Calorie Tracking for Weight Maintenance (2026): Keeping the Weight Off

Losing weight ends on a date; keeping it off does not. What a tracker has to do once the diet is over, scored on a five-part rubric, and which apps do it best.

For keeping weight off after a diet, the tracker to use is PlateLens. Maintenance is a moving target: you weigh less than when you started, so you burn less, and the number that holds your weight steady has to be found from your own data rather than a formula. PlateLens’s free plan is built for that job. It offers a maintain-weight plan, and its adaptive calorie algorithm re-learns your daily energy needs every week from what you log and weigh, revisiting your targets every two weeks (pricing page). Meals go in by camera, voice, barcode or typed search, an AI coach answers from your diary, and a 3D Body Scan shows the changes a scale hides. The free plan never expires and needs no card; Premium is $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month.

MacroFactor is the paid alternative for anyone who wants an adaptive engine at the center of the app, and Carbon Diet Coach the paid alternative for a coached move out of a diet, including reverse dieting. Lose It! and Cronometer suit people who prefer to set their own maintenance number.

Why maintenance is a different problem from weight loss

The good news first. A review by Rena Wing and Suzanne Phelan in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition estimated that about 20% of people with overweight succeed at long-term maintenance, defined as losing at least 10% of body weight and keeping it off for a year or more. Members of the National Weight Control Registry had lost an average of 33 kg and kept it off for more than five years. The strategies they reported included high levels of physical activity (about an hour a day), a lower-calorie diet, regular breakfast, self-monitoring of their weight and a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends. The review also found that maintenance may get easier: after two to five years, the chance of longer-term success rises sharply.

The harder part is that expenditure does not simply return to normal. The most dramatic illustration is a six-year follow-up of 14 contestants from “The Biggest Loser,” published in Obesity. Resting metabolic rate fell by about 610 kcal a day during the competition and was still about 704 kcal a day below baseline six years later, with metabolic adaptation of about 500 kcal a day after accounting for body composition and age. That was an extreme case, after very rapid, very large weight loss, but the direction is general: your post-diet maintenance number is usually lower than your pre-diet one, and it is specific to you.

Put those together and the job of a maintenance tracker is clear. It has to find your real maintenance intake, keep finding it as things drift, make logging light enough to continue indefinitely, and show early when the trend turns.

How the apps were scored

The rubric above weights five criteria for maintenance. Scores out of 10 per criterion come from what each maker documents on its own website, help pages and App Store listing, read on October 31, 2026; the composite is the weighted sum, out of 100. They are editorial judgments of documented features, not measurements.

Prices are US list prices: PlateLens Premium $34.99 a year or $9.99 a month; MacroFactor $71.99 a year or $11.99 a month with no free plan; Carbon Diet Coach $99.99 a year; Lose It! Premium $39.99 a year; Cronometer Gold $59.99 a year or $10.99 a month.

PlateLens: a maintenance target that keeps learning

The number comes from your data. PlateLens’s expenditure guide says that each week it “compares the food you logged with how your weight changed, and works out the expenditure that fits both.” For maintenance this is the core feature: the intake that holds your trend flat is your maintenance, and the app keeps recalculating it. Updates run every Sunday once the week has closed, look at up to the last three weeks, and move your expenditure by at most 5% per update, so a holiday week cannot send your target lurching. A line explains each change, for example how much you ate on average and how much your weight moved over the weeks used.

It is built for long, imperfect use. The update needs meals on at least 4 days and at least one weigh-in in a week. A week that falls short pauses the adjustment and keeps your last value, which “does not expire,” and the next qualifying week continues from it. Days with much less food than usual, often a sign of forgotten meals, are left out until you confirm them. Those rules suit maintenance, where most people log less strictly than during a diet.

The goal itself can be maintenance. PlateLens’s goal-weight guide lists maintain-weight and body-recomposition plans alongside weight-loss and muscle-gain goals; when you change a goal, the app may offer a review of your daily nutrition targets for you to accept or change.

Logging stays light. A plate goes in from a picture, a packaged snack from its barcode, a coffee from a spoken sentence and an ingredient from a search, all into one diary on iPhone, Android or in a browser. A photo entry can be opened and corrected ingredient by ingredient, down to the gram, and searches and scans draw on more than 1.2 million verified foods, upward of 820,000 barcoded branded products and over 45,000 restaurant menu items.

It shows what the scale hides. The 3D Body Scan turns a dozen front-camera photos into a 3D model and gives you measurements for your waist, hips and chest; comparing two scans shows whether a stable weight is hiding a change in shape. The AI coach can read your saved scans and your diary, so “compare my waist between my last two scans” or “why did my target change?” gets an answer from your own records.

What the free plan covers. On the free plan you keep calorie and macro tracking, every logging method, the adaptive algorithm and the coach, with a daily allowance of three AI photo entries and five coach questions. Premium lifts the AI allowances and unlocks vitamin, mineral and free-sugar breakdowns, nutrition reports and more nutrients, from a total of more than 80. Your full history exports as JSON from Settings.

