Carb Manager review

Basic Account and Premium Account, row by row

Across the 41 rows in the Premium page table, Basic Account has a check on three. The Premium subscription help article says a trophy icon marks an app feature that needs Premium.

How Carb Manager counts net carbs and total carbs

The help article on allulose describes the app's calculation as total carbs with fiber, sugar alcohols and allulose taken out. Allulose joined that calculation in 2022. The getting started help article places Carbs to Track under Settings and App Settings, with net carbs selected by default. The setting offers net carbs and total carbs among its choices.

Net carb tracking is described as free in the App Store listing and also in the Google Play listing. Total carbs remain available to view. Google Play names both total and net carbs among core nutrition details. The daily progress chart help article describes a Total Carbs choice in My Week, and the Apple Health sync help article says only total carbs are sent to Apple Health, even with net carbs selected in Carb Manager.

Carb Manager's 2026 article on net carbs calls total carbohydrates minus dietary fiber the most common formula in general. The app's own calculation also removes sugar alcohols and allulose, as described in the allulose help article. That article says allulose values appear only when a brand has supplied them to the data providers.

The sugar alcohol help article says some branded food data omits sugar alcohols, affecting the net carb figure. It allows a user to correct missing or inaccurate values for their own account without changing Carb Manager's database. The getting started help article says the carb setting matters especially in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK because labels there leave fiber out of carbohydrate values. Our nutrition label guide covers reading the carbohydrate, fiber and sugar alcohol lines.

Setting a carb target in Carb Manager

The Macros Calculator help article places the calculator under Goal Settings. A user can select a diet ratio or choose Custom and enter grams for each macro. The diet settings help article also describes entering custom ratio percentages. Carb Manager's getting started help article says the first-run wizard sets a default plan called Keto.

The detailed goals help article includes Total Carbs and Net Carbs as values to stay above or stay below. Applying those goals to selected days needs Premium. The Macros Calculator help article also reserves different goals by day of the week for Premium, along with Smart Macros. Smart Macros adjusts macro goals as logged weight changes and prevents hand edits to those goals while it is on.

According to the meal goals help article, default meal goals divide the day equally across meals with a smaller share for one snack. Meal goals are set as shares of daily calories. Premium allows customizing or turning off those meal goals. When meal reminders and meal goals are on, reminders include each meal's carbs goal. The barcode help article describes a Premium view of a food's macros as a share of its meal goal.

Explicit confirmation that a Basic Account can set a carb goal in grams is Not stated. The Macros Calculator help article has no Premium label on its Custom grams steps, and the Macros Tracker feature page calls macro goals for the Keto diet setting always free. A 2022 getting started article instead lists goal tracking under Premium without defining the term. The macro counting guide covers working out targets in grams.

Ways to log food, and which plan each needs

• Food search covers the database and a user's saved foods. The food and recipe search help article lists common foods, member foods and branded foods from the US, Canada, UK and Australia. The Carb Manager home page counts more than 1 million foods, and the Premium page table includes food logging on Basic Account.
• Barcode scanning is free in the mobile app according to the barcode help article, updated July 10, 2026, and the App Store listing calls scanning free too. The Premium page places its barcode scanner among Premium features. That page's data gives November 24, 2021 as its last publication date.
• Photo logging is a Premium feature on the Carb Manager home page and on the Food Tracker feature page. No current help article describes photo logging. The daily log overview, updated July 10, 2026, lists barcodes, speaking and copying but does not list pictures.
• Voice logging requires Premium and the mobile app. The voice logging help article describes saying a food and portion so Carb Manager can search its databases.
• Natural language logging is a Premium row in the Premium page table. Separately, the food and recipe search help article describes typing several foods and amounts into the search field and logging them with Multi-Add. The plan for that search method is Not stated.
• AI or chat-based food logging is Not stated in the pages read, including the daily log overview. Logging from a photo of a nutrition label is also Not stated.
• The Quick Add help article covers entering nutrition by hand. The custom food help article covers adding foods, while the custom recipe help article describes calculating nutrition from entered ingredients. The entry copying help article covers reusing entries, and the recurring food help article describes automatic entries on selected days. The plan for each of these tools is Not stated.
• The custom meal creation help article has no plan label for making a custom meal. The custom meal logging help article says logging one requires Premium.

