What Is the Fig App? How It Compares to Yuka

If you've used Yuka and found yourself wishing it understood your specific restrictions — not just whether a product is generally "healthy," but whether it contains that one ingredient you can't have — Fig is probably the app you were looking for.

Yuka scores products on nutritional quality and additives. Fig doesn't score at all. Instead, it tells you, based on your exact dietary profile, whether a product is compatible with what you can eat. Those are solving meaningfully different problems, which is why the two apps are more complementary than competitive.

What Fig Does

Dietary Filter System

Fig's entire premise is personalisation at the ingredient level. When you set up your profile — called your "Fig" — you select from over 2,800 dietary restrictions, allergies, sensitivities, and ingredient preferences. This goes well beyond the standard checkbox lists. You can select Low FODMAP, Low Histamine, Alpha-Gal syndrome, specific food allergies, individual ingredient avoidances (garlic, citric acid, added sugars), and severity levels for each restriction. A severe peanut allergy gets treated differently from a preference to avoid palm oil.

The result of that profile is a personalised compatibility lens applied to every product you scan or search. The app then covers over 300,000 grocery products across 100+ US stores, plus around 15 restaurant chains. Coverage continues to expand.

One feature that distinguishes Fig from most food apps: multi-person profiles. You can set up dietary profiles for family members and check whether a product works for everyone simultaneously — useful for households with multiple restrictions.

How It Scores Products

Fig doesn't produce a numerical score. Instead, it uses a traffic light system tied entirely to your profile:

• Green — compatible with your dietary restrictions
• Yellow — partially compatible, or contains ingredients worth noting for your profile
• Red — contains something incompatible with your restrictions

This is a fundamentally different logic from Yuka's scoring. Yuka's score is universal — the same product gets the same number regardless of who's scanning. Fig's output is different for every user because it's based on individual profiles. A product that's red for someone with a gluten allergy could be green for someone avoiding added sugars.

The ingredient assessment is built by a team of 11+ registered dietitians who review products and flag ingredient interactions. For complex diets — Low FODMAP in particular, where even derivative ingredients matter — this level of detail is what most general-purpose apps miss entirely.

Fig vs Yuka — Key Differences

This is the comparison most people searching for "Fig app" are actually looking for, so here it is directly:

The clearest summary: Yuka tells you whether a product is generally healthy. Fig tells you whether a product is safe for you specifically.

If your goal is avoiding ultra-processed food or understanding what additives are in your food, Yuka is the better tool. If your goal is navigating a specific dietary restriction, allergy, or medical diet, Fig is.

What Fig Gets Right

Restriction depth. 2,800+ dietary options covers territory that no other consumer food app reaches. Alpha-Gal syndrome, Low Histamine diet, specific FODMAP categories — conditions that typically require hours of manual research before a grocery trip are handled by the app's ingredient database. For anyone managing a complex or unusual restriction, this is the most practically useful food app available in the US.

Severity settings. Being able to mark a restriction as severe versus mild changes the output meaningfully. A severe gluten intolerance gets treated differently from "I try to avoid gluten when I can." Few apps make this distinction.

The family profile feature. Households with multiple restrictions — a child with a nut allergy, a partner with lactose intolerance, a parent following Low FODMAP — can check a single product against all profiles at once. Yuka offers nothing comparable.

Dietitian-backed ingredient assessment. The team of registered dietitians reviewing ingredient interactions adds a layer of clinical accuracy that purely algorithmic approaches miss. For medical diets where getting it wrong has real consequences, this matters.

Restaurant coverage. Checking compatible menu items at chain restaurants is something Yuka doesn't do at all. For people with serious restrictions, this is significant.

What Fig Gets Wrong

The free tier is genuinely limited. Five scans per month is not enough for anyone who shops regularly. In practice, the free tier functions more as an extended trial than a usable ongoing tool. The $3.33/month annual rate is reasonable, but the free tier doesn't demonstrate the app's value if you hit the scan limit in your first shopping trip. (Fig does offer free access for people who can't afford the subscription — there's an application process on their website.)

