Best Protein Tracking Apps
Getting enough protein is important for our health and supporting athletic performance. Calorie tracking apps like my favorite Cronometer can help you track your protein intake, but sometimes you just need to make sure you’re hitting your protein goals without putting calories first.
Why You May Want to Track Protein
After all, tracking macros isn’t just for weight loss. (And weight loss doesn’t require tracking calories; it’s just one useful tool, not the only way to achieve it.) Protein tracking can be helpful if:
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You are trying to gain muscle mass.
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You do a lot of endurance sports (such as long-distance running).
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You are pregnant or breastfeeding.
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You’re trying to eat better and have chosen protein as your main focus rather than trying to improve everything at once.
Tracking your protein intake alone is especially popular among people who have a heavy lifting habit. You may have to step out of your calorie- and weight-based comfort zone and just focus on fueling.
To find out which protein tracking app is the best, I downloaded four of the best protein trackers from the iPhone App Store that are n’t full-featured calorie trackers. Read on to see what I found.
All the major protein tracking apps are very simple and similar to each other.
I guess it’s a niche market, but somehow I expected more. The App Store is full of protein tracking apps, and they all have almost the same interface: a pie progress bar for your daily protein intake (showing how much you’ve eaten relative to your goal) and a button that lets you add the foods you’ve eaten. ate that day. I tested these four:
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Protein Tracker (which appears after installation called ProteinPlus)
However, unlike most calorie trackers, there is no way to search for foods for free. Two of them (Hello Protein and Protein Log) have no search at all. The other two (Protein Tracker and Protein Pal) have search, but require a premium subscription.
This means that most of the time when you use these apps, you just need to know how much protein is in the food you are recording. You can either check the label, google it, or just get it from your head. For someone like me who’s been tracking protein for years, this isn’t all that difficult— of course, an egg has 6 grams of protein—but it seriously limits usability for beginners.
Best for Minimalists: Protein Log
Protein Log is one of the apps that does not have a search function. It doesn’t find foods for you or help you determine how much protein you should eat. This simply gives you the option to say “chicken, 44 grams” and adds that to your daily amount.
There is a history tab showing what you ate and how much protein was in each food. You can also use the calendar to check your protein intake for any day in the past. In the Analytics tab, you can see how much protein you consumed each day this week, this month, and this year relative to your goal.
Runner-up: HelloProtein also falls into the minimalist category, but it has a pretty huge drawback: there’s no way to edit what you ate in previous days. Yesterday I wrote something down, and this morning I woke up and remembered that I needed to write down a protein bar. Sorry, there is no way to add. HelloProtein gives you an analytics page, but what good are my weekly stats if I know I’m missing the 20 grams I know I ate on Monday?
Protein Pal has the most features at the best price.
If you want something with built-in search, Protein Pal is the one for you. It also recommends a target protein for you if you want. When you launch the app, it gives you a space to enter your protein target, but there’s also a “protein calculator” to help you if you’re not sure what number to choose. I was recommended to consume 110 grams of protein per day, which is about 0.73 grams per pound of body weight and is exactly within the guidelines for gaining muscle mass (which was the goal I set).
Once you’ve decided on a goal, this app is a lot like my minimalist pick, Protein Log. The main difference is search, which is available with a Pro subscription ($3.99 per month or $23.99 per year with a 7-day free trial). You can now find products using text search (“powered by FatSecret,” it says) or using a barcode scanner (“powered by,” and then a green icon appears that I don’t recognize).
Both are a little awkward. The barcode scanner will display the results and then immediately scan the surrounding area again, so you’ll need to move the camera away from the object you just scanned if you actually want to enter it. Unfortunately, the database is not always accurate. My favorite protein bar is Barebells Salty Peanut , listed on the app as containing 16 grams of protein when the label says 20 grams.
Second place: Protein Tracker /ProteinPlus – a similar application with similar functions; his search even returned the same, incorrect 16 grams of protein for my Barebells bar. It also gave me a 7-day free trial before charging $24.99 per year, but the monthly cost is $9.99—a full $6 per month more than Protein Pal. (Protein Tracker has a slightly nicer search interface, but I’m not paying an extra six dollars just for that.) When I went into my subscriptions (under iPhone Settings > Apple ID), I noticed there were two annual options . , one for $24.99 and one for $19.99. If you end up using this app, be sure to choose the cheaper one because paying $5 more for no reason is just stupid.