Tallix
Written by Jake @ CaLab • Updated September 2026
Tallix, the MyFitnessPal alternative
An ad, or your day
Their home screen on a day with no food in it carries a gold Go Premium pill in the top bar, an Instacart banner ad, and directly beneath that ad a link reading "Get ad-free tracking in Premium—upgrade now." They run an ad, then sell you the removal of the ad, in adjacent elements.
Tallix opens on your day. Totals at the top, entries under them, Add food at the bottom. Nothing is selling you anything, because there is nothing left to sell you.
That is the screen you open. Next is the one that costs $79.99 a year.
Four locked fields, or seven open
Same job, both apps. On theirs, four of the five fields carry a gold crown. Underneath, in their own words:
"Unlock Premium to Quick Add macronutrients."
Said precisely: MyFitnessPal does show macros for free on foods you search from its database. What costs money is entering your own numbers by hand. That is exactly, and only, what Tallix does, and it is not behind anything.
Their screen offers four macro fields and gates all four. Tallix offers seven and gates none of them. Tap Show all macros and fat, carbs, fiber, sodium, sugar and caffeine are all there, blank until you want them, because blank means unknown rather than zero.
Nine answers, or the one on your label
This is the thing that made me mad enough to build my own app.
Before · MyFitnessPal
Search one Chobani peach yogurt drink and their database returns nine near-identical entries. They run from 140 to 230 calories. Two of the nine carry a verified badge. You are the one who has to pick which stranger typed it in correctly.
That is what a crowd-sourced database costs you. Not money. Certainty.
After · Tallix
There is no database of strangers' entries to sort through. The label in your hand says one number and you enter it once:
Why search an incomplete, confusing database of strangers' entries when the label is right there in your hand and takes seconds to type?
Whatever your label says is what goes in. Tallix saves it to your library, and it is two taps every time after.
Who this is for
For people who already know what they are eating, Tallix logs calories and macros in two taps, with no ads and no subscription. Unlike MyFitnessPal, entering your own macros is not a $79.99-a-year feature. Unlike the photo-estimate apps, nothing about your food is guessed.
- This is you Any one of these is enough. You read nutrition labels. Or you only really care about protein. Or you eat more or less the same things most days. Or you own a kitchen scale. Or you just want it recorded fast. What they have in common is having used MyFitnessPal and found it slow, ad-laden and increasingly paywalled.
- This is not you You want coaching, meal plans, barcode scanning as a ritual, or a social feed. Tallix has none of them, and that is a decision rather than a roadmap.
What you get
Your macros are not a premium feature
Typing in your own protein, fat and carbs is a subscription feature in the big trackers. Not looking it up. Not scanning it. Typing a number you already read off the label. That costs $79.99 a year over there. Here it is the whole app, for one payment.
Proof it can work this way: there is no crowd-sourced database in the middle, so there is nothing to sell you access to.
Never see an ad
Not on launch. Not between screens. Not a banner with an "upgrade to remove this banner" link underneath it. Tallix has never shown an ad and never will.
Proof it stays that way: nothing in Tallix arrives from a network, so nothing can load late and shove a button out from under your thumb. What you see on first paint is where it stays.
Pay once, own it
One payment of $19.99. No subscription, no recurring charge, no upsell treadmill. A 7-day free trial is included so you can be sure it fits how you eat before you pay anything. Three years of the other one is $239.97.
Proof there is nothing to bill you for: your log stays on your device and syncs to your own iCloud. There is no Tallix server.
No account. No survey.
The big trackers open with an account, then a survey. Age, weight, goal weight, activity level, all before you are allowed to log a single thing. Everyone has abandoned an app at that survey.
Tallix opens on an empty day with an Add food button. This is the entire onboarding, both screens of it, and the second one ends in Start tracking. No sign-up, no survey, no questions about your body.
The rest of Tallix
Saved foods, and history once there is some.
Three more things it does
What it charges. How its ad behaves. What it does before it will show you anything. One screenshot each.
$19.99 a month. Every month.
Two plans on their Plans screen: $19.99 billed monthly, $79.99 billed annually. Stay on the annual plan for three years and that is $239.97. Tallix is $19.99 once. Same number, and then it stops.
