Eat This Much and AskBeforeYouEat solve the same problem — eating better — but from completely different angles. Eat This Much is an automatic meal planner that tells you what to eat before you eat it. ABYE is an AI-powered tracker and coach that helps you understand what you're already eating and adjust from there. One plans ahead; the other meets you where you are.
| Feature | AskBeforeYouEat | Eat This Much |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever, all features | Free tier / $5/mo annual ($59.99/yr) / $14.99/mo |
| Core Approach | Track & coach — understand what you eat | Plan ahead — automated meal plans |
| Food Logging | Natural language + AI photo | Planned meals auto-logged; manual entry limited |
| Meal Planning | AI coach suggests meals on request | Fully automated weekly plans with recipes |
| Grocery Lists | Not built in | Automatic with Instacart/AmazonFresh delivery |
| AI Coaching | ✓ Built-in, conversational | No coaching — plan-based only |
| Adaptive Algorithm | ✓ Prime# adjusts targets over time | Static calorie/macro targets |
| Weight Tracking | Moving average smoothing | Basic weight log |
| Diet Styles | Flexible — no rigid categories | Vegan, paleo, keto, custom styles |
| Platform | Web app (any device) | Web + iOS + Android |
| App Store Rating | New | 4.7 iOS (22K+ reviews) · 4.6 Android (10K+) |
Eat This Much tackles the hardest part of healthy eating: deciding what to cook. The app generates complete meal plans based on your calorie and macro targets, dietary preferences, and even what's already in your fridge. You tell it your goals, pick your eating style — vegan, paleo, keto, or something custom — and it builds a full week of meals with recipes and step-by-step instructions.
The grocery list feature is genuinely useful. Once your meal plan is set, the app generates a shopping list automatically. The Instacart and AmazonFresh integrations mean you can go from plan to delivery without leaving the app. For people who waste food because they buy ingredients without a plan, this alone can save real money.
Eat This Much has been around since 2013, featured in the Washington Post, The Guardian, and Healthline. It has strong app store ratings — 4.7 on iOS with over 22,000 reviews, 4.6 on Android with 10,100+. The community of users who've lost significant weight using the structured meal planning approach is substantial and well-documented.
The pantry feature is a smart touch: add ingredients you already have, and the algorithm prioritizes recipes that use them up before they go to waste. It's a small thing that shows the app understands how people actually live.
The core limitation is philosophical: Eat This Much assumes you'll follow a plan. Real life doesn't always cooperate. Work lunches, social dinners, travel, kids' leftovers, the midnight snack you weren't planning on — the app doesn't have a great answer for meals that deviate from the plan. When life goes off-script, the tracking breaks down.
The free tier is limited. You get one meal per day generated, and most of the useful features — full-day planning, grocery lists, the pantry system, and multiple plan regeneration — require the $5/month Premium subscription ($59.99/year) or $14.99 month-to-month. It's not expensive compared to competitors, but it's not free.
Eat This Much doesn't coach. It plans, but it doesn't help you understand why you went over your target on Tuesday or how to think about a week where you traveled and couldn't follow the plan. There's no adaptive algorithm watching your weight trends and adjusting — your targets stay where you set them unless you manually update.
The app also works best for people who cook at home regularly. If you eat out frequently, order delivery, or grab food on the go, the meal planning model is less useful because the plans are built around specific recipes with specific ingredients.
ABYE doesn't try to tell you what to eat. It asks what you ate and helps you understand what it means. Describe your lunch in plain English — "chicken burrito bowl with rice, black beans, salsa, and sour cream" — and the AI parses it instantly. No recipe selection, no plan adherence, no stress about going off-script. Your actual eating patterns are the starting point, not someone else's meal plan.
ABYE's built-in AI coach can answer questions like "what should I eat for dinner to hit my protein target?" or "is this meal a good choice?" It provides personalized guidance based on what you've already eaten that day, your goals, and your patterns. Eat This Much gives you a plan on Monday; ABYE gives you a thought partner at every meal.
The Prime# algorithm in ABYE continuously adjusts your calorie and macro targets based on your actual weight trends and eating behavior. Week one targets won't match week eight targets because your body has changed. Eat This Much calculates your needs once from a standard formula and holds that number constant — you're responsible for updating it when things shift.
Every feature in ABYE — macro tracking, AI coaching, photo logging, adaptive algorithm, weight trend smoothing — is free from day one. No premium tier, no feature gates, no trial period. Eat This Much's meaningful features cost $5/month. Over a year, that's $60 you could spend on groceries instead.
Eat This Much is the right tool if you cook at home most days and want someone (or something) to decide what you're making. If meal decision fatigue is your biggest barrier — not knowing what to cook, not wanting to plan, not wanting to waste food — the automated planning and grocery list features genuinely solve that problem. The structured approach works well for people who prefer to follow a system rather than make choices in the moment.
ABYE is the better fit if you want:
Actually, yes — and some people should. Use Eat This Much for weekly meal planning and grocery shopping, then use ABYE to track what you actually ate (which may differ from the plan) and get AI coaching to adjust. The tools complement rather than compete. ABYE's free price tag makes adding it to any workflow a zero-risk decision.
Eat This Much excels at answering "what should I eat this week?" ABYE excels at answering "how am I actually doing?" One is a planner; the other is a coach. If you need structure and recipes, Eat This Much delivers. If you want intelligence, flexibility, and adaptive guidance — all for free — AskBeforeYouEat is the tool that grows with you.
AI coaching, adaptive targets, natural language logging. No meal plan required. No cost, ever.
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