Is Lose It!'s Barcode Scanner Still Free?

That split is why the search results feel broken. You are not misreading them. The sources really do disagree, and the rest of this page explains why.

Look it up and you get two confident, opposite answers. A review from March 2026 says the scanner works free on every platform. A pricing guide from February 2026 says new free accounts find Scan It locked. User reports split the same way.

Both are describing the same app honestly. So we ran the test ourselves: we created a brand-new Lose It! account in August 2026, and the barcode scanner came up as a Premium feature. Put that next to the older reviews and the picture is clear — Lose It! grandfathered existing accounts when it moved Scan It into Premium. If your account is a few years old, nothing changed for you. If you signed up recently, you hit a paywall on day one.

In other words: the variable isn't the app version. It's your account's age. Two people can hold the same phone, open the same app, and get different answers.

One honesty note: we couldn't find an official announcement from Lose It! about the change — the paywall itself is the only documentation. If your own account still scans free, that's the grandfathering at work, not a contradiction.

Lose It! Premium lists at $79.99 per year as of 2026 — roughly double what it cost a few years ago. That buys the scanner plus photo logging, the fasting tools, and an ad-free diary.

Zoom out and this is a pattern, not a one-off. MyFitnessPal moved its scanner behind Premium in 2022, and the backlash still shows up in its reviews. Scanners are one of the most-used buttons in any tracker, which makes them one of the most tempting things to paywall.

1. Pay the $79.99. A fair deal if you actually want the rest of Premium — the photo logging and fasting timers are real features. A bad deal if the scanner is the only thing you miss.

2. Log by search. Lose It!'s free tier still lets you find foods by typing. It works. It's just slower, and slower logging is how tracking habits die.

3. Use a tracker that keeps scanning free. The Macros.gg barcode scanner is free for every account, new or old. A scan is a simple lookup against the food database — it costs almost nothing to serve, so we don't charge for it. And everything free in Macros.gg stays free; that's a standing commitment, not a promo.

If you're weighing the switch, the full Lose It! vs Macros.gg comparison maps every paywall in both apps, feature by feature.