If you searched this exact phrase, I already know roughly what happened. You weren’t unhappy with Cronometer’s nutrient tracking - you were mid-bite of logging a meal and a full-screen video ad took over your phone for the better part of thirty seconds. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s a widely reported complaint on the app’s own forums and in a growing pile of one- and two-star reviews since a recent update, and it’s specific enough (loud, disruptive, showing up mid-log) that it’s clearly not a one-off bug.
So let’s deal with that honestly, including the parts that don’t flatter me.
What’s actually happening with Cronometer
Cronometer’s free tier is ad-supported, and the ads have gotten more aggressive - full-screen video, not the quiet banner style most tracking apps use, and users report them interrupting the actual logging flow rather than staying confined to a dashboard or search screen. The fix Cronometer offers is Gold: $4.99/month billed annually (about $60/year) or $10.99/month if you’d rather pay monthly. Gold removes the ads entirely and adds real features on top - the Oracle nutrient search, custom charts, a fasting timer, a recipe importer, custom biometrics, photo logging.
I want to be clear that this isn’t a “Cronometer is bad” post. It’s a genuinely strong app with a curated database of over a million verified foods - reviewed by an actual staff, not just crowdsourced - 84 tracked nutrients, and a large, established community. If those specific Gold features matter to you, paying for Gold is probably the right call, not switching apps just to dodge an ad.
But if what’s actually bothering you is being interrupted mid-log by something on a screen you don’t control, on a service that requires an account and syncs your food log to the cloud either way, that’s a different complaint - and it’s worth knowing what your actual options are.
The alternatives that don’t really solve this
Most of the obvious “switch away from Cronometer” suggestions trade one problem for another. MyFitnessPal has an enormous food database and is also ad-supported on its free tier, and it’s notably weaker on micronutrients - it’s built for calories and macros, not the vitamin and mineral depth that probably brought you to Cronometer in the first place. Lose It! is in the same boat: macro-focused, ad-supported, thinner on micronutrients. If the thing you liked about Cronometer was seeing your zinc and B12 alongside your protein, these aren’t really lateral moves.
Where Nutrient Logger is genuinely different - and where it isn’t
I built Nutrient Logger because I wanted the Cronometer-style depth (80+ nutrients tracked, not just calories and macros) without the account-and-cloud model. There’s no sign-up, no server your food log gets synced to - it’s stored entirely on your device. That’s not a workaround for the ad problem, it’s a structural difference: there’s no cloud service in the middle to monetize with an interstitial, and no third-party ad network in the app at all.
There’s no ad-supported free tier here. Free users occasionally see a small, single-line prompt suggesting Premium, in the same handful of screens an ad would have gone before - not a video, not a third-party ad, nothing that takes over the screen or blocks what you’re doing. It’s easy to ignore if you’re not interested. Premium itself (there’s a 7-day free trial) removes it entirely and unlocks nutrient trend charts, a weekly deficiency digest, Apple Health sync, body metrics tracking, and CSV export.
Here’s the honest tradeoff: Cronometer’s database is bigger and more rigorously curated - over a million verified entries versus tens of thousands in Nutrient Logger’s bundled USDA-based database, plus barcode scanning for packaged foods. Cronometer also has a decade-plus head start on community - active forums, a large subreddit, a track record. There’s no Oracle-style nutrient search, no recipe importer, no fasting timer here. If your workflow leans on any of those, Nutrient Logger isn’t a straight upgrade, and I’d rather tell you that now than have you download it and feel misled later.
The actual decision
If the Gold features are why you’re on Cronometer - the curated million-food database, the Oracle search, the established community - pay for Gold. It’s a fair price for what it does, and the ad complaints are a free-tier problem that Gold specifically solves.
If what you actually want is a smaller, offline-first, no-account nutrient tracker with no ad network in it at all, and you’re fine with a somewhat smaller (though still substantial) food database in exchange, that’s the specific gap Nutrient Logger is built for.
Either way, the ad complaints you’re seeing right now are real, not exaggerated, and you don’t have to just live with them.
Nutrient Logger tracks 80+ nutrients completely offline - no account, no cloud, no ads.