Aug 15, 2026

The Best MyFitnessPal Alternative With Workouts Built In (2026)

MyFitnessPal will only help you track your calories and macros. APEX does that, pushes you to make progress as you improve your nutrition, and adapts it to your training, so you get ACTUAL results.

APEX is more than a MyFitnessPal alternative with workouts built in. Not only does it help you log food and get all your macros and calories on target, it also comes with a progressive overload engine so everything moves forward consistently. And better yet, it adapts your nutrition and workouts TOGETHER. Doing both nutrition and training at the same time, in the same app, makes it a lot easier to get the results you want.

Let's put it in simple words. MyFitnessPal is like a notepad. You can write down everything you eat and calculate from it. APEX goes a step further. It's the notepad + an assistant + a coach in the same place, ready to help you get to your goals FASTER while making total sense from a scientific perspective.

While MyFitnessPal just tracks what goes into your mouth, APEX formulates a plan based on everything you've eaten, every weight you've lifted, and all the results you've gotten while using the app. Then it formulates the perfect plans to keep you going towards your goals.

What makes MyFitnessPal good, but APEX much better

MyFitnessPal is the biggest nutrition logger on earth. Millions of people use their food database to keep track of everything they eat. And it works because it's simple.

But it stops at food. No exercise tracking, no way to bring your training into the app leaves a lot of the REAL fitness progress out of the question. It may track your general training and calories burned, but nothing else.

This leaves a huge hole in the app. Fitness is not only about nutrition, it's about exercise and combining the two to meet a goal. Nothing you log on MyFitnessPal will be used to adapt your next plan. It just tells you how many calories and macros to eat, then helps you reach the target.

That's why MyFitnessPal is too expensive for what it does. You can get the same and MUCH MORE with APEX.

A straightforward food logger with thousands of ingredients, AI features to log everything with photos, descriptions, or from files. And of course, it combines it all with a comprehensive workout system that keeps you making progress.

There's really no comparison. While MyFitnessPal is just measuring what you eat and not giving you a single clue on how to continue, APEX is analyzing every single meal alongside your training performance to make sure you're on the right path.

Why nutrition alone is not enough

You get to log everything you ate. But there's no feedback. There's no analysis to see where you could improve. And it doesn't adapt to your training. Logging for the sake of logging is useful to keep track of your intake. But what about training? How does it adapt to what you do at the gym?

Here's where nutrition apps lose. Most food trackers have no idea what you do at the gym. But lifting itself burns a lot of calories (100kcal to 700kcal or more per session). This expenditure adds up to your daily expenditure, something that nutrition-only apps don't account for.

And if they do, they don't do it right. It's just an approximation from wearables that usually leaves a lot of space for error. Or simply make unreliable energy balance calculations that don't really adapt to reality. This increases the chance that the way you eat and the way you train are not really working in your favor, or at least not optimizing to the fullest, which is what an app should do.

Let's imagine an 80kg / 176lbs lifter is trying to lose some fat. A nutrition app says they need to eat 2,800 calories, lots of protein (150g to 170g) to promote muscle growth and enough carbs to boost their workouts (200g to 300g). But where is it taking these numbers from, when it has no idea how intense the workout can really be? What if it's pushing the user to eat LESS than they should, producing more muscle loss than necessary?

Apps like MyFitnessPal have no idea what a workout really looks like so it loses the whole context. It can provide an approximation according to what the user reports doing, but it will never know exactly how hard it is. This leaves a HUGE chunk of data outside of the equation, which loses against apps that combine both correctly.

That's why APEX sees both workouts and nutrition in the same place. And nutrition becomes the driver of energy balance, adapted to how hard the person trains and spends their calories every day.

How APEX runs your nutrition and training TOGETHER

  1. NUMBERS ADAPTED TO YOU: It starts by setting up what phase you're at the moment. You pick or let the engine decide according to your goals and data: BULK, CUT, MAINTAIN or RECOMP. Calories and macros adapt to your workout plan and phase, so you're leaving the smallest possible space for errors.
  2. BASED ON YOUR PERFORMANCE: As you log your meals and workouts, the app helps you move forward. Because it knows what your nutrition looks like (sees the plan) and knows what you're REALLY eating, then it knows how to help you progress on your training accordingly. There's no black box with APEX, your nutrition moves around your workouts, but your training also moves around what you're really eating.
  3. COMPLETE PROGRESSION ENGINE: The advice and recommendations APEX gives you will be granular and general. Yes, you will get advice on how to improve the nutrition plan to better serve your workouts if necessary. But it will also check meal timing around your training sessions, whether there's any sign of diet fatigue, or even if you're training way more than your nutrition is supposed to help with. All these analyses turn your data into real, practical tips.

