Head to head · Cooking nutrition · October 2026 research run

fatsecret Platform API vs Nutritionix API

fatsecret Platform API scores 42 (E) on agent readiness against Nutritionix API's 33.6 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Nutritionix API leads on transparency & trust. Both do cooking nutrition.

Best recipe, nutrition and meal planning APIs for AI agents · All 28 cooking comparisons

Which one, for what

fatsecret Platform API E

Best for Agents logging foods and reading serving-level nutrients, allergens and barcodes for a person, with diaries written back; strongest outside the US on Premier with 62 regional datasets.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 35 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 52 against 45
  • Agent ergonomics, 64 against 51
  • Payments & pricing, 25 against 0

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Natural language, image recognition, autocomplete, barcode scanning and foods.search v5 are Premier Exclusive, priced on request by market

Nutritionix API F

Best for Agents that log meals from free text for a US or UK audience and need branded grocery and restaurant nutrition with UPCs, under a sales contract.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 57 against 34

Watch for

No public free tier or published price; a limited trial is granted by sales after a form on www.nutritionix.com

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Payments & pricing fatsecret Platform API +25

fatsecret Platform API 25

No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Basic is free and Premier is priced on request by market, with add-ons billed in tiers of 25,000 inputs and no price given, so the paid prices are contact sales (5 of 20). Basic is free on self sign-up with no card, and the platform page says Premier needs no upfront payment or card (20 of 20). A person registers in a browser and Premier goes through sales; no key API was found (0 of 20). 0 + 5 + 20 + 0 = 25.

Nutritionix API 0

No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). No price is published on any page read; the pricing page on www.nutritionix.com is closed to our reader and the developer portal routes to sales (0 of 20, unchecked). The developer portal says the public free-access tier has ended and a limited trial is granted by sales (0 of 20). A person files a form and waits for a sales follow-up (0 of 20). Total 0.

Transparency & trust Nutritionix API +23

fatsecret Platform API 34

Closed service with terms that are clear on caching, attribution, rate limits and termination, but undated, naming the provider only as Fatsecret.com, and changeable with or without notice (12 of 30). The privacy policy on foods.fatsecret.com could not be read, because that host's robots.txt disallows our reader, so no data-handling statement was scored; the terms require content to be removed within 24 hours (0 of 30, unchecked). Older method versions stay documented alongside v5 and foods.search v4 is still served, but the terms allow any aspect of the API to be changed or discontinued at any time with no notice period (6 of 20). No subprocessors or data locations found (0 of 20). 12 + 0 + 6 + 0 = 18.

Nutritionix API 57

Closed service whose API terms are shown at signup and on www.nutritionix.com, which could not be read; Syndigo's website terms of 2019 do not cover the API (5 of 30, unchecked). Syndigo's privacy notice, effective 25 March 2026, states deletion within 30 days once purposes end, names EU and UK representatives and a DPO, and relies on standard contractual clauses and the Data Privacy Framework, but does not name Nutritionix and gives no category-level retention periods (15 of 30). No deprecation policy or notices found (0 of 20). Sub-processors for the Nutritionix API are named with locations (Amazon Web Services, Red Hat 3scale, Cloudflare, all in the United States) in a list effective 13 April 2026 (16 of 20). 5 + 15 + 0 + 16 = 36.

Reliability fatsecret Platform API +20

fatsecret Platform API 35

Read with the hosted lines. No status page was found on the platform site, the guides, the editions page or the about page (0), so there is no incident history to read (5). The limit is published with a number, 5,000 calls a day on Basic in the terms and on the editions page, and Premier is unlimited (15). Limits surface as error codes 11 and 12 in the body; no HTTP 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance was found, and diary writes have no idempotency key (5 of 15). Premier carries a month-by-month SLA with service credits, named on the editions page without figures, and every edition claims more than 99.9 per cent uptime (5 of 10). The API is generally available, with versioned methods (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 + 5 + 10 = 35.

Nutritionix API 15

Read with the hosted lines. The docs name a status page at status.nutritionix.com, but that host's robots.txt disallows our reader, so it is scored as unread (0 of 20) with no incident history (5). No rate limit figure appears anywhere in the docs (0 of 15). No 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance; the error page files 'usage limits exceeded' under 401 (0 of 15). No SLA found (0). The v2 API is generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 15.

Agent ergonomics fatsecret Platform API +13

fatsecret Platform API 64

max_results up to 50 (default 20), format=json, and include_* switches add sub-categories, images and attributes only when asked, but there is no field selection and each food carries every serving (15 of 25). Zero-based page_number, food_type generic or brand, region and language filters (18 of 20). Numeric error codes with messages, for OAuth, parameters and application errors, but limit errors come as codes 11 and 12 with no HTTP status or retry hint (13 of 20). Food and recipe methods are reads and safe to repeat; diary and saved-meal writes have no idempotency key (10 of 20). No parameter is required on foods.search, but there is no official SDK in any language (8 of 15). 15 + 18 + 13 + 10 + 8 = 64.

