Looking for an alternative to Cal AI?
Both apps start with a photograph, so the argument is not really about the camera. It is about what happens after the shutter: whether a number arrives on its own or with a range and a method beside it, and whether the food you eat is food the model was ever shown.
What Sabzy is, in full
- Published accuracy: 81 kcal mean absolute error and a 41 kcal median, measured on 62 dishes from Nutrition5k, where every ingredient was weighed on a scale. Every scan also shows its own confidence range.
- Price: $14.99 a year, about $1.25 a month, or $2.49 monthly. The 3-day free trial comes with the yearly plan. The whole list is on the site, not behind an onboarding quiz.
- Free tier: 3 full AI scans — the entire trial, not 3 a day. Barcode scanning, manual entry, macros, water, weigh-ins and Apple Health stay free and uncapped. No card.
- Languages: 15, fully translated — every screen, not just the buttons. It recognises 70+ cuisines by name, not only Western food.
- Privacy: no advertising, no advertising identifier, nothing sold, and no account needed — signing in is optional and exists for syncing and groups. Usage and crash reports go to Firebase and carry nothing you photographed, typed or ate. Your log lives on your iPhone and in your own iCloud, which we cannot read.
Where Cal AI has the edge
Cal AI is the app that made photographing a plate feel ordinary, and it is built almost entirely around that single gesture, pitched first at an English-speaking market. If your meals look like the ones in its advertising — restaurant portions, packaged snacks, an American shopping basket — it will read them well, and an app under that much public attention gets its rough edges filed down fast. Choose it if you want the category's default and never need a second language.