Triggerbites vs Cronometer: which food app is right for you?

Cronometer is the tracker people reach for when they want the nutrient numbers right. It follows up to 84 nutrients, from vitamins and minerals to amino acids and fatty acids, and its food database is built to that level of detail.

If you want to know exactly what's in your food, Cronometer is superb.

Knowing what's in your food is a separate question from knowing what your food is doing to you. You can track your magnesium intake to the milligram and still have no idea why you're bloated, foggy or flaring.

That second question - the symptom question - is what Triggerbites is built for. Here is how the two compare.

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The Quick Overview

	Triggerbites	Cronometer
Primary Focus	Food triggers & symptom patterns	Precise nutrition & micronutrient tracking
The Question It Answers	"What's making me feel this way?"	"What nutrients am I getting?"
Logging Style	Write like a diary (voice & photos too)	Database search & portion entry
Symptom Tracking	Unlimited, fully analysed	Manual custom biometrics only
Ingredient Extraction	Automatic (AI-powered)	Manual entry
Compound Tagging	40+ criteria in six groups (allergens, FODMAPs, histamine and amines, irritants, additives and plant compounds)	No
Delayed-Reaction Analysis	Yes - multiple windows up to 72 hours	No
Calorie & Macro Tracking	Yes	Yes
Micronutrient Tracking	No	Up to 84 nutrients, curated database
Import Existing Notes	Yes (PDF, photo, CSV)	No
Platform	iOS	iOS, Android, Web
Price	Subscription (7-day free trial)	Free; paid Gold tier

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1. Nutrient Data vs. Trigger Data

Cronometer

Cronometer is a nutrition microscope. Its purpose is precision: how much of each of 84 nutrients you consumed, measured against your targets. For optimising a diet - keto, athletic nutrition, correcting a deficiency - that depth is what you want.

Triggerbites

Triggerbites is hunting for causes. It cares which ingredients and compounds line up with your bloating, headaches or flares, and it leaves the micrograms of folate in lunch to Cronometer.

Cronometer tells you what your food contains. Triggerbites tells you how your body responded to it.

Winner: Depends on your question - nutrient completeness, or symptom causation.

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2. How You Log

Cronometer

Cronometer logging is database-driven and precise: search its curated database, enter accurate portions, get an exact nutrient breakdown. That accuracy is the whole point - and it does mean logging is a measuring exercise.

Triggerbites

Triggerbites logging is a diary. You write what you ate and how you felt, in plain language, or use voice or a photo:

You skip the portion weighing and the nutrient fields, and capture your day and your symptoms fast.

Winner: Depends - Cronometer for precise nutrition entry; Triggerbites for quick, symptom-focused logging.

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3. Symptoms and Triggers: Cronometer's Blind Spot

Cronometer

Cronometer lets you log custom biometrics - so technically you could record a symptom as a number. But that's a manual note sitting in isolation. Cronometer won't correlate it with specific ingredients, won't tag compounds, and won't analyse delayed timing. It can store a symptom; it can't investigate one.

Triggerbites

Symptom investigation is the entire engine. You log symptoms alongside food, and Triggerbites correlates them with ingredients and compounds automatically - that's what it's for.

Winner: Triggerbites - logging a symptom as a number isn't the same as analysing what caused it.

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4. Ingredients and Compounds

Cronometer

Cronometer breaks food down into nutrients, not triggers. It won't tell you a meal was high in FODMAPs, or histamine, or salicylates - those aren't nutrients, they're the compounds behind food reactions, and they're outside Cronometer's model entirely.

Triggerbites

Triggerbites breaks every meal into ingredients and grades each against 40+ trigger criteria, then correlates them with your symptoms across delayed time windows. (More on the timing in why your food reaction shows up hours or days later.)

Winner: Triggerbites - for finding triggers, compound analysis matters more than a nutrient panel.

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5. Micronutrient Precision

In fairness, this is exactly where Cronometer is unmatched.

Cronometer

For sheer nutrition accuracy, Cronometer is excellent: up to 84 nutrients, a carefully curated and verified food database, and detailed trends over time. If micronutrient precision is your goal, nothing here competes with it.

Triggerbites

Triggerbites counts calories, protein, carbs, fat, saturated fat, sugar and fibre from what you write, once you turn them on in Settings. It doesn't track vitamins or minerals, or measure micronutrient targets.

Winner: Cronometer - for micronutrient precision, it's purpose-built and Triggerbites isn't.

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6. Price and Platform

Price. Cronometer has a free Basic tier, with a paid Gold tier. Triggerbites is a subscription with a 7-day trial - a little cheaper than Cronometer Gold, though Cronometer's free tier covers basic nutrition logging.

Platform. Cronometer is on iOS, Android and the web. Triggerbites is iOS only.

Winner: Depends - Cronometer for a free tier and wider platform support; Triggerbites slightly cheaper than Gold.

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So, Which One Should You Choose?

Choose Cronometer if:

• Your goal is precise nutrition - calories, macros and micronutrients
• You want to track vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids in detail
• You're optimising a diet or correcting a deficiency
• You want iOS, Android and web access

Choose Triggerbites if:

• You want to know why food makes you feel unwell, not its nutrient breakdown
• You need symptom tracking correlated with ingredients and compounds
• You suspect delayed reactions and want multi-window analysis
• You have existing notes or diaries to import

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Where Triggerbites fits in

Cronometer does nutrition tracking very well. If your aim is to understand and optimise the nutrient content of your diet, it's about as good as it gets, and nothing here changes that.

A perfect nutrient breakdown still won't tell you why you feel terrible after eating. Bloating, reflux, brain fog and flares show up when specific ingredients and compounds collide with your body, often hours later, and a vitamin panel never catches that.

Triggerbites is built to catch exactly that. It won't measure your micronutrients - but it will tell you what's making you feel unwell, which is the question Cronometer was never designed to answer.

Live, love, log.

Weighing up Triggerbites and Cronometer? Reach out at hello@triggerbites.com - the team is happy to help you find the right fit.