Triggerbites vs Bearable: which symptom tracker is right for you?

If you've been researching symptom tracking apps, you've almost certainly come across Bearable. It's one of the most beloved health trackers out there, with glowing reviews (4.8/5 on iOS, 4.7/5 on Android) and a passionate community of users managing chronic conditions.

Bearable has built something genuinely admirable. Their approach to mood and symptom tracking is thoughtful, their interface is clean, and their commitment to accessibility (including a program that gifts free subscriptions to those who can't afford them) reflects real care for their community.

But here's something that surprises many people: Bearable doesn't actually track food.

Not in the way you might expect, anyway. And if you're specifically trying to identify food triggers – the ingredients causing your bloating, migraines, or mystery flares – that's a pretty significant limitation.

Let's break down how these two apps compare, honestly and fairly.

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The Quick Overview

	Triggerbites	Bearable
Primary Focus	Food triggers & symptom patterns	Mood, symptoms & chronic illness
Food Tracking	Full food diary with ingredients	Generic "factors" only (no food database)
Logging Style	Write like in a notepad (voice & pictures allowed as well), also manual entry	Tap-based factors and sliders
Ingredient Extraction	Automatic (AI-powered)	Not available
Compound Tagging	20+ categories (FODMAPs, histamine, salicylates, oxalates, etc.)	No
Time Precision	Exact timestamps	6-hour blocks (AM/MID/PM/NIGHT)
Import Existing Notes	Yes (PDFs, photos, CSVs)	No
Price (Monthly)	$8.99	$6.99
Price (Yearly)	$39.99	$34.99

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1. The Fundamental Difference: Food Tracking

This is the core distinction, and it's important to understand before anything else.

Bearable

Bearable tracks "factors" that might affect your health – things you toggle on or off, or rate on a simple scale. For food, this means generic categories like:

• "High sugar"
• "Caffeine"
• "Processed food"
• "Alcohol"
• "Skipped meal"

There is no food database. No barcode scanner. No way to log "I had pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan for lunch."

You can create custom factors, so technically you could add "pasta" or "cheese" as toggles. But you'd need to create a factor for every food you eat, manually manage that list, and still wouldn't get ingredient-level data or compound analysis.

This isn't a criticism of Bearable – it simply wasn't designed for food tracking. Their roadmap shows a "Nutrition / Food diary items" feature request with 104 votes and users saying:

Triggerbites

Triggerbites focuses specifically on food and symptom tracking. Write what you ate in natural language:

Triggerbites automatically extracts the ingredients (chicken, bread/wheat, avocado, potatoes, oil), tags relevant compounds (FODMAPs, histamine, etc.), and connects everything to your symptoms.

No toggles. No pre-built categories. Just write what you ate and how you felt.

Winner: Triggerbites – Actual food tracking vs. generic factor toggles.

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2. Ingredient-Level Analysis & Compound Tagging

If you're dealing with IBS, histamine intolerance, FODMAP sensitivity, or similar conditions, this is where the difference becomes critical.

Bearable

Because Bearable doesn't track actual foods, it cannot:

• Break down meals into individual ingredients
• Identify which component of a dish caused your reaction
• Tag foods with FODMAP, histamine, salicylate, or oxalate content
• Distinguish between "I ate cheese" and "I ate aged parmesan" (high histamine) vs. "I ate fresh mozzarella" (lower histamine)

If you're trying to figure out whether it's garlic (high FODMAP), tomatoes (high histamine), or wheat (gluten/fructans) that's causing your symptoms, Bearable simply doesn't have the data structure to help.

One user on their roadmap summed it up:

Triggerbites

Every food you log is automatically:

1. Parsed into ingredients – "veggie stir-fry" becomes onion, garlic, peppers, soy sauce (wheat), sesame oil, etc.
2. Tagged with compounds – FODMAP categories (fructans, fructose, polyols, etc.), histamine levels, salicylate content, oxalates
3. Analyzed for patterns – which specific ingredients or compounds correlate with your symptoms

You don't need to know that garlic contains fructans or that soy sauce contains wheat. Just write what you ate; Triggerbites handles the chemistry.

Winner: Triggerbites – Ingredient-level tracking with automatic compound tagging.

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3. Time Precision & Delayed Reactions

Food reactions aren't always immediate. That migraine might be from yesterday's dinner. The bloating might be cumulative FODMAPs from breakfast and lunch combining.

Bearable

Bearable tracks symptoms and factors in 6-hour time blocks: Morning, Midday, Afternoon, and Night.

This works reasonably well for mood tracking or general wellness patterns. But for food-symptom connections, it creates problems:

If you ate breakfast at 8am, a snack at 11am, and lunch at 1pm – then got symptoms at 2pm – all of that falls into the same block or adjacent blocks. Which meal caused it? The 6-hour resolution can't tell you.

Even more concerning, Bearable's correlation analysis sometimes gets causation backwards:

Triggerbites

Triggerbites tracks with exact timestamps and analyzes across multiple time windows:

• Immediate (0-2 hours) – for quick-onset reactions
• Short delay (2-8 hours) – FODMAP sensitivity, fructose issues
• Medium delay (8-24 hours) – histamine, migraine triggers
• Long delay (24-72 hours) – gluten sensitivity, cumulative effects

This means Triggerbites can tell you: "Your headaches most often appear 12-18 hours after high-histamine meals" – the kind of delayed pattern that 6-hour blocks would completely obscure.

