Hint App: India's Best Calorie Tracker for Indian Food (2026) | Clearcals

By Dr. Krishna Athmakuri, Co-Founder & CEO, Clearcals | Updated: July 3, 2026

Most calorie-tracking apps were built for grilled chicken, salads, and protein shakes. Not dal tadka. Not aloo gobi. Not the bowl of curd rice your grandmother has been making for thirty years.

If you've ever searched for "aloo gobi calories" in MyFitnessPal and found three inconsistent entries created by anonymous users — or given up on calorie tracking because no app understood what you actually eat — you're not alone.

The Hint app was built to solve exactly this. It uses the Indian Food Composition Table published by the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN-ICMR) as its nutritional backbone, covers thousands of Indian dishes and ingredients, and lets you build accurate nutrition labels for any home-cooked meal. It is free to download on iOS and Android.

This page covers everything you need to know about Hint before downloading: what it does, how it compares to other apps, what's new in version 2.0, and which plan — if any — makes sense for your goal.

TL;DR

• Track calories, macros, and 31 nutrients in Indian meals — free
• New (iOS): Apple Health sync — workouts and sleep log automatically, no manual entry
• Coming to Android this month: Google Health Connect sync, free AI insights, and trend charts
• New: Free AI insights on every meal, workout, and sleep entry — personalised to your goals and health conditions
• Create a custom nutrition label for any home-cooked recipe in minutes
• New: Trend charts for nutrition, sleep, and workouts (Hint Pro & Premium)
• New: 300+ Pro strength training workouts with guided videos — now free for all users
• Get personalised Indian diet plans for weight loss, diabetes, PCOS, thyroid, and more (Hint Pro)
• Access unlimited dietitian consultations (Hint Premium)
• Buy a Garmin watch from the Clearcals Store and get 1 month of Hint Premium (worth ₹1,999) free
• Buy an Apple Watch from the Clearcals Store and get a free Hint Pro subscription

🎥 Watch: How the Hint App Helps You Eat Better with AI Insights & Smart Tracking

🆕 What's New — Hint Version 2.0 (July 2026)

We've just released the biggest update to Hint since launch. Here's what changed:

Apple Health Sync (iOS) Hint now connects with Apple Health on iPhone. Your workouts and sleep data sync automatically — no manual logging, no duplication. Every step, run, gym session, and sleep record from Apple Health flows directly into Hint, so your nutrition and activity picture is always complete.

Free AI Insights — Now Personalised to Your Goals and Conditions AI insights were already available after every meal. In version 2.0, they go further: insights are now personalised to your specific health goal (weight loss, muscle gain, diabetes management, PCOS, thyroid) and factor in your recent activity and sleep. This is available free on all plans — no subscription required.

Custom Recipes — Add and Edit Anything You can now add your own recipes from scratch or customise any existing item in the Hint database. If your aloo sabzi uses more oil than the standard entry, or your dal recipe is a family version with specific proportions — adjust it once, and every future log reflects your actual meal.

Trend Charts for Nutrition, Sleep & Workouts (Pro & Premium) Hint Pro and Premium now include trend charts showing how your key metrics are moving over time — calories, protein, sodium, sugar, sleep stages, workout consistency, and more. Instead of looking at one day in isolation, you can see the direction you're heading across weeks.

Pro Workouts Now Free — 300+ Strength Training Workouts with Guided Videos All 300+ strength and gym workouts — previously available only on Hint Pro — are now free for every user. Each workout includes animated guidance videos covering beginner to advanced levels, with detailed tracking for sets, reps, and calories burned per exercise.

Coming to Android this month Android users: a similar update is on the way this July. It will bring Google Health Connect sync (automatically pulling in workouts and sleep from any connected fitness app), free AI insights personalised to your goals and health conditions, and the new trend charts. We'll update this page when it's live.

📚 Table of Contents

1. What's New in Version 2.0

2. Why Indian Food Needs Its Own Tracking App

3. What Is the Hint App?

4. Hint vs MyFitnessPal, HealthifyMe, Lose It & Cronometer

5. Key Features of the Hint App

   • Track Calories, Macros & 31 Nutrients
   • Create Your Recipe
   • AI Insights for Every Meal
   • Workout Tracking — No Wearable Required
   • Weekly & Monthly Insights (Hint Pro)
   • Personalised Indian Diet Plans (Hint Pro)
   • Unlimited Dietitian Consultations (Hint Premium)

6. How to Start Tracking Calories in Indian Food with Hint

7. Hint for Your Specific Health Goal

8. Not Ready to Download Yet? Try the Free Web Tool First

9. Free Hint with Every Watch Purchase — Garmin & Apple Watch Offers

10. FAQs

Why Indian Food Needs Its Own Tracking App

Indian cooking is nutritionally complex in ways that most global apps are not equipped to handle.

