# CaloRec journal, full text A calorie ledger you talk to. 3 free days. Then $9.99, once. --- # Three free days, then $9.99 once: why no subscription Source: https://calorec.app/journal/three-free-days-then-9-99-once/ Published: 2026-10-25 · PeregrineX > CaloRec is $9.99 once, after three free days. No subscription, no account. How the trial works, what stays free, and why the price is a line, not a wall. In short: - CaloRec is $9.99 once, after three free days. No subscription. - The trial starts at your first saved entry, not at install, and counts whole days. - After an unpaid trial, creating entries is paid; browsing history, the week card and export stay free forever. - The price is shown as a plain line four times before the purchase sheet appears; there is never a popup after you decline. A subscription is a relationship. The app needs you to come back, so it needs to know when you left, so it needs to watch. For a calorie ledger that promises nothing leaves your phone, that is a contradiction. So CaloRec charges once. ## The shape of it - **Three free days.** They start at your first saved entry, not at install, and they are counted by days, closed by the 9:30 "Close the day?" ritual. A Saturday install that first logs on Tuesday still gets three full days. - **Then $9.99, once.** On the App Store or Google Play, through the store's own purchase sheet. CaloRec never sees your card or your account. - **Family Sharing on.** One purchase covers the household. ## What stays free, forever The rule is simple enough to say in a breath: **creating is paid, browsing is free.** | Action | After an unpaid trial | | ------------------------------------ | --------------------- | | Log a meal by voice or camera | $9.99, once | | Import a walk or run from your watch | $9.99, once | | Change your plan | $9.99, once | | Today's last balance | Free | | Every past day | Free | | Week card and sharing | Free | | Export your ledger | Free | Your history is never locked, blurred or held hostage. If you stop at day three, the app looks paused, not broken, and the ledger is still yours to read and export. ## The price is a line, not a wall You will have seen "$9.99, once" four times before any purchase sheet appears, each time as a line of information in the app's ordinary voice: 1. On the store listing: _3 free days. Then $9.99, once. No subscription, no account._ 2. On first launch, above the mic: _3 free days. Then $9.99, once. Your history is always free._ 3. As a small pill on Today: _Day 1 of 3 free_, _Day 2 of 3 free_, _Last free day_. 4. At the close of day three: _That's your three free days. Tomorrow, logging is $9.99, once. Your history stays free either way._ With two chips: Buy now / Tomorrow. From day four, tapping the mic or the camera opens the store's sheet directly. No CaloRec screen in between, one tap instead of two. If you decline, the mic shows a quiet "$9.99 to log" label and that is the end of it. No reminders, no countdown, no popup, ever. ## What this costs us Without a server there is no way to stop a reinstall or a clock change from resetting the trial. We accept that. Preventing it would mean an account, and an account would mean the one thing the app exists not to have. ## Questions this answers **When does the three-day trial start?** At your first saved entry, not when you install. If you install on Saturday and first log on Tuesday, you still get three full days. **What happens after the trial if I don't pay?** The app keeps working for everything that looks at the past: today's last balance, every previous day, the week card, export. Logging a new meal, importing a walk or changing your plan opens the store's purchase sheet, once, when you tap. **Is the purchase shared with my family?** Yes. Family Sharing is on for the purchase on both the App Store and Google Play, so one payment covers the household. **Why no subscription?** A subscription needs reasons to keep you: notifications, engagement, data. CaloRec keeps no data and sends at most two quiet notifications a day. A one-time price is the only model that matches that. --- # What “about 780” means: from a sentence to a number Source: https://calorec.app/journal/what-about-780-means/ Published: 2026-10-24 · PeregrineX > Say 'two eggs, buttered toast and a coffee' and CaloRec answers with a number. The path that sentence takes, and why the model never invents a calorie. In short: - Speech is recognised on the phone by OpenAI's Whisper model, which installs with the app; nothing is sent to a server. - Google's Gemma model, on the phone, fills slots (item, count, portion class). It never writes a sentence or a calorie figure. - Calories are looked up in a bundled table built from public food data: USDA FoodData Central, the Canadian Nutrient File, the UK's CoFID and the Swiss Food Composition Database. - Every estimate is rounded to tens and prefixed with 'about'; every portion is confirmed with a chip. You hold the button and say: _"Two eggs, buttered toast and a coffee with milk."_ A moment later the screen says **I heard**, lists three things with a number next to each, and asks one question: one slice or two? That short trip has four stops, and each one is deliberately narrow. ## 1. Hearing Whisper, OpenAI's speech model, turns sound into words on the phone. It installs with the app, so nothing has to be online. While you talk, the Listening screen follows your voice; when you stop, Whisper writes the whole sentence down at once. No audio is stored and none is sent anywhere. ## 2. Understanding, but only slots The words go to Gemma, Google's open model, which also runs on the phone and installs with the app. It is asked to do one small job: fill in a form. | Slot | From the sentence | | ------------- | ---------------------------------------- | | item | eggs · buttered toast · coffee with milk | | count | 2 · ? · 1 | | portion class | — · one slice or two · small | That is the whole contract. The model is never asked to write a sentence to you, and it is never asked for a calorie figure. Models are good at language and bad at arithmetic they cannot see; a plate is exactly the thing they cannot see. ## 