Simple vs Zero vs Nutrola: Tracking-Plus-Fasting in 2026

If you want a fasting app that is also a real nutrition tracker, Nutrola is the only one of these three that does both well. Simple and Zero are dedicated fasting apps with excellent timers, but neither offers real food logging, a verified food database, or macro tracking during your eating window. Nutrola pairs a full fasting timer (16:8, 18:6, OMAD, custom) with AI-powered nutrition tracking, 100+ nutrients, a 1.8 million+ verified food database, a native Apple Watch and Wear OS app, zero ads on any tier, and a free plan backed by premium at €2.50/month.

Intermittent fasting is not just about the hours you skip food — it is about what you do when the window opens. A perfectly timed 16:8 schedule does very little if the meals inside the eating window are random, low in protein, or missing the nutrients your body actually needs. Yet the two largest fasting apps, Simple and Zero, treat eating-window nutrition as someone else's problem. Their timers are polished. Their food tracking barely exists.

This guide compares Simple, Zero, and Nutrola specifically on the combined workflow that most serious fasters want in 2026: a reliable timer plus genuine nutrition tracking inside the eating window. We evaluate the timer itself, the eating-window food logging, pricing, ads, and the use cases each app actually serves.

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What Do Intermittent Fasters Actually Need in 2026?

A reliable fasting timer with protocol presets

The fasting timer is the core of any fasting app. It needs to start and stop cleanly, run in the background without draining battery, survive phone restarts, and show accurate progress through each stage of the fast. Protocol presets save configuration time for the most common schedules — 16:8 for daily time-restricted eating, 18:6 for tighter windows, 20:4 for warrior-style fasts, OMAD for one meal a day, and 5:2 or alternate-day fasting for weekly rhythms. A good timer also supports custom protocols, because not every faster follows a standard schedule.

Beyond the timer itself, 2026 users expect streak tracking, start and end reminders, a widget for the home screen and lock screen, and a wrist-based experience on Apple Watch or Wear OS so a quick glance at the wrist shows fast progress without opening a phone. Missing any of these turns fasting from a habit into a chore.

Eating-window nutrition tracking

This is where the category splits. A fasting timer alone tells you how long you went without eating. It tells you nothing about whether your one or two meals inside the window hit your protein target, covered your micronutrient needs, or stayed within a calorie range that matches your goal — fat loss, maintenance, or lean gain.

Most dietitians agree that intermittent fasting works best when the eating window delivers high-quality, nutrient-dense meals. Compressing calories into a shorter window naturally pressures users toward quick, convenient foods, which can easily become protein-poor or high-sodium. Without tracking, there is no feedback loop. Without a verified database, any tracking is guesswork. Without macro and micronutrient visibility, the window becomes a calorie number with no context.

A fasting-plus-nutrition app needs food search, barcode scanning, AI photo or voice logging, a verified food database, macro tracking (protein, carbs, fat), and — for the users who want it — micronutrients covering vitamins, minerals, fiber, and sodium.

One dashboard for fasting, macros, and weight

Split workflows punish consistency. If your fasting timer lives in one app, your food logging in another, and your weight trend in Apple Health, you now maintain three data silos that rarely reconcile. A single dashboard that shows today's fast alongside today's macros alongside the weekly weight trend is the difference between a sustainable routine and a cluttered screen time habit.

In 2026, the expectation is one view: current fast status, eating-window calories and macros, weight trajectory, and optionally steps, sleep, and workout data synced from a wearable. Apps that do the timer perfectly but cannot show nutrition beside it force users into a second app — and most users simply skip the second app.

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Simple vs Zero vs Nutrola: Fasting Timer

Simple

Simple offers a clean, well-designed fasting timer with protocol presets for 16:8, 18:6, 20:4, OMAD, and custom windows. The app leans into behavioral psychology, pairing the timer with hydration logging, mood check-ins, and coaching prompts from its AI assistant. Streak tracking and reminders work reliably. Simple has an Apple Watch app for quick timer control on the wrist, though the watch experience is more limited than the phone app.

The timer itself is one of the most visually refined in the category. Progress rings, fast-stage callouts (fat burning, autophagy milestones), and celebratory completion screens are all handled with care. The onboarding flow introduces fasting concepts gently, which makes Simple one of the easier starting points for beginners.

