Head to head · Cooking food recognition · October 2026 research run
LogMeal vs spoonacular
LogMeal and spoonacular score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 49.1 (D) and 49 (D). spoonacular leads on reliability, agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do cooking food recognition.
Best recipe, nutrition and meal planning APIs for AI agents · All 28 cooking comparisons
Which one, for what
LogMeal D
Best for Agents that log meals from photos for a person and keep a nutrition history with goals, plans and manager oversight, within the EU.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 71 against 65
- Security & auth, 58 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 31 against 22
Watch for
No plan price is published; the pricing pages describe credits and limits and leave figures to the account
Best for Agents that need recipe search with diet and nutrient filters, ingredient substitutions and nutrition, and meal plans or shopping lists written to a connected user.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 58 against 42
- Agent ergonomics, 68 against 54
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
One all-powerful key per account, documented in the apiKey query parameter and sent that way by the MCP server
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.
Security & auth LogMeal +38
LogMeal 58
Three bearer token types scoped by role (company, end user, manager), one token per end user, a rotation endpoint that needs a fresh password proof, and instant disabling of an end user; the tokens are JWTs with no stated expiry and no finer scopes (24 of 30). Per-user tokens cannot reach other users, managers see only the users they are granted, and deletion of intakes is a separate endpoint, but there is no read-only token and no confirmation step (15 of 20). Food names come from LogMeal's own model and dataset, with custom recipe names from the customer (10 of 15). GET /v2/info/usages returns request history per APIUser and credit headers show spend per call (9 of 15). No security.txt (404 on three hosts), disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found (0 of 20). 24 + 15 + 10 + 9 + 0 = 58.
spoonacular 20
One key per account with no scopes, expiry or rotation procedure, documented first as the apiKey query parameter and also sent in the query string by the MCP server; the x-api-key header is the alternative. One all-powerful key (10) less 10 for the documented query string (0 of 30). The data endpoints are read-only and a user's meal plan is written only with that user's username and hash, but there is no read-only key mode or confirmation step (10 of 20). Recipe text, instructions and extracted pages come from third-party websites and no guidance on treating them as untrusted was found (5 of 15). The console shows quota use and the headers report it per call, but no request log was found (5 of 15). security.txt returns 404 and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 0 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 20.
Payments & pricing spoonacular +20
LogMeal 20
No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). No price is published; the pricing pages name the plans and describe credits, and the figures sit in the account (0 of 20). A 30-day trial of every endpoint with no card, capped at 200 queries and 5 users (20 of 20). A person signs up in a browser and chooses a plan there (0 of 20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 0 = 20.
spoonacular 40
No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Plan prices and per-point overage rates ($0.005, $0.004 and $0.002) are public, with the point cost of every endpoint (20). The Free plan gives 50 points a day with no card (20). A person signs up in the console in a browser, and no key API exists (0 of 20). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.
Reliability spoonacular +16
LogMeal 42
Read with the hosted lines. No status page was found on logmeal.com, the docs or llms.txt, and a search found none (0), so there is no incident history to read (5). Limits are published with numbers, 20 images a day and 1 a second per APIUser on standard plans, monthly credits per company, and 200 queries on the trial (15). HTTP 429 is documented with RateLimit-Reset, troubleshooting says to back off exponentially and respect Retry-After, but intake writes have no idempotency key (12 of 15). No SLA; the pricing page promises email answers within 24 to 48 hours on weekdays (0 of 10). The v2 API is generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 42.
spoonacular 58
Read with the hosted lines. A status page exists at status.spoonacular.com (UptimeRobot), but on 3 November 2026 it rendered 'There was an error while fetching the data' with no components or history, so half credit (10 of 20) and no readable incident record (5). Daily point quotas and requests-per-second limits are published by plan, 60 a minute on Free and 5, 10 and 20 a second on Cook, Culinarian and Chef (15). HTTP 429 and 402 are documented with three quota headers, but there is no Retry-After, backoff guidance or idempotency key for the meal-plan writes (8 of 15). The pricing page states 99 per cent uptime on Cook and Culinarian and 99.9 per cent on Chef, and the FAQ says SLAs are sold above $250 a month (10). The API is generally available (10). 10 + 5 + 15 + 8 + 10 + 10 = 58.
Agent ergonomics spoonacular +14
LogMeal 54
Recognition responses carry polygons, bounding boxes and recursive subclasses for every segment with no field selection; the language parameter is the only shaping control (10 of 25). History by date range, daily and weekly summaries, a batch endpoint for up to five users, no pagination on lists (12 of 20). Numeric codes with messages, such as 708 naming the valid languages, and troubleshooting guidance per status (15 of 20). Reads are safe to repeat; each recognition POST logs a new intake and spends a credit with no idempotency key (8 of 20). One required field (the image) with defaults from the user's profile, but no official SDK; the 'ready-to-use code in 35+ languages' is generated snippets (9 of 15). 10 + 12 + 15 + 8 + 9 = 54.
spoonacular 68
number caps results on every search (1 to 100), addRecipeInformation, fillIngredients and includeNutrition switch sections on, and the MCP server lists six compact tools, but there is no field selection and full recipe objects are large (15 of 25). Offset and number pagination with filters by cuisine, diet, intolerances, nutrient ranges, equipment, time and sort keys (18 of 20). 402 and 429 are documented with quota headers, other errors are not, and no error body is shown (10 of 20). Reads are GET and safe to repeat, writes to meal plans and custom foods have no idempotency key, and the MCP tools carry no annotations (10 of 20). No required parameter on complexSearch and generated SDKs in 24 languages (15 of 15). 15 + 18 + 10 + 10 + 15 = 68.
