Why Does MyFitnessPal Keep Getting Worse? A Timeline of Decline

MyFitnessPal used to be the undisputed king of calorie tracking. It was the app everyone recommended, the default choice for anyone who wanted to track their food. You probably started using it because a friend, a trainer, or a Reddit thread told you it was the best option available. And for a long time, it was.

Then it got worse. And worse. And worse again. Each app update seemed to remove something, add more ads, increase the price, or introduce bugs. If you have been using MyFitnessPal for more than a few years, you have watched a once-great app deteriorate in real time — and you have probably wondered why.

The answer is not incompetence or bad luck. It is a predictable pattern driven by ownership changes and financial incentives that prioritize revenue extraction over user experience. Here is the complete timeline of how MyFitnessPal went from the best calorie tracker in the world to an app that frustrates the very users who made it successful.

The Complete Timeline of MyFitnessPal's Decline

2005-2014: The Golden Era

MyFitnessPal was founded by brothers Mike and Albert Lee in 2005. It was built to solve a simple problem: make calorie tracking easy enough that people would actually do it. The app featured a large food database, barcode scanning, and a clean interface focused entirely on food logging.

During this period, MyFitnessPal was genuinely the best calorie tracking app available. It was free, it was fast, it was functional, and it had the largest food database of any tracker. The user experience was designed around the core task of logging food with minimal friction. Ads existed but were unobtrusive. The community was supportive. The app improved with each update.

By 2014, MyFitnessPal had over 80 million registered users and had become the default recommendation for anyone starting their fitness journey. This was the app at its peak — and it was about to be sold.

2015: Under Armour Acquires MFP for $475 Million

In February 2015, Under Armour purchased MyFitnessPal for $475 million as part of an ambitious strategy to build a connected fitness empire alongside MapMyRun and Endomondo. The acquisition price was extraordinary for a calorie tracking app, and it signaled that Under Armour valued MyFitnessPal more for its user base and data than for its core product.

What changed: Social features became more prominent. The app began integrating with Under Armour's fitness ecosystem. A premium subscription tier was introduced, but the free tier remained robust. The core calorie tracking experience was largely preserved during this period, but the app started accumulating features beyond its original purpose.

Warning signs: The enormous acquisition price created pressure to justify the investment through monetization. Under Armour was a sportswear company, not a software company. The app's direction was increasingly influenced by corporate strategy rather than user needs.

2018: The Massive Data Breach

In March 2018, MyFitnessPal disclosed that approximately 150 million user accounts had been compromised in one of the largest data breaches in history. Usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords were exposed.

What changed: User trust was severely damaged. The breach revealed that MyFitnessPal's security infrastructure was inadequate for the scale of personal data it held. For an app that collected detailed information about what people ate every day, their weight, and their health goals, this was particularly concerning.

Broader impact: The data breach accelerated Under Armour's desire to divest its digital fitness properties. The company had already been struggling financially, and the breach made the digital division a liability rather than an asset.

2020: Sold to Francisco Partners for $345 Million

In October 2020, Under Armour sold MyFitnessPal to Francisco Partners, a private equity firm, for $345 million — a $130 million loss compared to what Under Armour had paid just five years earlier.

What changed: Everything. Private equity ownership transformed the fundamental incentive structure of the business. Francisco Partners did not acquire MyFitnessPal to make the best calorie tracking app in the world. They acquired it to increase its revenue, improve its margins, and sell it at a higher valuation in 3-7 years.

The playbook: Private equity firms optimize for financial metrics. They look at a user base of 200+ million people and see a monetization opportunity. The product roadmap shifts from "how do we make this better for users" to "how do we extract more revenue per user."

2021-2022: The Stripping Begins

Under Francisco Partners' ownership, the transformation of MyFitnessPal from a user-friendly tool to a revenue extraction machine began in earnest.

Barcode scanning paywalled: The single most-used feature in the app — barcode scanning — was moved from the free tier to premium. Free users who had been scanning barcodes for years suddenly lost access. The message was unmistakable: pay $19.99/month or go back to the slow, error-prone manual search.

Price doubled: MyFitnessPal Premium went from approximately $9.99/month to $19.99/month — a 100% price increase with no proportional improvement in features.

Ad load increased: The free tier became increasingly ad-heavy, with full-screen interstitials, banner ads in the food diary, and video ads throughout the app. Users reported 6-12 ad impressions per typical logging session.