A single bowl of dal involves lentils cooked in water with a tempering of ghee, cumin, mustard seeds, and onions — a combination that no barcode represents. Add a side of rice cooked in a pressure cooker, a katori of sabzi, and two rotis, and you have a meal that requires either a purpose-built database or a lot of guesswork to log accurately.

Global apps typically manage this by letting users log ingredients from separate entries or accepting crowd-submitted entries for Indian dishes. Neither approach is reliable.

The specific gaps that matter for Indian users:

Ghee and oil quantities. Indian cooking uses significantly more cooking fat than Western recipes, and portion estimates in global apps are often based on Western cooking conventions. The difference between one teaspoon and one tablespoon of ghee is 36 kcal — across three meals a day, over a month, that gap compounds significantly.

Regional dish variation. A South Indian sambar has a completely different macro profile from a North Indian dal makhani, but most apps list only one "dal" entry. Hint covers regional variation in depth.

Home-cooked meals. A large proportion of Indian meals are cooked at home from scratch, with no barcode or standardised recipe. The Create Your Recipe feature in Hint solves this directly.

Micronutrients from Indian ingredients. Iron from moringa leaves, calcium from ragi, zinc from horsegram — the micronutrient density of traditional Indian ingredients is significant, but almost never captured in global apps. Hint tracks 31 nutrients against NIN-ICMR recommended daily allowances.

The Hint app addresses all of these. Its food database is adapted from the NIN-ICMR Indian Food Composition Table — the authoritative Indian nutritional reference — and is maintained by qualified clinical dietitians.

And its Create Your Recipe feature means any home-cooked meal, no matter how specific to your kitchen, can be logged accurately.

What Is the Hint App?

Hint is a free Indian food calorie tracking app available on iOS and Android. It lets you log meals, track calories and 31 nutrients, create custom recipes, and get AI-powered insights after every meal — all with a database built for Indian food.

The free version gives you:

• Calorie, carbohydrate, protein, and fat tracking
• Micronutrient tracking across 12 vitamins and 9 minerals (against NIN-ICMR recommended daily allowances)
• Custom recipe creation with auto-generated nutrition labels — plus the ability to customise any existing entry in the Hint database
• AI insights for every meal you log — personalised to your goals and health conditions, free for all users
• 300+ strength training workouts with guided videos — now free for all users
• Apple Health sync — workouts and sleep data flow in automatically from Apple Health (iOS)
• Google Health Connect sync — coming to Android this July, bringing the same automatic workout and sleep sync for Android users

Hint Pro adds weekly and monthly insights plus personalised Indian diet plans for specific goals and health conditions.

Hint Premium includes everything in Hint Pro, plus unlimited consultations with qualified dietitians, customised meal plans, and real-time support.

Hint vs MyFitnessPal, HealthifyMe, Lose It & Cronometer

There are five apps that come up most often when Indian users search for a calorie tracker. Here is how they compare on the features that matter for Indian food and health goals.

How each app positions itself:

HealthifyMe is the closest competitor for Indian users. It has a large Indian food database and offers AI coaching and dietitian support — but almost everything useful sits behind a paid subscription starting at ₹999/month. The free tier is heavily restricted. Hint's free plan includes AI insights, 31-nutrient tracking, and full recipe creation with no paywall.

MyFitnessPal has the largest global user base and works well for Western diets. For Indian food, its crowdsourced database introduces meaningful accuracy gaps — especially for home-cooked meals, regional dishes, and ghee quantities. It also uses US/global RDA targets rather than Indian ones.

LoseIt is built primarily for a Western market. Its 56M+ item database is almost entirely global, with minimal Indian food coverage. It performs well for barcode scanning and wearable integration but offers little for someone eating Indian food daily.

Cronometer is the gold standard for micronutrient tracking — covering 82+ nutrients from a scientifically verified database. If your primary goal is detailed micronutrient analysis, Cronometer goes deeper than Hint. However, it has no Indian food specialisation, does not use Indian RDA guidelines, and offers no AI insights or Indian diet plans. It is best suited for clinical or research-level tracking rather than everyday Indian meal logging.