Read what Premium is sold on. The first two items are "Go ad-free" and "Log food faster." Both of those are the removal of friction the free app added. Tallix's whole argument is that the friction was never necessary.
The ad moves the buttons
The banner sits between the macros card and the Meals section. It loads asynchronously with no height reserved for it, so when it arrives everything below it jumps down. Log, View diary and the whole meals list move mid-tap.
The thing that has moved under your thumb is the ad. On the web this is Cumulative Layout Shift and it is treated as a defect. Here it ships, because the ad slot matters more than the tap target.
It makes you wait to log
Cold launch is a full-screen splash with a spinner and the word "Loading...". A calorie tracker that cannot draw its own screen without a round trip to somebody's server.
Timed on one device: about 2 seconds before MyFitnessPal is usable, then about 5 more to get a calorie into it. Tallix opens in about half a second and logs in about 2. Seven seconds against two and a half, for the same piece of work.
The tap count is the same in both apps. It is two taps either way. What differs is everything wrapped around those two taps.
Your food log is your own arithmetic. Nothing in Tallix waits on someone else's server before it will show it to you.
Tallix vs the other two
Two different things are being sold. One charges rent to let you type a number you already read. The other points a camera at your plate and guesses.
They fail differently. The database does not guess. It hands you nine answers and makes you pick. The camera does guess, and hands you one number with nothing behind it.
A camera cannot weigh anything. It cannot see the oil in the pan or the sugar in the sauce. It cannot see under the top layer. You get one confident number and no way to check it. If the label is in your hand, a guess is a downgrade.
Tallix takes the number you read. Once, for one payment.
| Tallix | Subscription trackers | AI photo trackers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the number comes from | You type it off the label | A crowd-sourced database you search | A guess from a photo of your plate |
| How far off it can be | It is the number on your label | 140 to 230 calories for one yogurt drink | However wrong the guess is, and you cannot tell |
| Entering your own macros by hand | The whole app | $79.99 a year | Not what the app is for |
| What you pay | $19.99 once | $19.99 every month, or $79.99 every year | A subscription |
| Ads | None, ever | Banner ad plus two upsells on the home screen | — |
Subscription tracker column is MyFitnessPal, 2026-09-07. The dash is a cell I have not checked.
FAQ
Is it really one payment?
Yes. One in-app purchase, with a 7-day free trial. There is no subscription tier and no recurring charge. $19.99, once.
Does it sync?
To your own iCloud. Nothing goes to a Tallix server, because there is no Tallix server. Reinstalling does not lose your data, and your log is not sitting in an account somebody else administers.
Does it work offline?
Yes, with no network at all. That includes the food lookup, because the food database is bundled in the app rather than fetched. There is nothing to wait for on launch.
Is there a barcode scanner?
No, and that is a choice rather than a gap. A barcode gets you to a database entry that somebody else typed in, which is the mechanism that returns nine different answers for one yogurt drink. If the label is already in your hand, typing the number is the shorter path, and it is the same number every time after. Same reasoning for AI portion estimates from a photo, crowd-sourced entries, a social feed, streaks and gamification. None of them are here.
What is in the food database, and what is it weak at?
13,294 foods bundled offline, from USDA FoodData Central, including restaurant items. It is strong on restaurants and whole foods and weak on packaged brands. The app says so rather than pretending otherwise. When something is missing, the lookup screen tells you straight: "Not in here. Packaged foods often aren't. Use Quick add once, save it, and it is two taps after that."
When were the MyFitnessPal screenshots taken, and are the prices current?
All of them on 2026-09-07, on a real device, in one sitting. Their Plans screen that day offered $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year. Apps change their pricing and their layouts, so if something here no longer matches what you see, tell me and I will re-shoot it.
What can I track?
Calories always. Then any of protein, fat, carbs, fiber, sodium, sugar and caffeine that you switch on, and none of the ones you do not. Leave a number blank if you do not know it. Blank means unknown, never zero. History keeps every day with per-day graphs, and weight has its own trend chart.
Your numbers. Nothing else.
One payment of $19.99, then never again. 7-day free trial. iPhone.