US-only coverage. Fig works only in the US as of March 2026. For anyone outside the US, or for US users shopping at international stores or buying imported products, the database doesn't apply.

No general health scoring. If you want to know whether a product is nutritionally good in a general sense — not just whether it avoids your restrictions — Fig doesn't tell you. A product can be green on Fig and still be nutritionally weak. The app is answering a different question than Yuka, and sometimes users want both answers.

Database gaps for newer or niche products. The 300,000+ product database is substantial but not exhaustive. Specialty brands, recent product launches, and items from smaller regional manufacturers may not be in the system. Fig's submit-a-product feature works, but there's a lag.

Who Fig Is For

Fig is the right tool if:

• You have a specific food allergy, intolerance, or medically necessary dietary restriction — especially complex ones like Low FODMAP, Low Histamine, or multiple simultaneous restrictions
• You're newly diagnosed with a condition that requires dietary changes and you need to learn quickly which products are compatible
• You're shopping for a household with multiple people's restrictions to navigate
• You've been using Yuka and finding that it doesn't tell you what you actually need to know — which is whether you can eat this
• You eat at chain restaurants and need to filter menu items against your restrictions

Fig is less useful if:

• You have no specific dietary restrictions and just want a general sense of whether packaged food is healthy
• You shop primarily outside the US
• You want to scan cosmetics alongside food
• A free tier with meaningful functionality is important to you

Free vs Paid

Free: Create your dietary profile, unlimited product search (text-based), and 5 barcode scans per month.

Fig+ (annual subscription available; check current pricing in the app): Unlimited barcode scans, restaurant compatibility checking at ~15 chains, grocery store filtering (find products by store), and early access to new features. Fig describes the annual rate as "about the cost of a cup of coffee per month."

The scan limit is the main reason to upgrade. Five scans per month is not enough for a weekly shop. The annual rate works out to about $40/year — more than Yuka's ~$10–15/year, but the use case is also different. Fig+ earns its cost if you're regularly using the barcode scanner as a safety check for allergies or medical dietary restrictions, where the alternative is reading every ingredient label manually.

Plan What You'll Eat, Not Just What You'll Avoid

Knowing what you can't eat is half the problem. Knowing what to actually cook and plan for the week is the other half. At Macaron, we built our AI to plan meals around your dietary needs and remember your preferences across conversations — so weekly planning starts from what works for your restrictions, not from scratch. Try it free if you want the planning layer that complements the scanning.

FAQ

Is Fig App Free?

Partially. The free tier includes profile setup, unlimited text-based product search, and 5 barcode scans per month. For regular grocery shoppers, 5 scans/month is too limited — you'll hit the cap on a single shopping trip. Fig+ (annual subscription) unlocks unlimited scans, restaurant filtering, and store-based product discovery. Fig describes the annual rate as "about the cost of a cup of coffee per month" — confirm current pricing in the app before subscribing.Fig also offers a free access application for users who can't afford the subscription.

How Accurate Is Fig's Database?

Fig's ingredient assessments are reviewed by registered dietitians rather than relying purely on algorithmic classification or crowd-sourced entries. For established products at major US grocery chains, accuracy is generally high. For niche brands, recent product launches, or items with frequently changing ingredient lists, the database may lag. Fig prompts users to submit unrecognised products, and the team adds them. For medical dietary restrictions where accuracy matters significantly, using Fig as a starting point and verifying against the physical label for anything borderline is the sensible approach.

Does Fig Work Outside the US?

No. Fig's database and grocery store coverage is US-only as of March 2026. International users looking for a dietary restriction-focused food scanner may find Open Food Facts or regional equivalents more useful, though none match Fig's restriction depth for the US market.

Related Reading

• Yuka App — Yuka's features, scoring methodology, and who it suits
• Yuka App Review — an in-depth look at Yuka's accuracy and limitations
• Apps for Tracking Meals — apps for tracking what you eat alongside scanning for ingredients
• Food Log — keeping a simple record of what you're eating
• AI Diet Plan for Weight Loss — building a structured diet plan around your restrictions