Meal planner vs calorie tracker: which do you need?

Two jobs that share a food photo

A meal planner outputs upcoming dinners and a shopping list. Carby, eMeals, Plan to Eat, The Dinner Daily and Meals Hub do that job. Eat This Much sits on the line: it generates future meals to hit macros, then can add a list.

A calorie tracker outputs a diary of what you already ate. MyFitnessPal, Lose It, Carb Manager, Cronometer and Cal AI do that job. Cal AI is a photo logger, not a grocery-budget dinner planner. They are not on Carby’s planner shortlists for that reason.

When you might need both

Some people plan dinners with Carby and still log lunch in a tracker. That is two apps on purpose. Plan to Eat includes nutrition totals on the planner. Eat This Much combines generation and tracking. Carby does not replace a food diary.

If the next question is “should I use Carby or Eat This Much?”, that is a planner-versus-macro-generator choice, not a tracker choice.

The comparison that answers the next question

Carby vs Eat This Much is the page for grocery-budget family dinners versus calorie and macro meal plans, including free-plan and Premium price notes from Eat This Much’s own site.