The best food scanner apps of 2026, compared

A food scanner does one job well: you point your phone at a packet and it tells you whether the thing inside breaks your rules. For anyone managing coeliac disease, a nut allergy or a low FODMAP phase, that is worth a great deal, because the alternative is reading nine-point type in a cold aisle.

The catch is in the phrasing: every app here checks a product against rules you supply. None of them works out the rules for you, and most people arrive at this problem without knowing them.

So this list covers both halves. Eight apps, what each one reads, what it checks against, and where it stops.

Quick comparison: food scanner apps

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The best food scanner apps of 2026: our picks

1. Fig: Best all-round scanner

Price: Free for 5 scans a month; Fig+ at $5.99/month or about $50/year · Platforms: iOS, Android

Fig is the most polished scanner in this category and the one most people should try first. You build a profile from a very long list of dietary restrictions and allergies, from the obvious ones to low FODMAP, low histamine and alpha-gal, and every scan comes back green or red against that profile with the offending ingredient named.

It also covers more than 100 retailers, so you can filter a shop's own range before you leave the house, and around fifteen restaurant chains. Dietitians review the restriction logic.

Standout features:

• Hundreds of dietary restrictions and allergies in one profile
• Named reason for every red result
• 100+ grocery retailers and some restaurant chains
• Multiple profiles for a household on Fig+

Best for: Anyone who knows their restrictions and wants the fastest, broadest check in the aisle.

The catch: Five free scans a month runs out on the first proper shop. It knows only the diet you tell it, so it cannot tell you whether that diet is the right one.

Go deeper: Triggerbites vs Fig.

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2. Spoonful: Best for low FODMAP and coeliac shopping

Price: Free for 5 scans and 3 searches a month; $4.99/month or $29.99/year · Platforms: iOS, Android

Spoonful is the most actively developed scanner in the low FODMAP space, and the ratings carry more weight than most because Monash-trained dietitians review them. Results come back as a green, yellow or red traffic light, which suits FODMAPs, where portion size decides everything.

Its gluten handling is unusually careful too, taking oat cross-contact into account rather than reading the ingredient list alone. It covers the eight major allergens, alpha-gal, corn-free and plant-based eating, and suggests alternative products when something fails.

Standout features:

• Dietitian-reviewed low FODMAP ratings, green, yellow or red
• Coeliac-aware gluten analysis including oat cross-contact
• Alternative product suggestions when a scan fails
• Photo scanning as well as barcodes

Best for: Anyone in a low FODMAP elimination phase, or shopping for coeliac disease.

The catch: No symptom tracking at all, so it cannot help with the reintroduction phase, which is where a low FODMAP diet is decided.

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3. Triggerbites: Best if you do not know your triggers yet

Price: Subscription with a 7-day free trial · Platforms: iOS

Every other app here answers the question in front of you: can I eat this? Triggerbites is built to answer what you should be avoiding in the first place.

It scans like the rest. Point it at a barcode, say the brand name, or photograph the ingredients label, and the product comes back with its ingredients and additives, checked against the diets you follow. The catalog runs to over a million packaged foods.

The product then lands in your diary next to your symptoms, your sleep, your stress and everything else you ate that day. Log for a few weeks and the app ranks what your bad days keep having in common, including the reactions that show up a day or two later. A scan here starts a record that keeps working for weeks.

Standout features:

• Products by barcode, brand name or a photo of the label, additives included
• 40+ trigger criteria in six groups: allergens, FODMAPs, histamine and amines, irritants, additives, plant compounds
• 25 diet frameworks checked on every food and product
• Diary logging by text, voice or photo, no forms to fill in
• Delayed reactions, hours or days after the meal
• PDF reports for your doctor or dietitian

Best for: Anyone whose symptoms are still unexplained, and anyone in the reintroduction phase of an elimination diet.

The catch: That makes it the wrong tool for a quick aisle check if you already know your triggers. Fig and Spoonful are faster at that, and they should be. iOS only.

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4. Open Food Facts: Best free database

Price: Free, open source · Platforms: iOS, Android, Web

Open Food Facts is the product database that several apps on this list run on, including ours. It is a non-profit, crowd-sourced encyclopedia of more than 3.5 million products in 123 languages, and you can use it directly.

Scan anything and you get the full ingredient list, the allergens, the additives with their risk assessments, and alerts against preferences you set. Because it is community-maintained, coverage of local and supermarket own-brand products beats every commercial app here.

Standout features:

• 3.5 million+ products, 123 languages
• Full ingredients and additive information on every entry
• Allergen alerts against your saved preferences
• Completely free, no scan limit, no account required

Best for: Anyone who wants maximum coverage for nothing, especially outside the United States.

The catch: It is a reference work. The interface asks more of you than the commercial apps, entries vary in completeness because volunteers write them, and there is no symptom tracking.

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5. InTolerApp: Best profile coverage

Price: Free with a Pro tier, monthly, yearly or $69.99 lifetime · Platforms: iOS, Android

InTolerApp comes closest to the range of things we track. Its 60-plus profiles cover histamine, lactose, fructose, gluten and FODMAPs, all fourteen EU allergens, and the compounds most scanners skip entirely: salicylates, tyramine and nickel.

Scan a barcode or photograph an ingredient list and it flags anything that clashes with the profiles you have switched on. It also keeps a simple food journal.