Free tier degraded: Multiple features that had been free for years were reclassified as premium-only, creating a free experience that felt intentionally crippled to drive upgrades.

2023-2026: Continued Deterioration

The trajectory has not reversed. If anything, the gap between what MyFitnessPal was and what it has become has continued to widen.

Performance declined: The app became noticeably slower as ad infrastructure, analytics, and additional features added bloat. Users on both iOS and Android reported longer load times, search lag, and general sluggishness.

Database quality stagnated: The crowdsourced database of 14 million entries continued to accumulate duplicates and errors with no visible effort to verify or clean the data. The fundamental accuracy problem that has plagued MyFitnessPal for years remained unaddressed.

Competition arrived: While MyFitnessPal was focused on monetization, competitors emerged with modern technology, verified databases, and user-friendly pricing. The gap in product quality between MyFitnessPal and newer alternatives widened.

The Pattern: Why Private Equity Ownership Ruins Consumer Apps

MyFitnessPal's decline is not unique. It follows a well-documented pattern of what happens when private equity firms acquire consumer-facing software products.

Phase 1: Acquisition

The PE firm acquires a product with a large, loyal user base and identifies it as "undermonetized." The acquisition thesis centers on the belief that the user base can generate significantly more revenue with aggressive monetization strategies.

Phase 2: Price Increases and Feature Gating

The first moves are the easiest: raise prices and move popular features behind the paywall. These changes generate immediate revenue increases because existing users are locked into the ecosystem through habit, data, and familiarity. Switching costs are high, so many users pay rather than leave.

Phase 3: Cost Reduction

The PE firm cuts costs that do not directly drive revenue: customer support, product development for the free tier, database maintenance, and infrastructure improvements. These cuts improve margins but gradually degrade the product.

Phase 4: User Erosion

Users start leaving. At first, it is the most price-sensitive and least committed users. Then it is the power users who find better alternatives. Then it is the mainstream users who simply get tired of the deteriorating experience. Each wave of departures reduces the user base but — for a while — the increased revenue per remaining user compensates.

Phase 5: Exit

The PE firm sells the company, ideally at a higher valuation based on the improved financial metrics. The new buyer inherits a product with better margins but a declining user base, eroded brand trust, and significant technical debt.

MyFitnessPal appears to be deep in Phase 4. The question is not whether it will be sold again, but when — and to whom.

What MyFitnessPal Should Have Become

Imagine an alternate timeline where MyFitnessPal's owners had invested in the product instead of extracting value from it:

• A verified database replacing the chaotic crowdsourced one, with every entry reviewed for accuracy
• AI-powered logging using photo recognition and voice input to make tracking faster than manual search
• Comprehensive nutrient tracking covering 100+ nutrients instead of just basic macros
• Modern wearable support with native apps for Apple Watch and Wear OS
• Fair, accessible pricing that made premium features available to everyone, not just those who could afford $19.99/month
• Zero ads because the subscription revenue from a fairly priced product should be enough
• A focused experience built around nutrition tracking without the bloat of social features and content platforms

This alternate version of MyFitnessPal does not exist. But an app that matches this description does.

The App MyFitnessPal Should Have Become: Nutrola

Nutrola is what MyFitnessPal could have been if its owners had prioritized product quality over revenue extraction. It is a modern nutrition tracker built from the ground up with the lessons of MyFitnessPal's failures in mind.

Verified Database, Not Crowdsourced Chaos

Nutrola maintains a database of over 1.8 million verified food entries. Every entry is sourced from authoritative data and reviewed for accuracy. When you search for a food, you get reliable results — not 50+ duplicates with conflicting calorie counts.

AI-Powered Logging

Beyond barcode scanning (which is available to all users, not paywalled), Nutrola offers AI photo recognition — snap a picture of your meal and the app identifies the food and logs it — and voice logging for hands-free entry. These are the innovations that a well-funded calorie tracker should have developed years ago.

100+ Nutrients Tracked

While MyFitnessPal Premium tracks up to 19 nutrients, Nutrola tracks over 100 — including micronutrients like vitamin D, iron, zinc, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, and dozens more. Comprehensive nutrient tracking is essential for users managing specific health conditions or optimizing their overall nutrition.

Zero Ads, Fair Pricing

Nutrola costs €2.50 per month with zero ads on any tier. That is roughly one-eighth the price of MyFitnessPal Premium. The business model is simple: charge a fair price for a quality product. No ad revenue means no incentive to degrade your experience. No private equity pressure means no incentive to strip features or inflate prices.