3. Looking up, never guessing Each filled slot is looked up in a nutrition table that ships inside the app. The table is built from public food data, USDA FoodData Central, the Canadian Nutrient File, the UK's CoFID and the Swiss Food Composition Database, and the rules for matching a spoken phrase to an entry are written down and tested against hundreds of recorded sentences. So "eggs × 2" becomes about 150, "buttered toast × 2 slices" about 220, "coffee with milk, small" about 40. The figures come from the table. If the table has no entry, CaloRec asks rather than invents. ## 4. Confirming The I heard screen shows each item with its chips: 1 · 2 · 3 for the eggs, One · Two for the toast, Small · Medium · Large for the coffee. The likely answer is pre-selected. One tap changes it. "Add 410 to today" saves the lot, and the line underneath tells you where that leaves the day: "Today becomes 1,930 net · still on plan." ## Why "about" Every number CaloRec shows is rounded to tens and carries "about". That is not modesty for its own sake. A portion is the one thing no microphone and no camera can measure, so the honest figure is a range centred on the chip you picked. "About 780" says what the app knows and no more. If the sentence ever comes back wrong, you say so, out loud: "no butter", "that was a bagel". The form gets refilled, the table gets re-read, and the number changes. You never type a digit. ## Questions this answers **Does CaloRec use ChatGPT or send my voice to the cloud?** No. Hearing uses OpenAI's Whisper model and understanding uses Google's Gemma model, both running on the phone and both installed with the app from the App Store or Google Play. Nothing you say leaves the phone. **What happens if the model mishears me?** You see exactly what it heard, item by item, before anything is saved. Tap the mic and say the correction, 'no butter' or 'that was a bagel', or tap a chip. You never type a number. **Why are calories rounded to tens?** Because a portion is an estimate, and a figure like 783 would claim a precision nobody has. 'About 780' tells the truth about what the app knows. --- # Why CaloRec never counts your resting metabolism Source: https://calorec.app/journal/why-calorec-never-counts-your-resting-metabolism/ Published: 2026-10-23 · PeregrineX > Most calorie apps add the calories your body burns at rest, then subtract them again. CaloRec counts only active burn, and the number is more honest for it. In short: - CaloRec's balance is net = food in − active burn. Resting metabolism (BMR) is never added or subtracted. - A plan target such as 2,300 already assumes your resting burn, so adding it again would count it twice. - Active burn comes from walks, workouts and runs recorded by your watch, Apple Health or Health Connect, or started in CaloRec. - One event is one entry: a run tracked on both the watch and the phone is written once. Open most calorie apps and the day starts with a big number already in your favour. Two thousand, sometimes more, before breakfast. That number is an estimate of your resting metabolism, the energy your body spends keeping warm and thinking, and the app has added it to your budget. Then the app subtracts your meals from it, adds your workouts back, and shows you what is "left". It feels generous. It is also the least certain number in the whole app, dressed up as the most certain. ## One assumption, kept in one place CaloRec takes a simpler line. The balance you see on Today is: > **net = food in − active burn** Food in is what you said you ate, looked up in the nutrition table and confirmed with a portion chip. Active burn is what your watch or phone recorded you doing: a walk, a run, a workout. Nothing else. Your resting metabolism is still in the picture, but in exactly one place: the plan. When you choose "Hold at 2,300" or say "I want to lose a little weight", the target already assumes a resting burn for a person like you. Adding the same estimate into the daily ledger would count it twice, once as a target and once as a credit. ## Why this makes the number calmer A resting-burn estimate can be off by two or three hundred calories either way. Formulas disagree, and bodies disagree with the formulas. If that estimate is baked into "calories left", the day's number swings by that much before you have done anything. Keeping it in the plan means the swing lives in one decision you made once, which you can change with a sentence, rather than in a figure that changes every time you look. It also means the line under the hero number can be honest. "Room for a normal dinner, about 780" is a comparison of two things CaloRec can actually see: what you logged, and the target you picked. ## What counts as active burn - Walks and workouts your watch recorded, read from Apple Health or Health Connect. - Runs you start in CaloRec on the phone or on the wrist. - Anything you say out loud: "I walked for forty minutes" is an entry too. One event becomes one entry. A run tracked by the watch and by the phone at the same time is written once, with a note that says so. ## What this is not CaloRec is not a metabolism calculator and does not try to be. It will not tell you your basal rate, your TDEE, or how many calories a flight of stairs is worth. It keeps a ledger of what went in, what you did on purpose, and how that compares to the plan you chose. The rest of the day's energy is yours, uncounted, as it should be. ## Questions this answers **What does 'net' mean on the CaloRec Today screen?** Net is food in minus active burn for the day. If you ate 1,940 and walked and ran for 420, net is 1,520. That is the number compared with your plan. **Does CaloRec use my height, weight and age to estimate calories burned?** Not for the balance. Weight and goal are used only to suggest a plan target when you set up. The balance itself never includes an estimated resting burn. **Why do other apps show a bigger 'calories left' number?** Many apps add a resting-metabolism estimate to the day's budget, which inflates the number and then hides the uncertainty of that estimate inside it. CaloRec keeps the plan target as the only place that assumption lives. ---