The keto diet (or ketogenic diet) has become one of the most popular diets in recent years. Ketogenic eating encourages the body to burn fat, as opposed to glucose, by avoiding carbs and focusing on a high-fat diet.
While high fat may seem intimidating and even counter-productive, it’s important to remember that some fats are better for your body than others. Fatty fish, avocadoes, nuts, and olive oil are all sources of healthy fats that are ideal for the keto diet. Dieters may want to steer clear of oils high in polyunsaturated omega-6 fats, such as soy, corn, cottonseed, and safflower, which are less healthy than the fat sources listed above.
As always, it’s best to consult your doctor and/or a nutritionist before starting any new diet. The ketogenic diet may not be appropriate for patients with certain medical conditions, such as pancreatitis, liver failure, disorders of fat metabolism, among others, according to medical professionals. The diet also may not be safe during pregnancy.
Typically, those following a keto diet consume 70% to 75% of their calories from fat, 5% to 10% of calories from carbohydrates, and the rest from protein. The math can be hard to figure out, but there are a lot of apps out there to help you track your macronutrients (often called macros), or your percentage of fats, carbs, and proteins, to give you awesome meal ideas, to find community encouragement when things get tough and more. We’ve listed the best apps to help maintain an effective keto diet.
The Rundown
- Best Overall: Carb Manager
- Best for Tracking Nutrients: MyMacros+
- Best for Beginners: Senza
- Best for Finding Recipes: Total Keto Diet
- Best for Community: KetoDiet
Our Top Picks
Best Overall: Carb Manager
Key Specs
- Pricing: Premium version is about $40 per year
- Supported Devices: Fitbit, Apple Watch
Why We Chose It: Carb Manager goes beyond tracking your macros and focuses on the minute details of a ketogenic diet so that you can track exactly how your body is doing on the diet.
- Enables tracking of several useful keto metrics (macronutrients, blood sugar levels, ketones, etc.)
- Easy to log food through voice command, photo, or barcode scanning
- Can be synced with smartphone apps or fitness trackers
- Lets you track other lifestyle habits, like water intake and exercise
- The food database is not as extensive as other keto apps
- Premium version gets pricey (about $40/year)
- Nutrient data isn’t always accurate because it’s entered by other users
- Barcode scanner can be too quick to correctly scan the food item
Carb manager takes “Best Overall” for best keto diet apps because it’s one of the most comprehensive on the market. You can track all of the basic metrics that are critical to the keto diet—like total carbs, net carbs, and fats—but you can also track ketones, blood glucose, insulin, glycemic load, and more.
On top of all that, you can track metrics that aren’t necessarily related to your diet but help you to maintain an overall healthy lifestyle, including water intake, exercise, and body weight.
Carb Manager has a food database that’s more than one million foods strong and offers barcode scanning, photo logging, and voice command logging. You can sync Carb Manager to your Fitbit, Apple Watch, or other supported device, as well as connect it to several other health and fitness apps. This app also offers a wealth of recipes, educational content, grocery list building, and a community platform.
Best for Tracking Nutrients: MyMacros+
Key Specs
- Pricing: Free, with in-app purchases
- Supported Devices: iPhone, iPad, Android
Why We Chose It: With a huge food database, this app allows for precise tracking, which is key when using a ketogenic diet.
- Internet isn’t required for food logging
- Large database of over 5 million foods
- My Circle feature lets you connect with friends on the app in real time
- A body fat estimation calculator is now available
- Macro Coach guides you on which food choices to make
- It costs money to download the app, and you have to pay an additional fee to unlock the full features
- Some functionality is better on the iPhone versus Android phones
- It’s not always easy to find the foods you’re searching for
MyMacros+ has held a steady reign in the nutrient-tracking world, due largely in part to its massive food database (more than 5 million foods!) and simple app interface. With MyMacros+, tracking your meals is no longer frustrating and time-consuming. Rather, it’s easy, quick, and honestly quite fun when you see all of your great progress.
MyMacros+ isn’t strictly a keto diet app, but it does support everything a keto dieter would need. For instance, you can log all of your macronutrients, including carbohydrates and net carbs, protein, and fats. The app supports the logging of other nutrients that are important to the keto diet, too, such as sugar and fiber.
With this app, you can log unlimited meals throughout the day and see how your dietary choices affect your set goals (which you can modify at any time in your settings). MyMacros+ shows you the nutritional breakdown of every ingredient, meal, and day. Perhaps the best part? The logging feature is usable without the internet, so if you find yourself eating somewhere without service, you can still accurately log your meal.