Modern Platform Support

Nutrola runs on iOS and Android with native apps for Apple Watch and Wear OS. Recipe import from URLs makes it easy to track home-cooked meals. The app supports 9 languages, making it accessible to a global user base.

MyFitnessPal Then vs Now vs Nutrola

Feature	MFP 2014 (Peak Era)	MFP 2026 (Current)	Nutrola 2026
Barcode scanning	Free	$19.99/mo premium	Included (€2.50/mo)
AI photo logging	Did not exist	Not available	Yes
Voice logging	Did not exist	Not available	Yes
Ads	Minimal	6-12 per session (free tier)	Zero
Database	Crowdsourced (large)	Crowdsourced (14M+, unverified)	Verified (1.8M+)
Nutrients tracked	Basic	Up to 19 (premium)	100+
Monthly cost (premium)	Free / ~$9.99	$19.99	€2.50
App speed	Fast	Slow (bloated)	Fast (focused)
Apple Watch	No	Yes (premium)	Yes
Wear OS	No	No	Yes
Recipe import	No	Limited	Yes
Languages	English + limited	Limited	9
Data breach history	None (at that time)	150M accounts (2018)	None

How to Move On from MyFitnessPal

Step 1: Accept That It Is Not Coming Back

The MyFitnessPal you loved is gone. The ownership structure, business incentives, and product direction are fundamentally incompatible with rebuilding the user-first app it once was. Hoping for improvement under private equity ownership is waiting for something that is not going to happen.

Step 2: Export Your Data

Go to MyFitnessPal's settings and export your data. Download the CSV file of your food diary and keep it for your records. Your tracking history has value even if the app that created it no longer does.

Step 3: Download Nutrola

Available on iOS and Android. Set up your account and configure your nutrition goals. The setup process takes about two minutes.

Step 4: Experience the Difference

Log your meals for a day using Nutrola. Notice the fast search, the verified database results, the absence of ads, the AI photo recognition, and the comprehensive nutrient tracking. This is what calorie tracking feels like when the app is designed for users, not for revenue extraction.

Step 5: Cancel MyFitnessPal

If you have a premium subscription, cancel it through your device's app store. If you are on the free tier, simply delete the app. Reclaim the storage space, the time spent navigating ads, and the mental energy spent questioning whether your food entries are accurate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does MyFitnessPal keep removing features?

MyFitnessPal is owned by Francisco Partners, a private equity firm. Private equity ownership incentivizes moving features from free to paid tiers to increase subscription revenue. Features are removed from the free tier not because they are costly to provide but because gating them behind a paywall drives upgrades.

When did MyFitnessPal start getting worse?

The most significant decline began after Francisco Partners acquired MyFitnessPal in October 2020. However, the groundwork was laid during the Under Armour ownership era (2015-2020) when the app accumulated features beyond its core purpose and suffered a major data breach in 2018.

Is MyFitnessPal still the best calorie tracker?

Many users who started with MyFitnessPal years ago continue using it out of habit and familiarity. However, newer alternatives now offer better database accuracy, modern AI logging features, lower prices, and ad-free experiences. MyFitnessPal's primary remaining advantage is brand recognition and ecosystem familiarity, not product quality.

Will MyFitnessPal ever improve again?

Under private equity ownership, significant product improvements are unlikely. The business model is optimized for revenue extraction, not product development. Meaningful improvement would require a change in ownership to an entity willing to invest in the product rather than monetize the existing user base.

What is the best MyFitnessPal alternative in 2026?

Nutrola is a strong alternative that addresses MyFitnessPal's key weaknesses: it offers a verified database of 1.8M+ foods, AI photo and voice logging, barcode scanning for all users, 100+ nutrient tracking, zero ads, and a price of €2.50/month. It represents what a modern nutrition tracker should be.

Is it hard to switch from MyFitnessPal to another app?

The hardest part of switching is the psychological attachment to your historical data and the familiarity of the interface. Practically, setting up a new nutrition tracker takes about two minutes. Most users report that the improvement in speed, accuracy, and experience makes them wish they had switched sooner.

What happened to the MyFitnessPal founders?

Mike and Albert Lee, who founded MyFitnessPal in 2005, departed after the Under Armour acquisition. They are no longer involved with the product. The app's direction is now determined by Francisco Partners' management team and their financial objectives.

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MyFitnessPal is a trademark of MyFitnessPal, Inc. This article is an independent editorial piece and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MyFitnessPal, Inc.