The Best Before – Food Tracker app (published by Peytu) is a popular free expiry-date tracker: you type in what's in your fridge, sort it into categories and storage locations, and it reminds you before things go off. It does that job well and it's genuinely free. But plenty of its users eventually go looking for something else — usually because typing every item in by hand gets tedious, or because they want a home-screen widget or a faster way to log a full shopping trip. This guide is specifically about alternatives to that named app. If you're unsure what a best-before date even means, that's a separate question — our best-before date app explainer covers it — but here we're comparing the tools, not the labels.
UNEP estimates that around a third of all food produced globally is wasted. WRAP reports UK households alone throw away roughly 6.4 million tonnes of food a year. Any expiry-tracking app helps — but only if you actually keep using it, and that comes down to how much effort each one asks of you. Here's a clear look at what's available in 2026.
- Sticking with free and simple → the Best Before app itself is hard to beat
- Tired of typing each item → Fango (AI receipt scanning adds a whole shop at once)
- Shared household inventory → NoWaste (account + cloud sync)
- Barcode-first workflow → Fridgely
- Best overall for busy shoppers → Fango (no account, receipt scan, home-screen widget)
Why people look for Best Before app alternatives
The Best Before app has earned its good reviews — it's free, lightweight, and covers the fundamentals. But the most common reasons people start hunting for a replacement are:
- Manual entry is slow. Every item goes in one at a time. There's product auto-completion to speed it up, but after a big weekly shop you're still tapping through a lot of entries.
- The "barcode" isn't a real scan. As of 2026, several reviewers note the barcode feature actually takes a photo to attach a name and image, rather than reading the UPC from a product database — so it isn't the shortcut people expect.
- No receipt scanning. There's no way to point your camera at a grocery receipt and have the whole shop appear at once.
- Missing extras. Some users want a home-screen widget, or richer expiry-date estimates, which the app doesn't currently offer.
None of these make the Best Before app a bad choice — for a lot of people, free and simple is exactly right. But if any of the above is your reason for switching, here's how the main alternatives stack up.
One thing worth deciding up front: what actually stops you keeping a fridge tracker going? For most people it isn't the reminders — every app on this list handles those — it's the friction of getting food into the app in the first place. If logging your shopping feels like a chore, you quietly stop doing it, and the tracker goes stale. That's the lens we've used to compare these four: how much effort each one asks of you at the moment you get home from the shop, and what you trade away in privacy or price to reduce it.
The alternatives at a glance
| Feature | Fango | Best Before app | NoWaste | Fridgely |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No sign-up required | ✓ | ✓ optional account | ✗ | ✗ |
| Data stays on device | ✓ | ✓ unless you sync | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI receipt scanning | ✓ | ✗ | Partial | ✗ |
| Add a whole shop at once | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Barcode scanning | ✗ | Photo-based | ✓ | ✓ |
| Push notifications | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Home-screen widget | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Multi-device sync | ✗ | ✓ with account | ✓ | ✓ |
| iOS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Android | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price | ✓ 1-month free trial | ✓ Free | Limited free tier | Limited free tier |
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Fango — best for skipping the typing
If the thing pushing you away from the Best Before app is the manual entry, Fango is the most direct answer. Instead of adding items one at a time, you photograph your grocery receipt and the app reads the products automatically, estimating an expiry date for each based on what it is. A full weekly shop takes about ten seconds to log. Fango then sends push notifications before things go off — anywhere from one to fourteen days ahead, with quick action buttons right on the reminder. There's also a home-screen widget so your soonest-to-expire items are visible without opening the app.
Like the Best Before app, Fango needs no account to get started, and your fridge data lives locally on your device rather than in a cloud service. The only network step is the optional receipt scan, where the photo is processed momentarily and then discarded. It works with receipts from around 34 countries, in 8 languages and 26+ currencies, and can even read a PDF receipt. If you're deciding between scanning receipts and scanning barcodes, our receipt vs barcode guide lays out which suits which kind of shopper.
- AI receipt scanning adds a whole shop in one photo
- No account or sign-up required
- Fridge data stored locally — no cloud sync
- Home-screen widget and action-button reminders
- 1-month free trial, then £1.99/mo or £19.99/yr
- No barcode scanning
- No multi-device sync (by design)
- Paid after the free month (the Best Before app is free)
Scan your receipt — AI adds the whole shop automatically and reminds you before anything expires. No account, no cloud sync, fridge data stays on your device.
