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Free Tool

Meal Photo Calorie Estimator

Upload a photo of your meal. AI spots the foods, a real food database does the counting, and you can fix any portion. Free, no signup, photo never stored.

Upload a photo of your meal

Tap to take or choose a photo. A top-down shot of the plate works best.

Your photo stays private.We analyze it once, then throw it away. Never saved, never shared, no account needed.

How the photo calorie estimate works

  1. Your browser shrinks the photo, then it goes to Anthropic's Claude vision model once.
  2. The model lists the foods it can see and guesses each portion's weight in grams. It is not allowed to output calories or macros.
  3. Each food is matched to a real entry in the USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts databases, and the database supplies the calories, protein, carbs and fat for that weight.
  4. You review the list. Fix a weight, remove a wrong food, or type numbers for anything the database could not match. Totals update as you edit.

The weights are the guess, and the nutrition is the database. Weight is where photos go wrong most often (oil in the pan, sauce under the food, how deep the bowl is), so that is the part we make easy to correct.

Tips for a better estimate

  • Shoot from above in good light, with the whole plate in frame.
  • Keep foods separate where you can. A pile of mixed food is hard to read.
  • Add cooking oil, butter and dressings by hand. They are easy to miss and calorie-dense.
  • If you cook the same meal often, weigh it once on a food scale and reuse those weights.

What to do with the number

Compare it with your daily target from the TDEE calculator, plan the rest of the week with the meal planner, or browse high-protein recipes that already have macros on the card. To work out a dish you cook yourself, use the recipe macro calculator.

Frequently asked questions

Is this AI calorie counter from a photo really free?

Yes. It is free, there is no app to download and no trial or signup to see your result. Because each photo is a paid AI call, analysis is limited to 5 photos per hour from the same network. Entering an email is optional and only needed if you want to log the meal in a free baisics account.

How does it estimate calories from a meal photo?

In two steps. First, an AI vision model (Anthropic Claude) lists the foods it can see and estimates the weight of each portion in grams. Second, each food is looked up in a real food database (USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts) and the database supplies the calories, protein, carbs and fat for that weight. The AI never makes up nutrition numbers.

How accurate is a photo calorie estimate?

It is an estimate, and the portion weight is the weak link: a photo cannot show how much oil went into the pan, what sauce is under the food, or how deep a bowl is. We have not validated this tool against weighed meals, so we do not claim a percentage. That is why every food is an editable row: change a weight and the totals update instantly. A food scale beats any photo.

What if the tool cannot find a food in the database?

That row is marked as having no database match, and its numbers are left for you to enter or you can remove it. We do not let the AI guess nutrition values for it, so you always know which numbers came from a database and which you typed yourself.

Is my meal photo stored?

No. Your browser shrinks the photo, it is sent to our AI provider for that one analysis, and it is discarded. baisics does not save the image. If you choose to create an account, only the food names, weights and totals are kept.

How is this different from Cal AI or other photo calorie apps?

It runs in your browser with no app install and no subscription, and it shows its work: you see each food, its weight and where the numbers came from, and you can correct any of it. Then, if you want to keep logging, the baisics food log, macro targets and meal planning are free.

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