The bottom line: For Indian food accuracy, free AI insights, and condition-specific diet plans, Hint is the strongest option in the free tier. Cronometer wins on raw micronutrient depth. HealthifyMe competes on Indian food coverage but requires a paid subscription for the features that matter.

Key Features of the Hint App

📊 Track Calories, Macros & 31 Nutrients

Once you set your personalised goal in the app, logging a meal takes seconds. Search for your dish, adjust the serving size using Indian units (katori, bowl, piece, glass), and Hint gives you a complete nutritional breakdown:

• Calories
• Carbohydrates, protein, and fat
• 12 vitamins (including vitamins A, C, D, B12, folate, and more)
• 9 minerals (including iron, calcium, zinc, and potassium)

All micronutrient targets are benchmarked against the National Institute of Nutrition's 2020 recommended daily allowances — the Indian standard, not a US or global equivalent.

🍲 Create Your Recipe — Nutrition Labels for Home-Cooked Meals

This is the feature that separates Hint from every other app for Indian home cooking.

If you make a dal at home, there is no barcode to scan and no reliable pre-built entry. With Hint's Create Your Recipe feature, you build the nutrition label once and log it in one tap every time after that.

How it works:

1. Name your recipe (e.g., "Aloo Bhindi Masala" or "Green Moong Dal Chilla")
2. Set the number of servings and the unit
3. Add each ingredient and quantity
4. Save — Hint generates the full nutrition label instantly

Once saved, the recipe appears in your personal library and can be logged in any future meal with one tap.

In version 2.0, you can also customise any food item already in the Hint database — not just recipes you've built from scratch. If a dish exists in Hint but the standard entry doesn't match how you cook it, tap to edit the macros or ingredients and save a personalised version. Your customised entry replaces the standard one whenever you log that dish.

For anyone cooking the same meals repeatedly, which describes most Indian households, this feature alone makes Hint worth using.

✨ AI Insights for Every Meal Logged

Logging a meal in Hint doesn't just tell you how many calories you ate. After each log, Hint generates a short, specific insight personalised to your goal and health condition — not generic nutrition advice. If you're managing diabetes, the insight flags carbohydrate load relative to your targets. If you're building muscle, it surfaces your protein gap for the day. This is available free on all plans, including the free tier.

Insights typically include one or more of the following:

• A simple swap or portion adjustment to improve the meal's balance
• Whether you're falling short on protein or fibre for your goal
• What to reduce — excess refined carbs, added sugar, or cooking fat — without being prescriptive
• One small habit you can apply next time this meal comes up

This turns food tracking from a passive record-keeping exercise into an active coaching loop. Instead of just knowing your calorie count, you leave each meal log with one concrete thing to apply.

In version 2.0, AI insights now also cover your workouts and sleep — not just meals. After a workout synced from Apple Health, Hint can surface whether your calorie intake is supporting your training load. After a poor night's sleep, it notes the recovery context when interpreting the next day's nutrition.

🏋️ Workout Tracking — No Wearable Required

Hint includes workout tracking built directly into the app, so you can log exercise and see net calories alongside your food intake.

New in version 2.0 (iOS): If you use an iPhone, Hint now syncs automatically with Apple Health. Any workout recorded in Apple Health — whether from the Workout app, a third-party fitness app, or an Apple Watch — appears in Hint without any manual entry. Sleep data syncs the same way.

Coming to Android this July: Android users will get Google Health Connect sync this month — the same automatic pull of workouts and sleep from any connected fitness app on your device, with no manual logging.

The free plan now includes the full workout library — 300+ strength and gym workouts with animated guidance videos from beginner to advanced, plus cardio and home workouts covering walks, runs, cycling, and bodyweight exercises. Previously, the 300+ strength training workouts required a Hint Pro subscription; as of version 2.0, they are free for all users. Calories burned are estimated based on exercise type, duration, and your personal profile, with detailed tracking for sets, reps, and calories burned per exercise.

This matters differently depending on your goal. For weight loss, knowing your calorie burn helps you manage your deficit accurately rather than guessing. For muscle gain, tracking expenditure ensures your food intake is supporting recovery and growth — not just maintenance. By connecting your workouts to your diet, Hint keeps training and nutrition aligned in one place.

📈 Weekly & Monthly Insights for Long-Term Change (Hint Pro)

Daily tracking is useful. Pattern recognition across weeks is transformative.