MacroFactor: the adaptive engine, for a price

MacroFactor calculates your expenditure from the calories you log and the change in your body weight, and its page says the macro plan is revised automatically every week, from your logged data and not from how closely you followed the plan. Goal settings cover bulking, cutting and maintenance, a Weight Trend algorithm promises to “find your true weight,” and you can track body measurements and progress photos. Food goes in by AI photo, barcode or nutrition-label scan, or by speaking. MacroFactor has no free plan; after a seven-day trial it costs $71.99 a year. It is the strongest choice for people who want the algorithm above everything else and are happy to pay for the long term.

PlateLens or MacroFactor for maintenance?

These two score the same on the adaptive-target criterion, so the choice comes down to the rest.

• What they share. Both estimate your expenditure from the calories you log and the change in your weight, and both update weekly.
• Cost over time. Maintenance has no end date. PlateLens’s adaptive algorithm is on its free plan, with Premium optional at $34.99 a year. MacroFactor is subscription only: at $71.99 a year, three years of maintenance cost $215.97.
• Lapses. Most people log less strictly once a diet ends. PlateLens’s guide spells out what happens then: a short week pauses the adjustment and keeps your last value, and a day that looks incomplete is left out until you confirm it.
• Seeing the change. MacroFactor offers a weight-trend view, body measurements and progress photos. PlateLens offers a 3D Body Scan with waist, hip and chest measurements that you can compare scan to scan, and a coach that can read those scans.
• Where you use it. PlateLens runs on iPhone, Android and the web on one account; MacroFactor’s FAQ says a desktop version is planned but not available yet.

If you want a focused, paid algorithm and nothing else, MacroFactor is a strong choice. For most people keeping weight off for years, PlateLens covers the same core on a free plan and adds more around it.

Carbon Diet Coach: a coach for the transition

Carbon is built around goals, including “lose weight, gain weight, maintain weight, or reverse diet,” according to its How it works page. Each week you check in, and its App Store listing describes explanations for every check-in, a check-in history and “recommendations after you reach a goal so you can plan for what’s next and KEEP your results.” Its diet planner lets you set higher and lower calorie days across the week. Food data is powered by FatSecret, with a barcode scanner, quick-add macros and copied meals, and it imports smart-scale data through Apple Health or Health Connect. Carbon is sold by subscription, $99.99 a year after a 7-day trial. Choose it if you want a structured, explained path from a cut to maintenance.

Lose It! and Cronometer: set your own number

Lose It! builds a daily calorie budget from the profile you fill in, and its App Store listing also offers a calorie schedule for planning larger weekend days, which suits a maintenance routine with a predictable weekly rhythm. The free version covers calorie tracking and community groups; body measurements, advanced macro tracking, photo, voice and barcode logging are listed under Premium, at $39.99 a year.

Cronometer promises to help you “reach & maintain your goal weight” and sets goals through a target wizard, and its Gold page adds a Macro Scheduler for different targets on different days. Its panel covers as many as 95 nutrients and compounds, plus a long list of biometrics, which suits people who want maintenance to include a closer look at diet quality. Barcode scanning is free and the free plan has ads; photo and voice logging and Crono Coach are Gold features.

A maintenance routine that works with any tracker

1. Switch the goal on purpose. When the diet ends, change the app’s goal to maintenance rather than simply eating more. That tells an adaptive tracker what to aim for.
2. Raise intake in steps and watch the trend. Add calories gradually and let two or three weeks of weigh-ins show where your trend settles.
3. Set a range, not a number. Decide in advance how far above your goal weight the trend can drift before you act, for example a kilogram or two.
4. Keep the minimum habit. Logging most days and weighing in a few times a week is enough for most people, and enough for an adaptive estimate to keep working.
5. Keep weekends and weekdays similar, or plan the difference. Registry members reported a consistent pattern across the week; if your weekends are bigger, budget for them rather than hoping they average out.
6. Check your shape as well as your weight. A tape measure or a body scan every few weeks catches changes that a stable weight can hide.

More on the logging side is in our guide to where calorie-logging error comes from, and the phase before this one is covered in calorie tracking for serious dieters. The scoring framework behind this review is documented in Methodology v3.2.

A note on health

Calorie targets from any app are estimates. If you have a medical condition, take medication that affects appetite or blood sugar (including GLP-1 medicines, or if you are coming off one), are pregnant or breastfeeding, or have a history of disordered eating, work out your maintenance plan with a doctor or a registered dietitian. If tracking becomes stressful or compulsive, step back and ask for support.

Verdict

PlateLens is the best calorie tracker for weight maintenance for most people. Its free plan gives you a maintain-weight goal and an adaptive calorie algorithm that keeps finding your real maintenance intake week after week, logging light enough to continue indefinitely, an AI coach that reads your own records and a 3D body scan for the changes the scale hides. MacroFactor is the choice for a paid adaptive engine, Carbon Diet Coach for a coached transition, and Lose It! or Cronometer for people who would rather set the number themselves.