Food tracking, by photo

The calorie tracker for people who've quit calorie trackers.

You have tried the others. Weighed the rice, scanned the barcode, searched a database with fourteen kinds of oatmeal, given up by Thursday. Snapkin asks for one thing per meal: a photo. It does the napkin math.

€24.99 a month. No trial, no free tier, no upsells later. The App Store or Google Play takes the payment and shows you the price and tax for your country before you confirm.

weigh it scan it search for it build the recipe just photograph it

Home cooking, a restaurant plate, a label, half a leftover pizza. No barcodes, no scale, no database.

How it works

One photo. Maybe one question. That is the whole job.

Everything after the photo is the app's problem, not yours.

1
lunch

Take the photo

Point the phone at the plate. Snapkin names what is on it, sizes each portion against the plate and the cutlery, and counts the cooking fat and the sauce every tracker forgets.

2
642731 kcal
Pan-fried, or baked?
±90 kcal
Pan-fried Baked I do not know

Answer a question, maybe

When one detail would move the number, it asks, and says how much is riding on it. Tap an answer, or tap "I do not know". The estimate stands either way.

3
96
of 130 g
Protein first
34 g to go

Look at the protein

Calories and macros land on your day, against your own targets. Nothing to confirm, nothing to save. Next meal, same photo.

Try step 2 yourself

Every question is one tap, and every tap is optional.

Spaghetti and meatballs, and the three questions Snapkin had about it. Tap any answer and watch the estimate move. "I do not know" is always on the list, and the numbers simply stand.

Left alone it answers itself, but it is more satisfying to do it yourself.

Spaghetti & meatballs
Dinner · 19:12
0 kcal estimate
Snapkin has 3 questions
Beef meatballs, or pork?
±45 kcal
Any parmesan on top?
±70 kcal
Did you finish the plate?
±160 kcal
An answer sharpens this estimate. The numbers above already stand.
That is it. The meal was on your day from the photo onwards; the answers just sharpened it. Every one of them undoable.
Protein first

Hit the protein. The rest mostly sorts itself out.

Other trackers draw three macros the same size, as if they mattered equally. Protein is the only one you are trying to reach rather than stay under, and it decides what the rest of the day looks like. So it gets the big dial, and carbs and fat get the size they deserve.

  • 1.It keeps you fuller than carbs or fat do. Not the most filling thing on a plate, that is volume and water. But of the three it is the one that settles the four o'clock argument.
  • 2.It keeps what you meant to keep. Losing weight costs muscle as well as fat. Enough protein keeps the loss on the side you meant.
  • 3.It is one decision, not three. Build the plate around the protein and the carbs and the fat land roughly where they should. One thing per meal is a habit. Three is a spreadsheet.

the one number you reach, not avoid

Protein first
134
of 130 g
target reached
It learns you

Explain something once. It stops asking.

Week one it asks, because it has never met your kitchen. Every answer and every correction gets written down, in a sentence you can read and delete. A few weeks in, your usual food goes through in silence, and logging is a photo and nothing else.

Week 1 · Breakfast

A white tub in a bowl, and it genuinely cannot tell which one. So it asks, because the answer is worth fourteen grams of protein.

Yoghurt, or skyr?
Skyr, the 0% one.
That night · 04:00

It reads back over the day while nobody is waiting, and writes down the one thing it learned. One sentence, in plain words.

Skyr: eats the 0% one, not yoghurt.

Filed under what it knows about you. Delete it there if it is wrong.

Week 3 · The same breakfast

Same tub, same bowl. No question this time.

Skyr with berries
Breakfast · no questions
214
31 g protein
Leaned on: 0% skyr, the way you usually log it. Wrong for once? Say so and it drops the assumption.
right first time.
What it knows about you 11 things
Skyringredientseen 14×

Eats the 0% skyr, not yoghurt.

Kitchen scalemethodtold once

Tares the scale before every addition, so a reading is the thing just added, never the bowl.

Chicken breastportionseen 9×

Lands around 180 g, so a portion estimate starts there.

Bonne Maman confiturebrandseen 6×

The jar was on the table once, label and all. 250 kcal per 100 g, carried to every slice since.

This screen is in the app. Nothing on it was typed into a settings form. It all came out of meals you photographed and things you said about them, and every line has a delete next to it.

It never overrules the plate. A label in the photo comes first, then what is visibly on the plate, then what you typed on this meal, and only then what it remembers. And whenever it leans on a memory, it says so on the meal, so you can catch it being wrong.

Photo now, log it later

Snap it at the table. Log it from the couch.

The photo takes two seconds and nobody at the table notices. People have been photographing dinner since 2015, with better lighting and worse reasons. The logging waits for you: at eleven, horizontal, you go through the day in one pass. Answer the question it had, nudge the portion you know it overshot, day closed.

Honest numbers

A photo gives a good guess, not a lab result. Snapkin says which is which.

Every ingredient shows the assumption behind it, and the meal says how sure it is overall. When it is guessing, it says so. When it is wrong, you say so, and it shows the before and after.

Because somebody will ask: across a 60-meal benchmark, the model behind this lands a median 18% from the true figure, with 42% at the ninetieth percentile. That is the number, not a rounder one. It is why the app writes down what it assumed instead of just handing you a total.

Argue with it

Every meal has a chat. "The rice was more like half that." It moves the number, shows what changed, and tells you why it thought otherwise.

Everything undoes

Every answer, every correction, every edit. Nothing you tap is a commitment.