Hint Pro's Weekly and Monthly Insights summarise your nutrition trends over time so you can see clearly:

• How consistent you've been with your calorie and protein targets
• Which days or specific meals tend to push you off track
• Whether you're regularly skipping workouts or meals
• Progress trends toward fat loss, muscle gain, or condition management goals

For anyone trying to manage a chronic condition like diabetes or PCOS, this longitudinal view is particularly valuable — it's the difference between reacting to individual meals and understanding your actual dietary patterns over time.

Version 2.0 adds trend charts to this view — visual graphs showing whether your key metrics are rising or falling over time. You can track calorie trends, protein consistency, sodium and sugar intake, sleep stage distribution, and workout frequency in a single view. This makes it easier to spot drift early — for example, noticing that your protein intake has been declining for two weeks before it becomes a problem for your goal.

🎯 Personalised Indian Diet Plans (Hint Pro)

Hint Pro generates instant, personalised diet plans calibrated to your age, gender, height, weight, activity level, and health goal.

Plans are available for weight loss, weight gain, muscle building, diabetes, PCOD, thyroid management, and more. Each plan is structured around real Indian meals — from a vegetarian South Indian template to a high-protein non-vegetarian plan for someone in active strength training.

Two features make these plans particularly practical for everyday life:

Switch plans anytime. If your goal shifts — say from fat loss to muscle building, or you want to try intermittent fasting — you can switch your diet plan instantly without losing your tracking history.

Real-time recalibration. As your body and lifestyle change — you lose weight, increase your activity level, or start a new training programme — your plan updates to reflect your new targets.

👨‍⚕️ Unlimited Dietitian Consultations (Hint Premium)

Hint Premium includes everything in Hint Pro — weekly/monthly insights, trend charts, and personalised diet plans — plus direct access to qualified clinical dietitians.

Premium includes:

• Customised Indian meal plans based on your health profile
• Ongoing support for diabetes, high cholesterol, blood pressure, and thyroid disorders
• Practical guidance for sustainable fat loss or muscle gain

This is the tier designed for people who want professional-grade nutrition support without the cost or inconvenience of standalone dietitian appointments.

How to Start Tracking Calories in Indian Food with Hint

Getting started takes under two minutes:

1. Download Hint from the App Store or Google Play
2. Set your goal (weight loss, maintenance, muscle gain, or condition management)
3. Tap the + button and select the meal you're logging (breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack)
4. Search for your dish or select from frequently tracked foods
5. Adjust serving size using Indian units
6. View your calorie and nutrient summary

For home-cooked meals you eat regularly, use the Create Your Recipe feature once and log it in one tap every time after.

Hint for Your Specific Health Goal

Weight loss: Set your calorie target, track daily intake against it, and use the AI insights to identify where excess calories are coming from — usually cooking fat, refined carbs, or portion size rather than the foods themselves. With Hint Pro, the Weekly Insights help you spot which days break your consistency pattern — usually weekends or specific social eating situations — so you can plan around them rather than just trying harder.

Read our complete Indian weight loss guide →

Muscle gain: Protein tracking is where most Indian vegetarian diets fall short. Hint surfaces your daily protein intake against your target, making it easy to see whether you're hitting your gram-per-kilogram target or consistently falling short. For workout tracking, 300+ strength training workouts with guided videos are now free — no Pro subscription required.

Read our complete muscle gain diet guide →

Diabetes: Carbohydrate monitoring is the cornerstone of blood sugar management. Hint tracks total carbs and sugar per meal, allowing you to see exactly how much carbohydrate you're consuming at each sitting — not just across the day. Use the Create Your Recipe feature for home-cooked meals like khichdi or rice with dal to get an accurate carbohydrate count for the specific proportions you cook with. Hint Pro's diabetes diet plan can provide a structured starting framework.

Read our complete Indian diabetes diet guide →

PCOS: PCOS management through diet typically involves reducing refined carbohydrates, increasing protein, and managing iron intake. Hint tracks all three, with micronutrient visibility into iron and zinc — both commonly deficient in PCOS.

Read our PCOS diet guide → | Read our insulin resistance diet guide →

Thyroid: For hypothyroid management, tracking selenium, zinc, and iodine intake is as relevant as macros. Hint's 31-nutrient tracking includes these, making it one of the few apps where a thyroid patient can monitor micronutrients relevant to thyroid function alongside their daily calorie and macro intake.