Recipes, meal plans and shopping lists

The food and recipe search help article separates more than 5,000 Premium recipes from Carb Manager's kitchens from 360,000 web recipes for Premium members. Free users receive three Premium recipes a day through Recipes of the Day, while Premium access is unlimited. The Premium page describes Basic recipes as member-submitted.

Recipe counts vary across Carb Manager's pages. The home page gives 3,000 or more exclusive recipes. Both the App Store listing and the Google Play listing put 5,000 or more recipes under Premium. The feature summary page gives 50,000 or more recipes from chefs and members, and the recipes page also gives 50,000 or more. The recipe import help article says importing recipes from some websites needs Premium.

The meal plan help article describes three Premium plan types. Custom plans can cover up to 30 days ahead, and curated plans from Carb Manager's chefs cover 7 days. The generated meal plan help article says generated plans use dietary preferences and food intolerances or aversions. The shopping list help article places shopping lists in Premium, made from a started meal plan and foods logged for a future date.

What Carb Manager Premium costs over a year

The Carb Manager Premium page opens at $3.33 a month billed annually. Switching to quarterly shows $5.50 a month billed quarterly. A badge says Save 39 percent in both positions without naming the comparison behind that figure. Neither position states a yearly or quarterly total, and there is no displayed monthly option.

The Premium subscription help article names yearly, quarterly and monthly billing. The description on the App Store listing names only an annual subscription. That listing has ten in-app purchase entries.

• Three items named 1 Year, at $29.99, $39.99 and $59.99.
• One Year at $39.99.
• Premium Annual at $49.99.
• Premium Annual Special at $24.99.
• 3 Months at $16.49.
• 1 Month at $8.49.
• Premium Monthly at $19.99.
• Carb Manager Premium at $49.99, with no period in its name.

No Carb Manager page says which of these items a new US subscriber is charged. The Google Play listing shows in-app purchases but gives no plan names or prices. Free trial length is Not stated on any Carb Manager page or listing read.

The displayed figures give these yearly amounts through arithmetic.

• Using the Premium page figure, 12 payments of $3.33 come to $39.96, close to the $39.99 item named 1 Year on the App Store listing.
• The quarterly figure on the Premium page is $5.50 a month, making $16.50 for a quarter and $66.00 for four quarters. Four purchases of the 3 Months item at $16.49 on the App Store listing instead total $65.96.
• For the 1 Month item on the App Store listing, 12 payments of $8.49 come to $101.88.
• For the item named Premium Monthly on the App Store listing, 12 payments of $19.99 come to $239.88. Its period is known only from its name.

The MyFitnessPal Premium price breakdown covers how another tracker's paid plan is priced.

Store ratings on October 16, 2026

The App Store listing shows 4.8 out of 5 from 736K ratings and names Wombat Apps LLC as developer. The Google Play listing also names Wombat Apps LLC and shows 4.8, with 167K reviews at the top and 164K reviews in its Ratings and reviews section, plus 5 million or more downloads. These figures belong to the stores, and this page assigns no score of its own.

How TrueCal handles carbs and logging

The TrueCal fact sheet puts manual calorie logging on the free plan. Free accounts see calories, while Pro shows protein, carbohydrates and fat and includes typed descriptions, voice, photos and barcodes for logging. A carb target is Not stated on TrueCal's pages, and net carbs inside TrueCal are Not stated. The TrueCal pricing page lists Pro at $29.99 a year or $9.99 a month.

The TrueCal fact sheet names USDA FoodData Central, FatSecret, Open Food Facts and published restaurant and brand information among its sources. It says every nutrition number must come from a source or the user. More app comparisons appear on TrueCal's comparison page.

Carb Manager, asked and answered