Zero

Zero pioneered the fasting-app category and still has one of the largest user bases. Its timer is functional, reliable, and supports all common protocols (16:8, 18:6, 20:4, OMAD, 36-hour fasts, and custom). Zero integrates with Apple Health, offers streaks, and runs a lightweight mood and weight log. The app has an Apple Watch companion and integrates with popular research-backed fasting content.

Zero's design emphasizes consistency and history. Longtime fasters often prefer Zero because it preserves years of fasting data and surfaces it in simple graphs. Reminders are reliable and the app has survived multiple design generations without breaking core functionality.

Nutrola

Nutrola includes a full fasting timer inside a broader nutrition tracking app. Protocol presets cover 16:8, 18:6, 20:4, OMAD, 5:2, alternate-day, and fully custom windows. Streaks, start and end reminders, and stage callouts all work as expected. The native Apple Watch and Wear OS apps let you start, pause, and end a fast from the wrist, with glanceable complications showing remaining fast time on watch faces.

The difference is what sits beside the timer. The same app tracks every meal inside the eating window, so the finished fast hands off directly into nutrition logging. When the window opens, AI photo logging, voice input, or barcode scanning captures the meal in seconds and applies it against your calorie and macro goals for the day.

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Simple vs Zero vs Nutrola: Nutrition Tracking During Eating Windows

This is where the three apps diverge sharply. We want to be fair to Simple and Zero — they are excellent at fasting — but their nutrition tracking is either minimal or absent.

Simple

Simple does not include real food tracking. The app logs meals as categorical labels (for example, "I ate a balanced meal") and uses these labels to drive coaching prompts. There is no food database, no barcode scanner, no calorie counting in the traditional sense, and no macro tracking. Users who want to know how many grams of protein they ate during their 8-hour window cannot get that information from Simple.

Simple's design choice here is deliberate. The team leans on behavioral nudges rather than numerical tracking, which works well for some users — particularly those recovering from disordered eating patterns or those who explicitly want to avoid calorie counting. But for fasters who care about body composition, athletic performance, or specific macro targets, Simple is a timer with vibes, not a tracker.

Zero

Zero has no meaningful food tracking either. The app offers weight logging and mood logging, and recent versions have added lightweight meal notes, but there is no food database, no barcode scanner, no calorie or macro tracking, and no micronutrient visibility. Zero is, by design, a fasting app — not a nutrition app. If you want to know what you ate during your window, Zero is not the place that information lives.

Nutrola

Nutrola offers full nutrition tracking inside the same app as the fasting timer. The database includes 1.8 million+ nutritionist-verified foods. AI photo logging identifies meals in under three seconds and estimates portions. Voice NLP lets you describe a meal in natural language and logs it automatically. Barcode scanning handles packaged foods. Manual entry handles edge cases. Every log applies against 100+ tracked nutrients — calories, macros (protein, carbs, fat), fiber, sodium, and a full vitamin and mineral panel.

For fasters specifically, this matters in two ways. First, the visibility prevents the common compressed-window mistake of under-eating protein or skipping vegetables. Second, the dashboard shows today's fast alongside today's macros, so the fasting-and-nutrition picture is unified rather than split across two apps.

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Simple vs Zero vs Nutrola: Pricing and Ads

Simple

Simple offers a limited free tier with basic timer functionality and restricted coaching. Premium unlocks AI coaching, deeper insights, and the full timer feature set. Annual pricing typically runs in the $40-50 per year range, with occasional promotional discounts and longer-term plans available at a reduced effective monthly rate.

Zero

Zero has a reasonably useful free tier covering the core timer and basic history. Zero Plus, the premium tier, unlocks advanced fasting plans, personalized insights, and content from fasting researchers. Zero Plus is typically priced around $69.99 per year, making it one of the more expensive fasting-only subscriptions.

Nutrola

Nutrola offers a real free tier — not a time-limited trial, but a genuinely usable free plan with the core fasting timer and nutrition logging. Premium unlocks AI photo logging at full frequency, advanced analytics, unlimited recipe imports, and the full micronutrient dashboard, at €2.50 per month. That works out to roughly €30 per year, substantially below Simple and less than half the cost of Zero Plus — while delivering both fasting and full nutrition tracking.

