Short answerSet your daily calorie target, add each food and workout as you go, and the calorie counter shows what you've eaten, what you've burned and how much is left. It's a free food journal that saves to your own browser, with no sign-up. Export it as a CSV to open in any spreadsheet.
How to use the free online calorie counter
- Set your target. Use our TDEE calculator for maintenance, or the macro calculator for a weight loss target.
- Log food. Pick a meal, then a food from the list, which uses USDA values for about 40 everyday items, and set the number of portions. For anything else, choose "Something else" and type the calories from the package.
- Log exercise. Pick the activity and minutes. The calories use the same values as our calories burned calculator, adjusted for your weight.
- Check the ring. It fills as you eat and turns dark pink if you go over.
Use the arrows or the date box to go back and fill in other days. The 7-day strip shows each day's net calories at a glance. New to the idea? Read what are net calories.
A food and exercise journal that stays private
Most calorie tracking tools ask for an account and store your diary on their servers. This one doesn't. Your food exercise journal is saved in your browser's local storage on this device, and nothing is sent to CalorieBloom. The trade-off: it won't sync between your phone and laptop, and clearing your browsing data deletes it. Export a copy now and then.
Calorie tracker spreadsheet
Prefer spreadsheets? "Export as spreadsheet" downloads every day you've logged as a CSV file, with one row per food or workout and columns for date, meal, calories, protein, carbs and fat. Open it in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers to make charts or weekly averages. It's an easy way to keep a calorie tracker spreadsheet without typing every row yourself.
Does cal tracking actually help?
Yes. In weight loss programs, people who keep a food record more consistently tend to lose more weight. Writing it down makes portions visible: the handful of nuts, the few squares of chocolate, the second glass of juice, the oil in the pan. You don't need to track forever. A few weeks of honest logging teaches you what a 500-calorie lunch looks like; a regular turkey sandwich, for comparison, is about 217 (see sandwich calories).
Tips for a useful free food journal:
- Log as you go. Memory at the end of the day is surprisingly bad.
- Count drinks, sauces and cooking oil; they add up fast. A 20 oz regular cola has about 258 calories, while water has none.
- For home cooking, work out a serving with the recipe nutrition calculator, then add it here as "Something else".
- Look at weekly averages, not single days.
What a tracked day looks like
For foods not in the list, our food nutrition facts pages give USDA values by portion. Here's a day built only from foods in the counter's list, the kind of day that fits a 1,500 to 1,600 calorie target:
| Meal | Foods | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | ½ cup rolled oats, ½ cup blueberries, 1 cup 2% milk | 316 |
| Lunch | 3 oz chicken breast, 1 cup brown rice, 2 cups spinach, 1 tbsp olive oil | 513 |
| Snack | 1 apple, 1 oz almonds | 257 |
| Dinner | ½ cup firm tofu, 1 cup quinoa, 1 cup red bell pepper | 449 |
| Total | 85 g protein, 185 g carbs, 56 g fat | 1,535 |
Two things stand out once you log a day like this. The tablespoon of olive oil is almost a quarter of lunch, and the almonds cost more than the apple and the blueberries together. Neither is a problem; seeing it is the point. For a lighter snack, two clementines come to about 70 calories, and 3 oz of baby carrots to 30. To find the right daily number for your goal and a realistic finish date, use the weight loss simulator, and keep an eye on fiber with the fiber calculator; this day lands around 30 grams.
Cooking in batches? Work out the whole pot once, divide by servings, and log a serving as "Something else". If you make the recipe bigger or smaller next time, the recipe scaler resizes the ingredients first.
Calorie tracking tools compared
For a detailed look at eight popular apps, with current prices, see our comparison of the best free calorie counter app options.
- Phone apps have huge food databases and barcode scanners, but most need an account, and many push paid plans and ads.
- Spreadsheets are flexible and private, but slow to fill in by hand. Exporting from this counter gets you the same file without the typing.
- Paper food journals work surprisingly well for awareness, though adding up calories is on you.
- This counter sits in between: quick to use, private, free, and built for a few weeks of learning your portions rather than tracking forever.
If you also follow an eating window, plan it with the fasting calculator; the counter doesn't care when you eat, only what.
Calorie counter FAQ
Is this calorie counter free?
Yes, with no account or sign-up. Your entries are saved in your own browser and never sent to us.
Where is my food journal saved?
In this browser on this device. If you clear your browsing data or switch devices, the journal won't follow you, so export it as a CSV now and then.
Does tracking calories help with weight loss?
Yes. In weight loss studies, people who kept a food record more consistently lost more weight. Even a few weeks of tracking teaches you a lot about portions.
Sources
- Burke LE, Wang J, Sevick MA. Self-monitoring in weight loss: a systematic review of the literature. J Am Diet Assoc, 2011;111(1):92–102.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central (food values).
- Herrmann SD, et al. 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities (exercise values).