Targets that know their direction

Protein is a floor to reach. Calories, carbs and fat are ceilings to stay under. The dials know the difference, so "over" on protein is a win, not a warning.

Ask what to eat next

The coach reads today's numbers and your meal library, and answers "what should I have for dinner?" with meals that fit what you have left.

No signal, no problem

Photograph the meal anyway. It queues on your phone and uploads itself when you are back online.

Weight, without typing it

Step on a Withings scale and the trend updates on its own. The point of all this, on one screen.

Why this one sticks

You did not fail the last five trackers. They asked too much.

They all work, technically. Then Thursday happens and you cannot face weighing rice again. Tracking has to be effortless or it stops, so Snapkin removed the effort instead of asking you for more discipline.

Every other tracker

  • Weigh every ingredient, including the oil
  • Scan the barcode, if there is one
  • Search a database with fourteen kinds of oatmeal
  • Build the recipe, portion the recipe, save the recipe
  • Quit by week two

Snapkin

  • Take a photo.
  • Look at the protein.

Restaurant plate, home cooking, packaging, a nutrition label, half a leftover pizza: photograph it and it gets estimated. Several photos of the same meal are welcome; a shot of the ingredients before they go in the pan makes the estimate sharper.

Not forever

You need this for a few months, not for the rest of your life.

The goal was never to log every meal until you die. It is to find out what your food actually costs you, in calories and in protein, until you can call it yourself.

Week 1 to 2

Everything is a surprise

The oil in the pan was 300 kcal. The salad beat the burger. The meal you were sure was loaded with protein had 18 grams in it. Most of what you learn early, you learn by being wrong.

Month 1 to 2

You start guessing right

You photograph the plate and you have already called the number before the app answers. The gap between your guess and the estimate closes, meal after meal.

After that

You just know

You can look at a plate and land close without thinking about it, and you know which meals get you to your protein without doing the sums. That part stays with you when the app is closed.

Drifting away from it is the point. Stay if you like the numbers, plenty of people do. But if you stop opening it after a few months because you no longer need it, that is the app having worked, not you having failed. When life goes sideways and you want to recalibrate, it is still here, with every meal you already logged.

The actual app

Not a mockup. These are screens from the app itself.

The day so far: 1,367 of 2,200 kcal eaten, 833 left, protein on 124 g of 165 with 41 g to go, and the three meals logged underneath.
Your day, protein first
One meal opened up: 645 kcal marked Best guess, the three macros, and the four ingredients it found with the grams and calories it gave each.
One meal, itemised
Questions

The things people ask before they install it.

Mostly some version of "yes, but does it actually work".

How accurate is a calorie estimate from a photo?

Across a 60-meal benchmark, the model behind Snapkin lands a median 18% from the true figure, with 42% at the ninetieth percentile. That is good enough to run a deficit on and not good enough to call a measurement, which is why the app shows the assumption behind every ingredient instead of handing over a total. A weighed, database-logged meal is more accurate on paper; the one you actually log every day beats the one you abandon in week two.

Do I have to weigh my food or scan barcodes?

No. There is no scale, no barcode scanner and no food database to search. You photograph the plate and Snapkin sizes each portion against the plate and the cutlery. If you happen to know a weight you can say so in the meal chat, and it will use it.

Does it work with restaurant food and home cooking?

Both, and that is the point: restaurant plates and home cooking are exactly the meals a barcode cannot help with. Photograph a restaurant plate, a home-cooked dinner, a packet, a nutrition label, or half a leftover pizza. Several photos of the same meal are welcome, and a shot of the ingredients before they go in the pan makes the estimate sharper.

Why does Snapkin put protein first?

Protein is the only macro you are trying to reach rather than stay under, and it decides what the rest of the day looks like: it settles the four o'clock argument better than carbs or fat do, it keeps the weight you lose on the side you meant, and building a plate around it lands the other two roughly where they should be. So it gets the big dial and carbs and fat get the size they deserve.

How much does Snapkin cost, and is there a free version?

One subscription, billed monthly by the App Store or Google Play, which charge in your own currency and show you the price and tax for your country before you confirm. There is no free tier, no trial and no upsells later. Cancel in the store any time.

Does it work without an internet connection?

Photograph the meal anyway. It queues on your phone and uploads itself when you are back online, so a basement restaurant or a plane does not become a gap in the day.

What happens if I do not answer its questions?

Nothing breaks. Every question is optional and "I do not know" is always on the list. The meal is on your day from the photo onwards; an answer only sharpens the estimate. Everything you do answer is undoable.

Does it get better the more I use it?

Week one it asks a lot, because it has never met your kitchen. Every answer and correction gets written down as a sentence you can read and delete, so a few weeks in your usual food goes through in silence. It never overrules the plate: a label in the photo comes first, then what is visibly there, then what you typed on this meal, and only then what it remembers.

Do I have to track forever?

No, and drifting away from it is the point. The goal is to find out what your food actually costs you until you can call it yourself, which most people can after a few months. If you stop opening it because you no longer need it, that is the app having worked.

What happens to my food photos and my data?

The privacy policy says exactly what is stored, who else sees it and how long it is kept. You can delete your account and everything in it from inside the app, immediately and without asking anybody, or request it from the delete-account page if you cannot sign in.

Next time you eat something, take a photo.

That is the whole habit, and it survives restaurants, holidays and Thursdays, because there is nothing to keep up.

€24.99 a month, billed by the store, cancel there any time.

one subscription, no free tier, no upsells later.