Ads across all three

Simple and Zero do not run banner ads in the core experience, but both push premium upsell prompts regularly in the free tier — interstitials on timer completion, lock screens, and feature gates. Nutrola runs zero ads and zero upsell interstitials on any tier, free or premium.

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Head-to-Head Verdict by Use Case

The beginner faster

If you have never fasted before and want an app that holds your hand through the behavioral side, Simple is the most forgiving onboarding. The coaching prompts and mood check-ins normalize the early discomfort of a 16:8 schedule. If you later decide you want nutrition data, you will outgrow Simple and need a second app — or switch to Nutrola. If you want fasting-plus-nutrition from day one, Nutrola's free tier lets you start both habits in the same app without a double subscription.

The longtime faster

If you have been fasting for years and have historical data in Zero, Zero is the easiest way to preserve that history. The timer is reliable, the streaks are intact, and the design is familiar. If you have started caring about what you eat during your window — whether for body composition, performance, or health markers — Zero cannot answer those questions. Nutrola either replaces Zero (import your schedule, start fresh on the fasting data but gain full nutrition) or supplements it (run Zero for history, Nutrola for daily tracking).

The faster who tracks everything

If you already track macros, weight, workouts, and sleep, Simple and Zero are redundant with your existing setup. You need an app that fits fasting into the broader tracking stack. Nutrola is built for this case: fasting timer, nutrition logging, macros, 100+ nutrients, weight, and bidirectional sync with Apple Health and Google Fit so steps, workouts, and sleep flow in from your wearable. One dashboard, one subscription.

The faster on GLP-1 medication

Users on semaglutide, tirzepatide, or similar GLP-1 medications often combine intermittent fasting with deliberate protein-forward eating during shorter windows. Appetite suppression can mask under-eating of protein, which undermines lean mass retention. Simple and Zero cannot track protein. Nutrola tracks protein per meal and per day, flags low-protein days, and maintains the fasting schedule beside those numbers — which is the exact combination GLP-1 users actually need.

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How Does Nutrola Deliver Fasting + Tracking?

Nutrola is built as an AI nutrition app that includes a first-class fasting timer, not as a fasting app that added a food log as an afterthought. The combined experience includes:

• Full fasting timer with protocol presets: 16:8, 18:6, 20:4, OMAD, 5:2, alternate-day, and custom windows. Start, pause, end, and edit past fasts.
• Streak tracking, reminders, and stage callouts: Notifications for fast start, fast end, and milestone stages inside the fast.
• Native Apple Watch app: Start, end, and monitor fasts from the wrist. Glanceable complications on watch faces.
• Native Wear OS app: Full fasting timer and tracking on Android wearables.
• AI photo logging: Point the camera at a meal. Under three seconds, the meal is identified, portioned, and logged.
• Voice NLP logging: Say what you ate in natural language. No menu navigation needed.
• Barcode scanning: Verified data for packaged foods from the 1.8 million+ entry database.
• 100+ nutrients tracked: Calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, sodium, and a full vitamin and mineral panel.
• Combined dashboard: Today's fast, today's macros, and weight trend in one view. No app switching.
• HealthKit and Google Fit sync: Bidirectional sync with Apple Health and Google Fit for activity, steps, workouts, weight, and sleep.
• 14 language support: Full localization for international users.
• Zero ads on every tier: No banners, no interstitials, no upsell on the free or premium plan.

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Comparison Table

Feature	Simple	Zero	Nutrola
Fasting Timer	Yes	Yes	Yes
Protocols (16:8, 18:6, OMAD, custom)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Food Database	No	No	1.8M+ verified
AI Photo Logging	No	No	Yes (under 3 sec)
100+ Nutrients Tracked	No	No	Yes
Macro Tracking	No	No	Yes
Native Watch App	Apple Watch	Apple Watch	Apple Watch + Wear OS
Ads / Upsell	Premium upsells	Premium upsells	Zero ads, zero upsells
Free Tier	Limited	Decent	Real free tier
Premium Cost	~$40-50/yr	~$69.99/yr	€2.50/month (~€30/yr)

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Which Should You Choose?

