QuicKcals
About QuicKcals
A food diary built by one person, which is honest about what it knows, what it estimates, and what it has no business telling you.
QuicKcals is a food diary, built and run by one person in the UK. My name is Elliot Clifford. You can reach me at hello@quickcals.com and it comes to me, not to a helpdesk.
Who I am, and what I'm not
I'm a software developer, not a dietitian, a nutritionist or a doctor. I have no clinical qualification of any kind, and nothing on this site should be read as though I do.
What I do have is the problem. I've used food diaries, got bored of them, and stopped — repeatedly, the way most people do. The app exists because the logging is the part that fails, not the arithmetic.
So the writing here sticks to things that are well established and checkable — that a kilogram of body fat is worth roughly 7,700 calories, that nutrition labels carry a tolerance, that people consistently underestimate portions — and says plainly where the honest answer is "nobody can measure that precisely". Where a question is genuinely medical, the guides say so and point at a doctor or a registered dietitian rather than having a go.
That goes double if you're managing a medical condition, are pregnant, are under 18, or have any history of disordered eating. A food diary is a record. It isn't care, and I'm not qualified to provide any.
Why the app is built the way it is
One idea runs through all of it: say which numbers are known and which are guessed.
Anything read from a barcode or a food database is marked verified. Anything worked out by the AI from a photo or a description is marked an estimate, itemised, with the portion it assumed shown so you can correct the part that's wrong instead of abandoning the whole entry. A calorie count is never as precise as four digits make it look, and an app that pretends otherwise is training you to trust the wrong thing.
The same rule applies to what QuicKcals claims it can do. It does not sync with Apple Health or Android's Health Connect, because no website can read either — so instead it reads the export file those apps already produce. That distinction cost me a feature on the marketing page. It was the right trade.
How it makes money
Free accounts are funded by advertising. Paid plans are £4.99 and £9.99 a month and carry no ads at all, which is the whole reason the free tier has them.
Nothing you log is sold, shared, or used to target advertising at you, and your diary is never used to train a model. That's stated properly in the privacy policy, and if you'd rather just take everything and leave, Settings → Export hands you the lot as a file without asking anybody.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell me and I'll fix it and say that I did. hello@quickcals.com. Signed-in users can also use Settings → Suggest an update, which comes to the same place with a bit more context attached.
Try it, then decide
Free, no card, and everything you log stays yours. If you never pay a penny, the diary still works.
Start a free diary