Standout features:

• 60+ intolerance and allergen profiles, including salicylates, tyramine and nickel
• Barcode and ingredient-photo scanning
• Multiple profiles on Pro, useful for a household
• A one-off lifetime price

Best for: Anyone tracking an uncommon compound that mainstream scanners ignore.

The catch: The journal records food without symptoms, so nothing connects what you ate to how you felt. The iOS build was last updated in May 2024.

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6. ALLiCANEAT: Best combined rating

Price: Free with ads, one-off purchase to remove them · Platforms: iOS, Android

Most scanners answer one question per intolerance. ALLiCANEAT merges them. You tell it which of lactose, fructose, histamine, gluten, sorbitol, salicylate and FODMAPs apply to you, add your allergens and the additives you avoid, and every food comes back with a single traffic-light rating that accounts for all of them at once.

You can override any rating from experience, so the app gradually learns the foods you personally tolerate.

Standout features:

• One combined rating per food across every intolerance you have
• Specific additives included: sulphites, benzoates, glutamates, aspartame
• Personal overrides that stick
• Free, with an ad-free upgrade

Best for: Anyone juggling several intolerances at once who is tired of checking them one at a time.

The catch: No diary, no symptoms, no patterns. German-first, so some product coverage skews to Europe.

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7. The Gluten Free Scanner: Best for coeliac disease

Price: Scanning free; premium for offline use and history · Platforms: iOS, Android

Running since 2013 and independent of ads and affiliate deals, this app does one thing. It grades a product on four levels: certified gluten-free, labelled gluten-free, gluten-free by ingredients, and a cross-contact risk flag. That distinction matters enormously for coeliac disease and almost no general scanner makes it.

Beyond scanning, it holds 80,000 searchable gluten-free products, printable dining cards for restaurant staff, and gluten risk information for 150,000 restaurants.

Standout features:

• Four-level analysis including cross-contact risk
• 500,000 to 1 million+ products
• 80,000+ searchable gluten-free products
• Dining cards and restaurant information

Best for: Coeliac disease, where the difference between certified and merely unlisted is the whole point.

The catch: Gluten only. If you are also chasing FODMAPs or histamine, you need a second app.

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8. Lunchly: Best for histamine

Price: Premium at $11.99 as a one-off purchase · Platforms: iOS

Lunchly is small and focused, and for histamine intolerance that focus pays. It scans a barcode or reads an ingredient list and highlights the problem ingredients inside the list itself, so you see where in the product the trouble sits. It reports histamine and tyramine content, and it separates liberators, which release your own histamine, from blockers, which is a distinction most apps never make.

You can also build a personal list of foods you know you tolerate.

Standout features:

• Histamine, tyramine, liberators and blockers treated separately
• Problem ingredients highlighted inside the ingredient list
• Fructose, gluten and salicylates covered too
• One-off price, no subscription

Best for: Histamine intolerance, especially alongside a food diary.

The catch: iOS only, a small product database, and last updated in April 2025. No symptom tracking.

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Which food scanner should you choose?

Choose Fig if: you know your restrictions and want the broadest, fastest check while shopping.

Choose Spoonful if: you are on a low FODMAP diet or shopping for coeliac disease and want ratings a dietitian has reviewed.

Choose Triggerbites if: you do not yet know what is triggering you, or you are reintroducing foods and need the scan and the symptom in the same place.

Choose Open Food Facts if: you want the largest database for free, particularly outside the US.

Choose InTolerApp if: you track salicylates, tyramine or nickel and cannot find them anywhere else.

Choose ALLiCANEAT if: you have several intolerances and want one rating that covers all of them.

Choose The Gluten Free Scanner if: you have coeliac disease and need cross-contact risk on top of an ingredient check.

Choose Lunchly if: histamine is your main problem and you want the detail on liberators and blockers.

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Where Triggerbites fits in

A scanner is a rule-checker. Given a rule, it applies it faster and more reliably than you can at the end of a long day, and for a diagnosed allergy or coeliac disease that is the tool for the job.

What none of them can do is tell you the rule. If you are standing in a supermarket scanning packets because something is wrong and nobody has said what, the scanner will keep answering a question you cannot yet ask properly. That takes a few weeks of writing down what you ate and how you felt, and then the scanning becomes useful, because you finally know what you are scanning for.

Live, love, log. 🧡

Common questions

What is the best free food scanner app?

Open Food Facts, if you want the most products and no paywall at all. ALLiCANEAT is free with ads and combines several intolerances into one rating per food. Most of the others give you a handful of free scans a month and then ask you to subscribe.

Can a scanner tell me what I am intolerant to?

No. A scanner checks a product against rules you give it, so it can only apply what you already know. Working out the rules takes a record of what you ate and how you felt over several weeks.

Do these apps read the ingredients or just the barcode?

Both, depending on the app. A barcode looks the product up in a database, which fails on anything unlisted or foreign. Photographing the ingredients panel reads the printed text instead, which is what you need for a local product or an own-brand item.

Are barcode scanners accurate for allergens?

They are as accurate as the label they read, which means they miss cross-contact. A product with no allergen in the ingredients can still be made on a shared line. Treat a green result as a first pass, never as a clearance for a serious allergy.

Which scanner is best for low FODMAP?

Spoonful, whose FODMAP ratings are reviewed by Monash-trained dietitians, or Fig, which covers low FODMAP among a long list of other restrictions. Both flag a product green, yellow or red against the diet you select.

Can I scan a product and track symptoms in the same app?

Triggerbites is the one here that does both. The rest are shopping tools, so a scan tells you about the product and nothing about you.