Winner: Triggerbites – Precise timestamps with multi-window delayed reaction analysis.

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4. The Logging Experience

Both apps aim to make daily tracking manageable. The approaches differ significantly.

Bearable

Bearable uses a tap-based interface with sliders, toggles, and quick-select options. Users consistently praise how fast it is:

For tracking mood, energy, sleep quality, and general factors, this works beautifully. Tap a few buttons, rate your day, done.

But for food? You'd be tapping custom toggles you created yourself, without any of the context of what you actually ate, how much, or what was in it.

Triggerbites

Triggerbites feels like writing in a diary, not filling out forms.

Voice note while you're eating. Quick text message-style entry. Snap a photo of your meal. Even import a photo of your handwritten food journal.

That's a complete entry. The context stays. The ingredients get extracted. The symptoms get tracked. And months later, users can look back and remember that Sunday dinner – not just see a row in a spreadsheet.

Triggerbites also supports quick check-ins for symptoms similar to Bearable's tap-based style – using an NRS (0-10) intensity scale with a quick slider for whatever you're tracking.

Winner: Tie – Bearable excels at quick tap-based logging for mood/symptoms; Triggerbites excels at natural food diary entries. Different strengths for different purposes.

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5. Importing Your History

If you've already been tracking somewhere else, starting fresh is discouraging.

Bearable

No CSV import from other apps. No way to bring in existing food diaries or notes. You can export your Bearable data as CSV, but notably it doesn't export symptom entries marked as "none" – creating incomplete datasets if you need your full history.

Triggerbites

Triggerbites supports users who have tracked before but don't want to start from scratch. Your history matters. Why throw it away?

Users can:

• Copy paste their journal notes
• Import CSVs from other apps
• Upload photos of handwritten journals (OCR reads them)
• Upload PDF reports from healthcare providers

As it's all diary entries at its core, importing from multiple sources is straightforward.

Winner: Triggerbites – Allows you to import your existing data

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6. Pricing & Accessibility

Let's be straightforward about costs.

Bearable

	Bearable
Monthly	$6.99
Yearly	$34.99
Free Tier	Generous

Bearable is more affordable and has a notably generous free tier. They also run a "Bearable Heroes" program that gifts approximately 150 free subscriptions monthly to users who can't afford to pay. As they've been around for a while, they're able to offer this kind of community support.

Triggerbites

	Triggerbites
Monthly	$8.99
Yearly	$39.99
Free Trial	7 days full access

Triggerbites is $5/year more expensive than Bearable. That's a fair point in their favor.

Winner: Bearable – More affordable with a generous free tier and accessibility programs.

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7. What Each App Does Best

This isn't really about which app is "better." It's about which app fits your specific needs.

Bearable excels at:

• Mood tracking – Rating your emotional state across the day
• Chronic illness management – Tracking symptoms for conditions like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, chronic pain
• General wellness patterns – Sleep, energy, exercise, stress correlations
• Mental health journaling – Mood alongside factors and symptoms
• Medication tracking – Logging meds and seeing their effects

If you're managing depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, or general chronic illness – and food isn't your primary investigative focus – Bearable is excellent.

Triggerbites excels at:

• Food trigger discovery – Finding which ingredients cause your symptoms
• Compound tracking – FODMAPs, histamine, salicylates, oxalates
• Delayed reaction analysis – Catching patterns that appear hours or days later
• Diary-style logging – Keeping your story alongside your data
• Importing existing data – Building on what you've already tracked

If you suspect food is driving your IBS, migraines, GERD, skin issues, or mystery symptoms – and you need ingredient-level analysis – Triggerbites is purpose-built for that.

Winner: Depends entirely on your goal.

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Can You Use Both?

Honestly? Yes, some people might benefit from both.

Bearable for mood, sleep, energy, and general chronic illness tracking. Triggerbites for dedicated food and symptom investigation.

The downside is managing two apps. But if you need deep food analysis and comprehensive mood tracking, using specialized tools for each might give you better results than forcing one app to do everything.

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So, Which One Should You Choose?

Bearable is probably better for you if:

• Mood and mental health tracking is your primary goal
• You don't need to track actual foods or ingredients
• You want the most affordable option
• General factor-based tracking (sleep, stress, weather, exercise) fits your needs

Triggerbites is probably better for you if:

• You specifically want to discover food triggers
• You need ingredient-level tracking (not just "ate dairy" but "ate aged cheese vs. fresh cheese")
• You're tracking FODMAPs, histamine, salicylates, or oxalates
• You have existing food diaries or notes you want to import
• You need precise timestamps and delayed-reaction analysis
• You want a diary-style experience where your entries stay readable

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The Bottom Line

Bearable is a beautifully designed app for mood and symptom tracking. Its community loves it, and for good reason – it does what it does very well.

But it wasn't built for food tracking. If you're trying to figure out which ingredient in your lunch caused your afternoon flare-up, Bearable can't help you – not because it's a bad app, but because that's simply not what it was designed to do.

Triggerbites is built to find connections between food and symptoms.

Write what you ate. Discover what's triggering you. Keep your story while Triggerbites finds the patterns.

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Live, love, log.

Have questions about whether Triggerbites is right for your situation? Reach out at hello@triggerbites.com – the team is happy to help you figure out the best approach.