Lifesum

Best Self-hosted Alternatives to Lifesum

A curated collection of the 2 best self hosted alternatives to Lifesum.

Lifesum is a nutrition and wellness SaaS app for tracking food intake and calories, creating meal plans, monitoring healthy habits, and viewing nutrition summaries. It provides food logging, progress tracking, and integrations with health devices and services.

Alternatives List

#1
Clean Slate

Clean Slate

Open-source calorie tracker for non-judgmental, fast food logging with search, barcode scanning, custom foods/recipes, GraphQL API, and Docker deployment.

Clean Slate screenshot

Clean Slate is an open-source calorie tracker web application designed for fast, compassionate food logging. It emphasizes caloric awareness while minimizing perfectionism by tracking only calories and protein and by encouraging a daily "fresh start" approach.

Key Features

  • Simple food search and quick-add calories/protein for fast logging
  • Barcode scanning powered by Open Food Facts to import product nutrition
  • Create and log custom foods and recipes; track meals and exercise
  • GraphQL API (Hasura) for querying logs, foods, recipes, and profiles
  • Two authentication options: simple apiToken-based auth or optional Firebase social login
  • Deployable via Docker Compose with PostgreSQL backend and Caddy reverse proxy
  • Mobile-friendly web client built in TypeScript with a lightweight, speed-first UX

Use Cases

  • Personal calorie and protein tracking for weight management or nutrition awareness
  • Support for people recovering from disordered eating who need a gentle, non-judgmental tracker
  • Self-hosted deployments for users requiring privacy and control over their data

Limitations and Considerations

  • Default apiToken auth stores long tokens in the database and lacks email/password flows; Firebase adds complexity to set up
  • Barcode coverage depends on Open Food Facts data; some products may be missing or incomplete
  • No official native mobile apps; the service is primarily a responsive web client

Clean Slate is focused on simplicity and evidence-based education to teach sustainable tracking habits. It is suitable for individuals who want a fast, privacy-conscious tracker and for operators who prefer self-hosted deployment via Docker Compose.

211stars
19forks
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#2
Calorific

Calorific

Calorific is a minimal PHP-based calorie tracker for logging meals, saving common meals and ingredients, and tracking progress against a daily calorie goal. Runs on AMP stacks or Docker.

Calorific is a minimal, dead-simple self-hosted calorie tracker implemented in PHP. It provides an easy interface to log meals, reuse saved meals and ingredients, and monitor progress against a daily calorie target without micromanaging macronutrients.

Key Features

  • Log individual meals and entries with timestamped records
  • Save and reuse commonly used meals and ingredients to speed logging
  • Build log entries from saved meals or ingredient lists, and compose saved meals from ingredients
  • Set a daily calorie goal and preview how a new entry will affect daily progress
  • Built-in update mechanism for the application
  • Options for hour offsets to accommodate server time differences
  • Utility features for cleaning up the log database and hiding the control panel

Use Cases

  • Track daily calorie intake for weight loss, maintenance, or gain with minimal overhead
  • Maintain a reusable list of common meals and ingredients for fast logging
  • Lightweight self-hosted alternative for users who do not need detailed macro tracking

Limitations and Considerations

  • Focuses on calories only; it does not provide detailed macronutrient tracking or advanced nutrition analysis
  • No documented API or official mobile apps; primarily a web interface intended for single-user or small private use
  • Developed and tested on a typical AMP stack (Apache + MySQL) — other web servers or SQL engines may require additional configuration

Calorific is suited for users who want a straightforward, private calorie log without complex features. It is lightweight, easy to deploy on an AMP stack or via Docker, and emphasizes quick logging and simple progress tracking.

79stars
5forks
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Why choose an open source alternative?

  • •Data ownership: Keep your data on your own servers
  • •No vendor lock-in: Freedom to switch or modify at any time
  • •Cost savings: Reduce or eliminate subscription fees
  • •Transparency: Audit the code and know exactly what's running