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Balanza

A free calorie counter in ten languages. Photograph a meal, scan a barcode or type a few words; track water, sugar and every weigh-in; the AI does the numbers, and the daily target corrects itself from your weight trend. With a weight widget for the home screen, on Android and iPhone.

Download on the App StoreDownload on Google Play Ghid de calorii (română) →Таблица с калории (български) →
Balanza - today's screen: calories left and nutrient metrics
Balanza - add a food: describe it, photograph the meal or scan a barcode
Balanza - progress: weight trend and what affected it
Balanza - settings: reminders, intermittent fasting and language

Balanza is a free calorie counter for Android and iPhone in ten languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Russian and Czech. You photograph a meal, type a few words or scan a barcode; the AI works out the calories and the protein; and a daily target keeps correcting itself from the way your weight actually moves, week after week. Water and sugar sit on the home screen too. No account, no subscription, no photo archive.

Seven ways to log a meal

All of it starts from one add screen. It opens with a field on top, where you type what you ate, and a big photo button underneath; My foods, the barcode scanner, saved meals, the nutrition label and manual entry are one tap away, and your recent foods wait below, each with a plus button.

Whatever the path, everything lands on one confirmation screen where the quantity and the values can be fixed, and every correction is remembered in your own food list for next time. Drinks are measured in ml (or fl oz in imperial units), and a whole cake or pot can be divided into pieces, so logging asks how many pieces you ate.

The home screen: calories, protein, water and sugar

And on the phone's own home screen, on Android and on iPhone, a weight widget shows your weight and reminds you on weigh-in mornings to step on the scale.

Your day, your hours

You choose the hour your day starts, for late nights and night shifts, so a snack after midnight still counts toward the day you are living, and you choose the first day of your week.

Started in under a minute

The first run starts with food, not with a form: you log something you ate, and then one sentence about yourself is enough for Balanza to set your daily target. Everything else, from reminders to your diet type, waits in Settings for when you want it: one short screen with your daily target on top, and help and your account in small screens of their own.

A target that learns from your scale

Most calorie apps give you a number on day one and never look at it again. Balanza starts the same way, with the Mifflin-St Jeor formula, your activity level and the pace you chose. Then, once a week, it compares what you logged with how your weight really changed, estimates your true daily expenditure and moves the target a little. If you under-log by a steady 15 percent, the target absorbs it. Every change is explained in plain words on the progress screen, and guard rails keep the number from jumping. Training days get their own target, and the diary and the weekly chart measure them against it.

Your diet, recognised

Pick a diet during onboarding or in Settings: no restrictions, Orthodox fasting, vegetarian, vegan, keto or low-carb, gluten-free or lactose-free. Photo and text recognition then understand what is really on the plate: a vegan's schnitzel is recognised as a plant-based schnitzel, with its own values.

What the progress screen shows

Ten languages, one app

Balanza picks the language of your phone and lets you switch in Settings, on Android and on the iPhone alike. The whole app follows: the interface, the day and month names, the first day of the week (Monday, or the day you choose), the number format, and the AI itself, which names the foods and the portions in your language. Every translation was written by a person who speaks the language and reviewed a second time before release.

Privacy and sources

There is no sign-up. Each install gets an anonymous id; the diary is tied to that id and to nothing else, and a button in Settings deletes it from the server. Food photos are never stored. The formulas and the databases the app relies on, EFSA and WHO among them, are listed inside it, each with a link to the original publication, together with a clear note that the app is a diary with a calculator and not medical advice.

The story

Balanza is the international edition of Maazan, a Hebrew nutrition app on Google Play and the App Store since 2025. The Hebrew app is right-to-left, knows Israeli products and starts the week on Sunday; Balanza is the same engine rebuilt for left-to-right languages, international food databases and a Monday week, so that friends and family abroad get the same tool in their own language. The two apps share their code and their lessons, and every improvement in one reaches the other.

Links

Technology

Android · Google PlayiPhone · App Store10 languagesMeal recognition from a photoSelf-calibrating targetWater trackingWeight widgetFasting read from the diaryReact Native + Expo

FAQ

What is Balanza?

Balanza is a free calorie counter and food diary for Android and iPhone. You log what you eat in seven ways, from a photo of the plate, a few words or a barcode to a picture of the nutrition label, a database search, your own foods and saved meals or by hand; the AI works out calories, protein, carbs and fat, and the app keeps a daily target for calories and protein that adjusts itself to the way your weight actually moves. Water and sugar sit on the home screen next to them.

Which languages does Balanza speak?

Ten: English, Spanish, Portuguese (European), Romanian, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Russian and Czech, the same ten on Android and on the iPhone. The app picks the language of your phone and you can change it any time in Settings. The AI answers in the same language: a meal described in Greek gets a Greek name and Greek portion words.

How does the photo recognition work?

You take a picture of the meal (or pick one from the gallery). The photo is shrunk on the phone, sent to an AI model that lists the foods it sees with an estimated weight for each, and the result comes back as a list you can correct before saving. The photo itself is not stored anywhere: once the answer is back, it is gone. On Android you can also share a meal photo into Balanza straight from the gallery or from WhatsApp.

How accurate are the calorie estimates?