Maintenance & community LogMeal +9
LogMeal 31
Read as a closed service. The welcome and feature overview pages carry an updatedAt of 7 October 2026, within 30 days of 3 November, and the credential rotation endpoints are documented; no dated API change exists beyond that, so the docs update stands in (25 of 30). No dated changelog, so three changes in 90 days are not established (0 of 20). Email support within 24 to 48 hours on weekdays and a contact form, no public changelog or community channel (6 of 15). No official SDK and no MCP registry entry (0 of 15). No package to assess (0 of 10). 25 + 0 + 6 + 0 + 0 = 31.
spoonacular 22
Read as a closed service. The newest dated change on the updates page is February 2026 (Nutrition by Photo, recipe extraction from video), more than 180 days before 3 November 2026, and the SDK repository's last push is 2 December 2025 (0 of 30). No dated changes in the last 90 days (0 of 20). Updates page, Discord, contact form and paid support from $99 a month; three open issues on the clients repository could not be read (8 of 15). Generated SDKs in 24 languages, last pushed December 2025, and an npm MCP server, but no vendor entry in the official MCP registry, which lists only third-party spoonacular servers (10 of 15). spoonacular-mcp has one release (1.0.0, 4 August 2025), a test script and no CI (4 of 10). 0 + 0 + 8 + 10 + 4 = 22.
Schema & documentation LogMeal +6
LogMeal 71
The reference is generated from an OpenAPI specification and each endpoint page shows its schema, but no specification file is linked or served at a known path (15 of 25). llms.txt with a Markdown twin of every page (10). Endpoint descriptions state purpose, token type, limits and plan, with recommendations such as using the quantity variant on a Recommend plan (15 of 20). Enums for language codes and Nutri-Score categories, required flags, but coordinates are described two ways and the plan needed for nutri_score fields is stated inconsistently (11 of 15). Examples on every endpoint, error codes per endpoint and a numeric code with message in the 400 body (12 of 15). v2 in the path, deprecated endpoints marked with replacements, version endpoints for live APIs and models, but no dated changelog (8 of 15). 15 + 10 + 15 + 11 + 12 + 8 = 71.
spoonacular 65
Public OpenAPI 3.0.0 document (info version 2.0.2, 97 paths, 99 operations) in the vendor's spoonacular-api-clients repository, linked from the SDK page, and the MCP server's six tools carry JSON Schema inputs (25). No llms.txt (404) and no Markdown docs (0 of 10). Each endpoint states its purpose and point cost, with little on when not to use it (12 of 20). Parameters are typed with required flags, number is bounded, but diet, cuisine, intolerance and meal-type values sit in prose lists rather than enums (9 of 15). Request and response examples on every endpoint, 402 and 429 documented in the quota text, but the OpenAPI document lists only 200, 401, 403 and 404 and no error body shape (9 of 15). No version in the path; a dated updates page by month back to February 2020 records field removals with notice, the last in December 2022 for 30 June 2023 (10 of 15). 25 + 0 + 12 + 9 + 9 + 10 = 65.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | LogMeal | spoonacular | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 42 | 58 | spoonacular +16 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 71 | 65 | LogMeal +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 54 | 68 | spoonacular +14 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 58 | 20 | LogMeal +38 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 40 | spoonacular +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 31 | 22 | LogMeal +9 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 57 | 61 | spoonacular +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 49.1/100 | D 49/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | LogMeal | spoonacular |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | AIGecko Technologies S.L. | skycraft GmbH |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | stdio | |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Tools exposed | 0 | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-02-01 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-04-16 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 6 stars |
Verdicts
LogMeal
Photo recognition that returns dishes, ingredients, grams and nutrients, with per-user tokens, rate-limit headers, backoff guidance and a 30-day trial with no card. No price is published, there is no status page, SLA or security programme, and submitted images are kept indefinitely and used to develop models unless the user asks for deletion.
spoonacular
A broad recipe, ingredient, product and meal-plan API with a public OpenAPI document, 24 generated SDKs and a free 50-point day with no card. One key per account travels in the query string by default, the status page showed no data to our reader, and the terms allow caching for an hour at most.
Before you call either
LogMeal
- Create one APIUser per person with the company token, set the user's country and language first, and call recognition with that user's token only
- Send JPEG images resized before upload; a 429 may mean the per-second, daily or, on the trial, monthly limit, so wait for RateLimit-Reset or Retry-After and back off exponentially
- Read GET /v2/info/limitations before a batch, since it reports credits and daily limits without spending any
- Do not retry a recognition call blindly; each successful POST to /v2/image/segmentation/complete logs an intake and uses a credit, so check for the imageId first
- Tell the person that uploaded photos are kept and used to develop LogMeal's models unless deletion is requested
spoonacular
- Send the key as the
x-api-keyheader rather thanapiKey=in the URL, and keepnumbersmall, since every result adds 0.01 points to the call's cost - Read
X-API-Quota-Lefton each response; a 402 means the day's points are gone until midnight UTC and a 429 means the plan's requests-per-second limit, with no Retry-After to wait on - Use
/recipes/complexSearchwithaddRecipeInformation=truefor one call instead of a search followed by one information call per recipe - Do not store ingredients, instructions or nutrition between sessions; the terms allow only recipe ids, titles and image urls to be kept
- Show the original recipe source and a link to it with every recipe, as the terms require
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, LogMeal or spoonacular?
LogMeal and spoonacular score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 49.1 (D) and 49 (D). spoonacular leads on reliability, agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.
Do LogMeal and spoonacular need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call LogMeal and spoonacular without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for LogMeal. spoonacular runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.
Other comparisons with LogMeal or spoonacular
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/logmeal-vs-spoonacular.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/logmeal.json·/api/v1/tools/spoonacular.json - From a terminal
anchor compare logmeal spoonacular(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "logmeal", "b": "spoonacular"}at/mcp, no key