MyRealFood and Open Food Facts compared, plus how Yuka and El CoCo score additives, processing and nutrition straight from a barcode.
You are halfway down the supermarket aisle with a trolley half full, and the label in your hand lists twenty ingredients in six-point type. Scanning the barcode and getting a verdict in two seconds is the realistic version of reading it. The catch is that no two scanners judge a product the same way: one rewards a low Nutri-Score letter, another flags the processing level, and a third applies its own weighted formula. The 2 apps in this guide sit at opposite ends of that choice — an independent open database and a movement-driven scanner with recipes — and the FAQs also explain where Yuka and El CoCo fit, so you can scan knowing what each score actually means.
MyRealFood sorts every barcode into real food, well-processed or ultra-processed, then adds recipes and a meal planner for acting on the verdict.
Born from the Spanish realfooding movement, MyRealFood scans a product and places it in one of three groups: real food, well-processed or ultra-processed. That clear-cut classification is the app's reason to exist, and it goes further than a bare scanner by pairing the diagnosis with thousands of recipes and a meal planner, so the scan turns into tonight's shopping and cooking. The limitation is the same as the strength: the sorting follows one particular school of nutrition thought and is less objective than simply reading the label, and the full recipe catalogue sits behind a subscription. Its database is built around Spanish supermarket products.
Pros
Clear real, well-processed and ultra-processed split
Open Food Facts is the non-profit, ad-free database behind many other scanners — open data with Nutri-Score, NOVA and eco-score, no commercial agenda.
Built by volunteers, Open Food Facts supplies data to a good chunk of the other apps in this category. Scanning a product shows the public Nutri-Score letter, the NOVA processing group and the environmental eco-score, rather than a proprietary grade the app invented itself. There are no ads, no paywall and no company behind it pushing its own interests, and anyone can verify or download the data. The trade-off is coverage: rarely scanned products can be missing or incomplete, the interface is plainer than Yuka's, and the whole project depends on volunteers keeping the database alive.
Pros
Non-profit, open data and no advertising
Nutri-Score, NOVA and eco-score shown together
Anyone can verify or download the database
Cons
Patchy entries for rarely scanned products
Plainer interface than Yuka
Relies on volunteers to stay current
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
How reliable are the scores these apps give?
Reliability depends on how each score is built. El CoCo and Open Food Facts use Nutri-Score and NOVA, public systems anyone can inspect; Yuka applies its own algorithm weighting nutrition, additives and organic status, and that weighting is a company decision not every nutritionist agrees with. Treat all of them as screening tools rather than a replacement for professional dietary advice.
What are Nutri-Score and the NOVA classification?
They measure two different things and complement each other. Nutri-Score grades nutritional quality from A to E using sugar, salt, saturated fat, fibre and protein. NOVA ignores nutrients and instead ranks foods by how heavily they are processed, from unprocessed to ultra-processed. The same product can earn a good Nutri-Score letter while sitting in NOVA group 4, which is why checking both tells you more than either alone.
Which is the best free food scanner app?
Open Food Facts is completely free — no ads, no subscriptions — because a non-profit association runs it. El CoCo is also free and genuinely usable day to day. Yuka and MyRealFood reserve part of their feature set for the paid plan, though the basic barcode scan works without paying.
Do they recognise Spanish supermarket own brands?
El CoCo and MyRealFood cover Spanish supermarkets best because they are national projects, and they reliably recognise own brands from Mercadona, Carrefour and DIA. Yuka and Open Food Facts depend on someone having scanned that exact product before; when it is missing, every one of these apps lets you add it yourself.
More related apps
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