Nutritionix API 51

Instant returns at most 20 common and 20 branded items and premium detailed_nutrients picks up to three nutrients, but natural nutrients returns every food with a full nutrient array and there is no general field selection (12 of 25). No pagination; filters by branded, common, brand id, brand type and region (10 of 20). Six statuses with a line each, no codes in the body, and limit errors folded into 401 (7 of 20). Every endpoint is a read and safe to repeat (14 of 20). One required parameter per endpoint and sensible defaults, but no official SDK on the developer page beyond a label widget, and the organisation's Python library was last pushed in 2022 (8 of 15). 12 + 10 + 7 + 14 + 8 = 51.

Schema & documentation fatsecret Platform API +7

fatsecret Platform API 52

No OpenAPI or similar document was found; the official Postman collection is the only machine-readable contract (8 of 25). No llms.txt (a redirect) and no Markdown docs (0 of 10). Each method page states purpose, parameters, response fields and Premier status, with little on when not to use a method (12 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults and allowed values, max_results is capped at 50, but the field tables mistype allergen names as Long and leave food_images out of the food-level fields (11 of 15). Example responses in XML and JSON on each method, a central error code list with the body shape, and per-method error codes (13 of 15). Methods carry versions (v1 to v5) and older versions stay documented, but no changelog is on the platform site and the blog's 'What's new' could not be read (8 of 15). 8 + 0 + 12 + 11 + 13 + 8 = 52.

Nutritionix API 45

No OpenAPI or similar document was found (0 of 25). Syndigo's docs portal serves an llms.txt index and a Markdown twin of every Nutritionix page (10). Each endpoint page states its purpose with usage guidance, such as debouncing instant searches and using the right follow-up endpoint for common and branded foods (13 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults, but the only required column reads 'Required for Authentication', taxonomy_node_id is typed boolean while described as an id, and claims values sit in prose (8 of 15). Request and response examples on each endpoint; six error statuses with one line each and no body format (9 of 15). v2 in the path, no changelog, and the API guide last updated on 14 March 2024 (5 of 15). 0 + 10 + 13 + 8 + 9 + 5 = 45.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runfatsecret Platform APINutritionix APIEdge
Reliability16%203515fatsecret Platform API +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25245fatsecret Platform API +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.26451fatsecret Platform API +13
Security & auth14%17.55152Nutritionix API +1
Payments & pricing10%12.5250fatsecret Platform API +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81310fatsecret Platform API +3
Transparency & trust7%8.83457Nutritionix API +23
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 42/100F 33.6/100

Facts side by side

Factfatsecret Platform APINutritionix API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorfatsecretSyndigo LLC
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuthAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
Tools exposed00
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2024-03-14
Terms last updatedno date given2019-01-22
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-03-25
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity25 stars192 stars

Verdicts

fatsecret Platform API

OAuth 2.0 client credentials with feature scopes, IP-restricted tokens, a free 5,000-call day with no card, and per-serving nutrients with allergen flags on branded and generic foods. The newest search and image methods need the sales-priced Premier edition, there is no status page, OpenAPI file or official SDK, and the privacy policy and blog could not be read.

Nutritionix API

Free-text food logging and a branded-food and restaurant database behind four header-authenticated endpoints, documented in Markdown with an llms.txt index and backed by Syndigo's sub-processor list and disclosure programme. There is no public price or free tier since the open trial ended, no documented rate limit or 429, and the status, terms and pricing pages are closed to our reader.

Before you call either

fatsecret Platform API

  1. Request a token with grant_type=client_credentials and only the scopes the task needs; a token request from an IP not registered on the key fails, so run from a fixed address
  2. Use foods.search v1 on Basic, since v5, autocomplete, barcode and image methods answer with a scope error without Premier
  3. Pass format=json and keep max_results at or below 50 with a zero-based page_number; treat error code 11 or 12 in the body as the rate limit, since no 429 is documented
  4. Store only food_id and serving_id between sessions and re-request other values within 24 hours, as the terms require
  5. Use a delegated profile token for diary writes and keep the profile's oauth_token and oauth_secret, since fatsecret does not return them again

Nutritionix API

  1. Do not plan on self-serve access; a person must request a trial through Syndigo's sales form, so ask for an existing app id and key before starting
  2. Send x-app-id and x-app-key as headers and set x-remote-user-id per end user (0 in development), since billing counts active users
  3. Treat a 401 as either a bad key or an exhausted usage limit; the docs give no limit figure, so back off before retrying
  4. Debounce instant searches by 300 ms and send at least 3 characters, then pass food_name to natural/nutrients for common foods and nix_item_id to search/item for branded ones
  5. Cache only a person's own logged results; cached data may not be shown to another user

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, fatsecret Platform API or Nutritionix API?

fatsecret Platform API scores 42 (E) on agent readiness against Nutritionix API's 33.6 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Nutritionix API leads on transparency & trust.

Do fatsecret Platform API and Nutritionix API need an API key?

fatsecret Platform API uses an OAuth sign-in. Nutritionix API needs an API key.

Can an agent call fatsecret Platform API and Nutritionix API without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for fatsecret Platform API. No hosted endpoint is listed for Nutritionix API.

Other comparisons with fatsecret Platform API or Nutritionix API

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