The whole idea behind APEX is to remove obscurity in your fitness. Your nutrition will always adapt to how you're performing at the gym, while your workouts will be consistently audited to make sure nutrition is serving it.

And if something's wrong or needs a boost, you get instant actionable advice to make it work.

APEX vs MyFitnessPal

If you're weighing a MyFitnessPal alternative with workouts against staying put, here is the whole picture in one table.

NutritionBiggest food database. Too many options, sometimes not reliable (user-made) or simply unbacked.Smaller database but ONLY foods appearing in official government databases (like USDA). Some are estimated using these foods via photo AI logging, text or voice descriptions, recipes, and more.
TrainingSimple exercise logs. Doesn't know your sets, weights, or general details of your workouts. Just gets burned calories, that's it.Everything is recorded. Every set, every weight, every difficulty rating. Then it analyzes everything to push you forward as you make progress.
Nutrition and training togetherOnly logs total calorie expenditure. That's it. Nothing connects your nutrition with your workouts. Only one half of the work is done.Your nutrition is based on your current workout plan. Your performance dictates the specific and more general changes to make according to your logged calories, macros, and workouts.
PlatformsiOS, Android, and web.App Store only for now. Android waitlist is open.
PricePremium $19.99 a month, Premium+ $24.99 a month. Free tier with ads.Manual logging (meals and workouts) and routine generation are free forever. The full experience is $9.99 a month or $70 a year, first month free.

MyFitnessPal facts verified August 2026 against its pricing page and App Store listing. If something here has gone stale, tell us and we'll correct it.

Want to see what APEX is all about? Download and try all its premium features for 1 month.

Bottom line

Let's put it simply: you want only nutrition tracking? MyFitnessPal is an excellent choice, no doubt.

Want a more complete, reliable, well-designed and progress-oriented experience that forces you to make ACTUAL progress? APEX won't let you down.

If you came here searching for a MyFitnessPal alternative with workouts, then don't hesitate to try APEX (you get all its premium features completely free for the first month, cancel anytime).

Download on the App Store

First month free. Log your first meal by photo in seconds, run your first prescribed session, and decide after.

MyFitnessPal alternative FAQs

Is there a free MyFitnessPal alternative with workouts?

Yes. APEX logs meals and workouts manually and generates routines free forever. MyFitnessPal's free tier logs food with ads but doesn't coach training. The part of APEX that adapts your nutrition and training together is $9.99 a month, and your first month of the full experience is free.

Does MyFitnessPal have workout plans?

No. You can log exercise loosely, "strength training, 45 minutes," but no tier prescribes sets, reps, or weights. There is no progression engine, and logged workouts don't change your calorie or macro targets. It's a nutrition app with an exercise diary attached, not a training system.

Is MyFitnessPal Premium worth it for lifters?

For nutrition analytics, maybe. Premium is $19.99 a month and sharpens the food side with better macro tools and fewer ads. No tier adds training intelligence. A lifter on Premium pays double APEX's $9.99 for half the system: detailed logs of what happened, nothing about what to lift next.

What does APEX do that MyFitnessPal doesn't?

Three things. Your diet phase (bulk, cut, maintain, or recomp) sets both your calories and how your training progresses. The overload engine adjusts to that phase, so a cut never prescribes weights your deficit can't recover from. And every session comes with set-by-set weights and reps, not a blank log.

Can I just use MyFitnessPal plus a separate workout app?

Yes, and most lifters do exactly that. The problem is the apps never exchange information. Your training app doesn't know you're cutting, so it keeps pushing weight. Your food app doesn't know today is legs, so training and rest days eat the same. You end up carrying the numbers between them by hand.

Does APEX have a barcode scanner?

No. Meals log by photo, where the AI reads the plate, or manually. The food database is smaller than MyFitnessPal's. If you live on packaged food and scan everything, that's a real downgrade. If most of your meals are cooked, photo logging tends to be faster than searching a database.

Sources

  • Mitchell L, Wilson L, Duthie G, Pumpa K, Weakley J, Scott C, Slater G. Methods to Assess Energy Expenditure of Resistance Exercise: A Systematic Scoping Review. Sports Medicine, 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11393209/

APEX is not affiliated with MyFitnessPal. MyFitnessPal pricing and user figures were checked in August 2026 and can change.