Lifesum Review: Diet Plans, Premium Cost & Is It Worth It? (2026)

Lifesum is the Swedish answer to MyFitnessPal, and it made a smart bet early: most people don't want a blank calorie ledger, they want a plan. Its keto, Mediterranean, high-protein, and fasting plans give structure that plain trackers don't. This review covers what the plans actually deliver, what Premium costs, where the free tier runs out, and whether the logging holds the whole thing back.

What Is Lifesum?

Lifesum is a nutrition and healthy-eating app from Stockholm with tens of millions of downloads, positioned less as a calorie counter and more as a lifestyle coach. You pick a goal and — if you subscribe — a diet plan, and the app shapes your targets, meal suggestions, and feedback around it. Its signature touches are the Life Score (a periodic health-habit rating) and food ratings that nudge you toward better choices rather than just counting numbers.

Lifesum Features

• Diet plans — keto, Mediterranean, high-protein, intermittent fasting, and more, each with tailored targets and meal suggestions (Premium).
• Calorie and macro tracking with a food database and barcode scanner.
• Life Score and food ratings — qualitative feedback on how you're eating, not just totals.
• Recipes and meal plans aligned to whichever diet you've picked.
• Health sync with Apple Health and Google Fit.

Lifesum Cost: Free vs Premium

The free tier covers basic calorie logging and barcode scanning, but it's noticeably thinner than YAZIO's — macro breakdowns, the diet plans, most recipes, and the detailed feedback all sit behind Premium. Lifesum Premium runs around $50/year as of mid-2026 (with monthly and quarterly options that cost more per month, and frequent regional promotions).

That's mid-pack pricing: cheaper than MyFitnessPal Premium, a bit more than YAZIO PRO or Lose It! Premium. The catch is that Lifesum without Premium is a fairly basic tracker — the plans are the product, so budget for the subscription if you're considering it at all.

What Lifesum Does Well

Structure. If "just eat 1,800 calories" has never worked for you, a named plan with meal suggestions genuinely helps — it converts an abstract budget into decisions. The design is excellent: warm, encouraging, and far less spreadsheet-like than most trackers. The food ratings reframe tracking from pure arithmetic to quality, which suits people who find calorie-only feedback demotivating. And the recipe integration means the plan tells you what to cook, not just what to avoid.

Where Lifesum Falls Short

The free tier is mostly a demo. Without Premium you lose the plans — which is the reason to choose Lifesum over anything else. Logging is the same old search ritual: database lookup, portion picking, entry by entry. For a mixed home-cooked meal that's the familiar 30–60 seconds of friction, and Lifesum has no serious photo-first logging to shortcut it. The coaching is static — plans don't adapt to your actual results the way MacroFactor's algorithm does (compare on Bento Bunny vs MacroFactor). And nutrition depth is modest: micronutrient tracking trails Cronometer by a wide margin.

Lifesum vs Bento Bunny

Lifesum answers "what should I eat?"; Bento Bunny answers "how do I keep logging without it taking over my life?" If you already know roughly how you want to eat and the obstacle is the daily grind of recording it, photo-first logging changes the equation: snap the plate, done in about five seconds, with free barcode scanning and type-to-log as backups — and on iOS 26+ the AI runs on-device, so photos never leave your phone. It's free during the iOS beta, no subscription required for core features. See the side-by-side at Bento Bunny vs Lifesum or the wider field in our Lifesum alternatives guide.

Who Should Use Lifesum?

Lifesum is the right pick if you want a named diet plan with meal suggestions and gentle, quality-focused feedback — and you're willing to pay ~$50/year for it. It's especially good for people starting keto or Mediterranean eating who want the app to do the meal-decision work.

The Bottom Line

Lifesum is the best-designed "diet plan in an app" experience in the category, and for plan-followers the Premium price is fair. But it inherits the same weakness as every database tracker: logging is slow, and slow logging is why most people quit by week three. If the plans appeal, try Lifesum. If sticking with tracking is your real battle, try a photo-first tracker like Bento Bunny first — it's free, and speed is the feature that keeps you going.