Best if you only want a fasting timer with behavioral coaching

Simple. The behavioral-psych approach is genuinely helpful if you want gentle prompts, mood check-ins, and no calorie math. Choose Simple if you have deliberately decided not to track nutrition and want a coach-style timer. Accept that you will not know your protein intake or calorie total.

Best if you have years of fasting history and want to preserve it

Zero. The longest-running fasting app, with the largest installed user base and the deepest history graphs. Choose Zero if your fasting routine is already established, you do not want to track eating-window nutrition, and you value continuity with existing data. Consider pairing it with a nutrition tracker if that need emerges later.

Best if you want fasting timer AND real nutrition tracking in one app

Nutrola. The only app in this comparison that combines a reliable fasting timer with full nutrition tracking, macros, 100+ nutrients, a verified database, AI logging, and native wrist apps on both Apple Watch and Wear OS. Choose Nutrola if you want a unified dashboard, zero ads on every tier, and a €2.50/month price that is less than half the cost of Zero Plus while delivering far more functionality.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does Zero track nutrition?

Zero does not track nutrition in any meaningful way. There is no food database, no barcode scanner, no calorie tracking, and no macro tracking. Recent versions have added lightweight meal notes and weight logging, but the app remains a fasting timer at its core. If you want to know what you ate during your eating window, Zero cannot answer that question.

Does Simple track calories?

Simple does not track calories with a food database. The app logs meals as categorical labels and uses those labels for coaching prompts. It does not count calories, track macros, or integrate a verified food database. This is a deliberate design choice — Simple leans on behavioral nudges instead of numbers — but it means Simple cannot tell you your protein intake, your calorie total, or your micronutrient coverage.

Can I use Simple and Nutrola together?

Yes. Some users prefer Simple's behavioral coaching on the fasting side and use Nutrola for nutrition tracking during their eating window. Nutrola's timer is fully capable on its own, so running both is optional — but it is a supported workflow. Nutrola syncs weight and activity data through Apple Health and Google Fit, so the two apps can coexist without duplicate manual entry.

Can I use Zero and Nutrola together?

Yes. Longtime Zero users sometimes keep Zero for its fasting history graphs and add Nutrola for nutrition tracking and macros. Since Nutrola also includes a full fasting timer with protocol presets, most users consolidate into Nutrola within a few weeks. Whichever path you choose, both workflows are supported.

Which fasting app has the best Apple Watch experience?

All three have Apple Watch apps, but the experiences differ. Simple and Zero focus on timer control from the wrist. Nutrola's Apple Watch app covers both the fasting timer and nutrition logging, including quick-log complications and watch face widgets. If you also use Wear OS on an Android device, Nutrola is the only one of the three with a native Wear OS app.

How much cheaper is Nutrola than Simple or Zero Plus?

Nutrola premium is €2.50 per month, which works out to roughly €30 per year. Simple premium is typically $40-50 per year, and Zero Plus is approximately $69.99 per year. Nutrola is meaningfully less expensive than Simple and less than half the cost of Zero Plus, while covering both fasting and full nutrition tracking rather than fasting alone.

Is there a truly free way to track fasting plus nutrition in 2026?

Nutrola offers a real free tier with the core fasting timer and nutrition logging. Simple and Zero have free tiers that cover basic timer use but do not provide nutrition tracking at any level. For fasting-plus-nutrition at zero cost, Nutrola's free plan is the only option among these three that delivers both.

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Final Verdict

Simple and Zero are both well-built fasting apps. Their timers are reliable, their interfaces are polished, and their communities are mature. For users who only want a fasting timer — nothing more, nothing less — either choice is defensible. Simple wins on behavioral coaching. Zero wins on history and user base.

But in 2026, most serious fasters want more than a timer. They want to know what they ate during their window, whether their protein was high enough, whether their micronutrients were covered, and how their weight is trending across the weeks. Simple and Zero cannot answer those questions. Nutrola can — in the same app, on the same dashboard, with the same subscription.

Start Nutrola free, keep your existing fasting schedule, and add real nutrition tracking to the hours when the window is open. If you decide the combined workflow is worth keeping, premium is €2.50 per month — less than a coffee, less than half the cost of Zero Plus, and the only plan in this comparison that covers both fasting and tracking at once.