When it comes to health and fitness, it's surprising how much your phone can help you achieve your goals. There's now a myriad of different apps that you can use to improve your diet and increase your activity levels, including Lifesum.

But what exactly is Lifesum, what does it offer compared to the competition, and should you choose it over MyFitnessPal? Let's find out.

What Is Lifesum?

Lifesum is an app that focuses on helping you to work on your diet, consume key nutrients, and stay hydrated. You can use this app if you're looking to eat more healthily or you want to lose a few pounds, as it promotes healthy eating for both weight maintenance and weight loss.

The Lifesum app is free to download on both Android and iOS and is super easy to use for people of all ages. The app offers a calorie tracker if you're interested in counting your calories and lets you track how much water you've been drinking through the day so that you know whether you're hydrated enough.

Lifesum has a database of foods and drinks from thousands of different brands, making it easy for you to log your meals and snacks quickly. However, if you can't find the product you're looking for, you can add your own to the database using a barcode. You can also favorite food items that you eat regularly so that you can quickly add them to your daily meal diary. You can also log your exercise in your daily diary so that you know how many calories you've burned.

On top of this, Lifesum offers you a "Life Score," which is basically a number used to determine just how healthy you are. The app asks you a total of 41 questions about your diet and exercise to produce this score, with a higher score denoting a healthier lifestyle. This is a great way to combine all of your health habits to determine whether you're on the right track or have some work to do.

Lifesum Premium

Though you can access some of Lifesum's features for free, many are hidden behind a paywall, and you'll need to upgrade to Lifesum Premium in order to access them. As shown above, if you want to access the app's diet plans, recipes, health tips, or macro and carb tracking, you need a premium account, which will cost you $22.00 for three months, $30 for six months, and $45 for a whole year.

The number of paid features in Lifesum can limit the app for those who don't want to pay for something that they can access for free elsewhere. But upgrading to the app's premium version does mean that you can access a calorie and macro tracker, numerous meal plans, and hundreds of recipes all in one place.

So, if you're willing to invest money into your health goals, Lifesum could make for a super useful app that offers you a wide range of resources to get you to where you want to be. A price of $45 for an entire year is pretty reasonable compared to some other health apps out there, and it's certainly value for money considering the features on offer.

But Lifesum isn't the only health and fitness app out there. In fact, it has a pretty strong competitor, known as MyFitnessPal. You may have already heard of MyFitnessPal, as it's a hugely popular app. So, let's get into what MyFitnessPal is and what it can offer you.

What Is MyFitnessPal?

MyFitnessPal offers some great features to help you succeed on your health and fitness journey. This app focuses on diet and exercise equally (unlike Lifesum, which puts diet at the forefront) to ensure that you're both eating well and staying active. With the app's daily meal, water, and exercise tracker, you can track how many calories you both consume and burn, as well as how hydrated you're staying.

Additionally, MyFitnessPal offers some insights into the food you log. It'll notify you if a food is high in a certain vitamin or protein or warn you if it's high in fat or sodium. You can also log food products using their barcodes.

On top of this, MyFitnessPal offers hundreds of amazing healthy recipes that are entirely free to access. You can find recipes for any meal of the day that suit any kind of diet, whether you're vegan, low-carb, or gluten-free. You can also find a range of recipes that are low calories and some that are low in sodium or high in protein. Whatever your dietary preference, MyFitnessPal has you covered.

Each recipe includes its calorie content, carbohydrates, fat, and protein, as well as a number of other nutritional factors, including cholesterol and sodium content. This makes it much easier to determine what you're consuming without having to do the math yourself.

Another great feature offered by MyFitnessPal is its plans. These range from exercise plans to meal plans and mental wellness plans. These plans have lengths ranging from a week to a month. The app offers a few free plans, but more importantly, it lets you try one paid plan for free. After this, you'll need a premium account to access more plans.

What's more, MyFitnessPal offers workout routines to get you moving. You can try one workout for free, but you'll need a premium account to access further exercises. So, let's get into what else the premium version of MyFitnessPal offers.

MyFitnessPal Premium

While you can access a lot of MyFitnessPal's features without paying a cent, there are some limitations that the app sets on non-premium users. As previously mentioned, you can only use one paid plan for free before having to upgrade, and you also cannot track macros using the app's standard version. MyFitnessPal's premium subscription currently costs just $9.99 a month, or $49.99 a year.

Additionally, MyFitnessPal limits the nutritional information of its recipes and only lets you view the protein, fat, and carbohydrate percentage a food takes up of your daily amount if you're a premium subscriber. You can also get access to guidance and coaching using MyFitnessPal premium, and you won't have to deal with any ads.

So, now we know the ins and outs of both Lifesum and MyFitnessPal, but there's one question left: which is better?

Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal

If you're looking to access as many free features as possible using a health and fitness app, then MyFitnessPal is probably the best option for you. The app only hides a few additional features behind a paywall, unlike Lifesum, which doesn't offer recipes or meal plans with its standard version.

MyFitnessPal is easily the better option if you're also interested in getting into shape and improving your fitness levels, as it offers a range of workouts, from circuits to HIIT and muscle workouts. While you can track your exercise on Lifesum, there are no workout routines on offer.

However, Lifesum is still an excellent app for improving your eating habits and learning more about your health, but you'll probably need to be willing to pay for a subscription. Otherwise, you'll be limited to just a few features. And if it's just dietary help or info you're looking for, Lifesum is cheaper to use than MyFitnessPal on an annual basis, though this is only by five dollars.

Depending on your needs, either app could be helpful, though one is solely for diet improvement, whereas the other is for staying active, too.

These Apps Can Help You Reach Your Health Goals

While Lifesum and MyFitnessPal may differ in some ways, they both have some great resources that you can use to boost your health. Whether you're looking to use some features for free or go ahead with a full premium version, both apps can offer you the guidance and information you need to either eat better or become more active.