Try Fango free for a month Get it on Google Play
Best Before app — best if free and simple is enough
It's worth being fair to the app you're already using. Best Before – Food Tracker is completely free, lightweight, and does the core job reliably. You add products manually with helpful auto-completion, organise them by category and storage location, keep a shopping list, and get reminders before things expire or after they've been opened. An optional free account lets you sync a list with family or friends. For a lot of households, that's genuinely all they need — and no other app on this list matches it on price.
Its limits are the flip side of that simplicity: everything goes in by hand, the barcode feature is photo-based rather than a true UPC scan, there's no receipt scanning, and no home-screen widget. If none of that bothers you, the best "alternative" might be to keep what you have. The apps below only make sense as replacements if one specific gap — entry speed, real barcode lookup, or shared sync — matters enough to give up "completely free" for it.
- Completely free, including optional sync account
- Categories, storage locations and shopping list
- Reminders for expiry and after opening
- Available on both iOS and Android
- Every item entered manually
- Barcode feature is photo-based, not a true scan
- No receipt scanning
- No home-screen widget
NoWaste — best for a shared household inventory
NoWaste is one of the most established names in the category. It requires an account, but that enables the thing it does best: cloud sync across devices. If you and a partner want to share one fridge inventory from two phones, NoWaste handles that out of the box — something neither the Best Before app's basic sync nor Fango's local-only model competes with directly. It includes manual entry, barcode scanning and recipe suggestions based on what's about to expire. The free tier is limited; the full experience needs a subscription.
- Full multi-device cloud sync
- Barcode scanning with product lookup
- Recipe suggestions based on expiry dates
- Available on iOS and Android
- Account required — email and password
- Data stored in the cloud
- Full features need a paid subscription
- Receipt scanning can be unreliable
Fridgely — best for barcode-first tracking
Fridgely is built around real barcode scanning — point it at a product's barcode and it looks up the item details from a database, which is the shortcut the Best Before app's photo-based feature doesn't quite deliver. It covers expiry tracking, fridge inventory and notifications. The interface is more utilitarian than newer apps, but it does the barcode job reliably. There's no AI receipt scanning, so you still add items one at a time, and it requires an account with cloud storage.
- Reliable barcode scanning with product database
- Straightforward fridge inventory tracking
- Available on iOS and Android
- Account required
- No AI receipt scanning
- Older, less polished interface
- Items added one barcode at a time
Which app is right for you?
If you liked the privacy angle of the Best Before app — local data, no mandatory login — it's worth knowing Fango keeps that while removing the manual-entry chore. We go deeper on both points in our guides to food waste apps with no sign-up and the best food expiry widget apps. And for a broader field of options, see our best food waste tracker app comparison.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Best Before app?
Best Before – Food Tracker (by Peytu) is a free food inventory app for Android and iOS. You add items manually with help from product suggestions, sort them by category and storage location, keep a shopping list, and get notifications before food expires or after it's been opened. An account is optional and only needed if you want to sync your list with family or friends. As of 2026 it does not scan grocery receipts.
Is the Best Before app free?
Yes. As of 2026 the Best Before – Food Tracker app is free to use, and the optional account for syncing with family or friends is free too. That's its main strength. Fango takes a different approach: it's free to try for one month, then £1.99/month or £19.99/year, and adds AI receipt scanning so you can log a whole shop at once instead of typing items in one by one.
What is the best alternative to the Best Before app?
It depends on why you're switching. If manual entry feels slow, Fango is the strongest option because AI receipt scanning adds an entire shopping trip in one photo, and it works with no account. If you want a shared inventory with barcode lookup, NoWaste is worth a look. If you want a barcode-first tool, Fridgely fits. See our full best food waste tracker app comparison for more detail.
Does the Best Before app scan receipts?
No. As of 2026 the Best Before app relies on manual entry with product suggestions, plus a photo-based barcode helper for names and images. It does not read a grocery receipt and fill in your whole shop. If you want that, Fango scans receipts from around 34 countries and adds every item automatically with estimated expiry dates.
