds of thousands of ratings against a brand-new app. If you want the option other people already use, that is Cal AI.
Input breadth. Barcode scanning, text description and a food database. Kaloro has none of those; it is photo and manual entry only.
Ecosystem. Cal AI has a large creator community, referral codes and constant content. Kaloro has a developer and an email address.

Where Kaloro is better

It shows its assumptions. Every Kaloro result says what it assumed — "1 plate, about 400 g, normal oil" — and gives you a cooking chip and a portion chip to correct it. The photo cannot see oil; the app admits that instead of hiding it in a confident number.
Home cooking. Kaloro was built around home-cooked food, including Turkish dishes recognised by name. In our reading of Cal AI's 70 most recent Turkish App Store reviews on 11 September 2026, the two most common complaints were miscounted local food and the lack of a Turkish interface.
The paywall is not a trap. In our reading of Cal AI's 150 most recent US reviews on the same date, 61 were one star, and the most frequent theme was a long questionnaire followed by a surprise subscription screen. Kaloro asks a few profile questions, shows the price, and lets you close the paywall and use your free scan.
Photos are not kept. Discarded in the same request, never logged, never used for training.

Where they are the same

Both use a vision model to estimate calories and macros from a photo, both let you set daily targets, both have a weekly view, and both will be wrong on a home-cooked plate unless you tell them about the oil. The difference is whether the app asks.

Who should pick which

Pick Cal AI if you eat a lot of packaged or restaurant food, want barcodes, and want the app your friends use.

Pick Kaloro if you cook, if you are Turkish or eat Turkish food, if you have been burned by a questionnaire-then-paywall app, or if you would rather correct two chips than trust a bare number.

Method

Rating counts from the US App Store via Apple's public iTunes lookup API on 12 September 2026. Review themes from reading the most recent public reviews on 11 September 2026; counts are ours, not Apple's. Cal AI pricing changes with offers, so none is quoted. Corrections: necatidogrul7@gmail.com.

Download on the App StoreFree to download · iPhone · iOS 17 or later