Good enough to see a trend, not a laboratory. A photo estimate is usually within 10 to 20 percent of the real value; a barcode scan of a packaged product is exact because the numbers come from the label; a text entry lands in between. The app is built around this: the daily target corrects itself from your weight, so a consistent bias in the logging is absorbed over the weeks.

What does "the target adjusts itself" mean?

On day one the target comes from a standard formula (Mifflin-St Jeor) plus your activity level and how fast you want to lose or gain. From then on, once a week, the app compares what you logged with how your weight actually changed, estimates your real daily expenditure and moves the target a little in the right direction. Every change is explained in plain words on the progress screen, and there are guard rails so the target never jumps.

How long does it take to get started?

Less than a minute. The first run starts with food: you log something you ate, and then one sentence about yourself is enough for Balanza to set your daily target. Everything else can wait for Settings.

Does Balanza track water?

Yes. A glass on the home screen fills up as you log your drinks, and the amount is shown exactly: 1.25 L, not rounded. The daily goal follows the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) guidance, an optional reminder nudges you during the day, and you can count in millilitres or in fluid ounces.

Why is sugar shown as a limit and not a goal?

Because more is not better. Sugar sits on the home screen as an upper limit, set from the World Health Organization (WHO) advice to keep sugars under 10 percent of your daily calories, so you see at a glance how much room is left today.

What does the add screen look like?

It opens with a field on top: type what you ate, or tap the big photo button to photograph the meal or pick it from the gallery. My foods, the barcode scanner, saved meals, the nutrition label and manual entry are one tap away, and your recent foods sit underneath, each with a plus button. From My foods you can also search the food database directly.

I forgot to log a day. Can I fill it in later?

Yes. The last seven days sit at the top of the home screen: tap the day you missed and add what you ate. When yesterday is still empty, a card in the morning reminds you.

My day ends after midnight. Does a late snack count for the right day?

Yes. In Settings you choose the hour your day starts, for late nights and night shifts, so what you eat after midnight still counts toward the day you are living. You also choose the first day of your week.

Can I see all my weigh-ins?

Yes. On the progress screen the weight card switches from a chart to a table: every weigh-in with the change since the previous one and since the start, and a summary for each month.

Is there a widget for the home screen?

Yes, on Android and on iPhone: a weight widget puts your weight on the phone's home screen, and on weigh-in mornings it reminds you to step on the scale.

Can I log the meals I always eat faster?

Yes, in two ways. The add screen suggests what you usually eat at this hour, so a regular breakfast is logged with one tap. And any set of foods can be saved as a meal with a name of your choice and logged again in one go; a saved meal stays linked to the foods in it, so a correction to one food updates the meal too.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no email and no password. Each install gets an anonymous id, and everything you log belongs to that id only. Deleting the app deletes the diary from your phone; the Settings screen also has a button that deletes everything from the server.

Is Balanza free? Are there ads?

Free, with a small banner at the bottom of the diary and the progress screen. There is no subscription and no paid tier: every feature is available to everyone.

Where do the nutrition values come from?

Packaged products come from Open Food Facts and USDA FoodData Central, matched by barcode or name. Fresh food and cooked dishes are estimated by the AI from standard nutrition tables. Anything you correct is remembered in your own food list and used first next time.

What is the weekly overview?

At the start of each week a card on the home screen sums up the week that just ended. The progress screen shows any week as a whole: average calories and protein per day, how many days landed on target, the weight trend and the change in your daily target. It is the place to look when one day went badly and you want to know whether it matters.

How does the intermittent fasting feature work?

Balanza does not run a timer. It reads the diary: the gap between the last entry of one day and the first entry of the next is your fasting window, and the app shows it on the progress screen. If you already fast 14 or 16 hours, you see it without doing anything extra.

Can Balanza tell a vegan schnitzel from a chicken one?

Yes. Pick a diet during onboarding or in Settings (no restrictions, Orthodox fasting, vegetarian, vegan, keto or low-carb, gluten-free or lactose-free), and photo and text recognition take it into account. When someone who chose vegan photographs a schnitzel, it is logged as a plant-based schnitzel with its own values, not as chicken. The choice can be changed any time in Settings.

Is there an iPhone version?

Yes. Balanza is on the App Store and on Google Play, in all ten languages on both, with the same features: the add screen, the last seven days, the weigh-ins table and the weight widget for the home screen.

Is Balanza medical advice?

No. It is a diary with a calculator. The formulas and the sources are listed inside the app, with a link to each original publication, and the app says so on the first screen: anyone with a medical condition, pregnant, under 18 or with a history of eating disorders should talk to a doctor or a dietitian before changing what they eat.

What happens to my data?

Your diary, your weight entries and your settings are stored on a server so they survive a phone change through the export feature. They are tied to an anonymous id, never to a name or an email. Food photos are never stored. The full privacy policy is at balanza.pages.dev/privacy.

Why another app when there is Maazan?

Because Maazan is written in Hebrew, right to left, with Israeli products and a Sunday-first week. Balanza is the same app rebuilt for left-to-right languages, a Monday-first week and international food databases, so someone abroad, or a friend who does not read Hebrew, gets the same tool in their own language.

Who makes Balanza?

Asaf Bendor, an independent developer in Israel, as the international edition of Maazan, a Hebrew nutrition app that has been on Google Play and the App Store since 2025. Balanza is the same app, rebuilt for left-to-right languages, a Monday-first week and metric units in ten languages.