Best for Beginners: Senza
Key Specs
- Pricing: Free, with in-app purchases
- Supported Devices: iPhone, iPad, Android
Why We Chose It: Transitioning to a keto diet is a big change, and Senza helps walk you through the first couple of days with ease. It’s also great for traveling, with its keto-friendly restaurant suggestions.
- Simple to use for beginners
- Helps you make gradual changes
- Other lifestyle factors can be tracked (like sleep) and synced with fitness trackers
- Suggests keto-friendly restaurants while traveling
- Nutrient data is entered by users so it’s not always accurate
- No option for other users to edit inaccurate nutrient data
Senza values simplicity, making it an ideal keto diet platform for beginners. With the introductory “5 Days to Keto” program, Senza guides you through the transition from your current diet—which may be carb-heavy if you’re used to eating a typical western diet—to the keto diet without making you feel miserable.
In your Senza Food Journal, you’ll track carbs and net carbs, as well as other keto nutrition metrics such as glucose and ketones. You can scan barcodes, search restaurant menus, or select from more than one million keto items in the food database. On top of those great features, you can track mood and sleep, and connect Senza to your Fitbit or Apple Watch to integrate other metrics.
Oh, and if you’re traveling? The app’s Keto Radar feature maps out keto-friendly restaurants near you—no more sifting through hundreds of Google search results to find a compliant restaurant.
Best for Finding Recipes: Total Keto Diet
Key Specs
- Pricing: Free, with in-app purchases
- Supported Devices: iPhone, iPad, Android
Why We Chose It: This app’s features make meal planning easy and fun. You can even customize your meal plan to your needs.
- Recipe library with thousands of recipes
- Customized keto meal plans tailored to your preferences
- Educates users about the ins and outs of a keto diet
- Weekly grocery list creator
- Some users complain about poor app functionality after installing updates
- Food database is not as large as other apps (less than a million foods)
- Barcode tracker sometimes makes the wrong selection
Total Keto Diet by Tasteaholics is fantastic for beginners and keto experts alike. Tasteaholics is a free low-carb educational resource with thousands of recipes, keto news, blog articles, and more. The Total Keto Diet app encompasses the educational aspect of Tasteaholics while also providing a keto calculator, macro tracker, food database, and beginner’s keto guide.
On the app, you’ll also find an expansive recipe library and a shopping list feature where you can add ingredients from Total Keto Diet recipes or your own recipes. Total Keto Diet shares recipes that adhere to three main goals: They’ll keep your net carb count to under 25 grams daily, help you increase your protein intake to at least 60 grams daily, and satisfy both your taste buds and your belly.
Best for Community: KetoDiet
Key Specs
- Pricing: Free, with in-app purchases
- Supported Devices: iPhone, iPad, Android
Why We Chose It: Maintaining a keto diet definitely takes some motivation, and the KetoDiet app provides just that, offering challenges and creating an online community atmosphere. We also love the accuracy of its food database for proper diet tracking.
- Nutrient data is verified for accuracy
- Competitive challenges and Facebook support group for accountability
- Recipes are tasty
- Intuitive user interface, easy to use
- Customer service is lacking if you have issues with your account
- Not possible to customize meal plans using different macros
Do you thrive in group settings and with a little bit of competition? If so, KetoDiet is the perfect keto app for you. Of course, the app offers all of the critical components of a keto diet app: carb and net carb tracking, macro tracking, body weight, and body fat tracking, recipes, etc. But it also offers KetoDiet Challenges and a Facebook support group, both of which can keep you motivated to stick to your low-carb diet.
Another great thing about KetoDiet is the accuracy of its food database. The app centers around the idea that accuracy is crucial for success on keto, so it doesn’t crowdsource nutrition data, unlike many other diet apps. That means KetoDiet gets all of its nutrition information from trustworthy, verified sources (such as the USDA) rather than allowing app users to upload nutritional information into a common database.
Final Verdict
Whether you’re new to a ketogenic diet or have been maintaining a keto lifestyle for some time, an app can greatly assist you in tracking your macros and keeping you on the path to reaching your health goals. Our favorite apps on this list are Carb Manager and MyMacros+. We think the most important thing to pay attention to when starting a keto diet is your macros by keeping a detailed food diary. Carb Manager’s comprehensive approach allows you to track detailed fitness information, keeping you informed of your progress. We also love MyMacros+ because of its food database, which keeps you accurate in your meal logging.