Read our complete Indian thyroid diet guide →

🔢 Not Ready to Download Yet? Try the Free Web Tool First

If you want to check the calorie and macro content of a specific Indian dish before deciding whether to download, use the free Indian Food Calorie Calculator on the Clearcals website.

Try the Indian Food Calorie Calculator →

The web tool shows calories, carbs, protein, and fat for individual Indian recipes, with adjustable serving sizes. No sign-up required.

New to calorie tracking? 👉 Read our beginner's guide to calorie tracking in India →

🎁 Free Hint with Every Watch Purchase — Garmin & Apple Watch Offers

Clearcals bundles Hint with every watch purchase so you can pair best-in-class activity tracking with India's most accurate nutrition app.

Garmin watches: Purchase any Garmin watch from the Clearcals Store and receive 1 month of Hint Premium (worth ₹1,999) free — including unlimited dietitian consultations and personalised Indian diet plans.

Browse Garmin watches at the Clearcals Store →

Apple Watch: Purchase any Apple Watch from the Clearcals Store and receive a free Hint Pro subscription. With Hint version 2.0, any workout recorded on your Apple Watch syncs automatically into Hint — no manual logging needed.

Browse Apple Watches at the Clearcals Store →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Hint app free? The free version includes calorie tracking, macro tracking, 31-nutrient monitoring, Create Your Recipe, AI insights after every meal, and the full workout library — including 300+ strength training workouts with guided videos (previously a Pro-only feature, now free for all users). Hint Pro adds weekly/monthly summaries, trend charts, and personalised Indian diet plans. Hint Premium adds unlimited dietitian consultations on top of that.

How is Hint different from MyFitnessPal for Indian food? Hint's food database is sourced from the NIN-ICMR Indian Food Composition Table — the authoritative Indian nutritional reference. MyFitnessPal relies on crowdsourced entries for Indian foods, which vary widely in accuracy. Hint also uses Indian RDA guidelines (NIN-ICMR 2020) rather than US or global standards, and provides AI insights after every meal free of charge.

Can I track home-cooked Indian meals? Yes. The Create Your Recipe feature lets you build a nutrition label for any home-cooked dish by entering each ingredient and quantity. The app uses the NIN-ICMR database to calculate a full nutritional profile for the recipe and per serving. In version 2.0, you can also customise any existing item in the Hint database to match how you actually cook it.

Does Hint sync with Apple Health? Yes. In version 2.0, Hint connects with Apple Health on iPhone. Your workouts and sleep data sync automatically — any activity logged in Apple Health, including workouts from Apple Watch or third-party fitness apps, appears in Hint without manual entry. This gives you a complete picture of your nutrition and activity in one place.

Is Google Health Connect sync coming to Android? Yes — this July. The Android update will bring Google Health Connect sync, so workouts and sleep recorded by any connected fitness app on your Android device will automatically appear in Hint. The same update also includes free AI insights personalised to your goals and health conditions, and the new trend charts for Pro and Premium users. We'll update this page when the update goes live.

Are the AI insights free? Yes. AI insights after every meal are available on the free plan — no subscription required. In version 2.0, these insights are personalised to your specific health goal and condition (weight loss, diabetes, PCOS, muscle gain, etc.) rather than generic advice. AI insights now also cover workouts and sleep synced through Apple Health, and will extend to Android users with the upcoming Google Health Connect update.

Does Hint work for diabetes management? Hint tracks total carbohydrates and sugar per meal and per day, making it well-suited for carb monitoring. Hint Pro includes a dedicated diabetes diet plan. For comprehensive clinical support, Hint Premium provides unlimited consultations with qualified dietitians who specialise in diabetes and metabolic conditions.

Is Hint available on iOS and Android? Yes, Hint is available on both the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android).

What is the difference between Hint Pro and Hint Premium? Hint Pro adds weekly and monthly nutrition insights, trend charts, and instant personalised Indian diet plans. Hint Premium includes everything in Hint Pro, and adds unlimited consultations with qualified dietitians, customised meal plans tailored to your specific health profile, and real-time support via calls and chat.

Can I track workouts in Hint without a wearable? Yes. Hint estimates calories burned based on exercise type, duration, and your personal profile — no wearable required. The full workout library is now free, including 300+ strength training workouts with guided animation videos from beginner to advanced (previously a Pro-only feature). On iOS, workouts can also be pulled in automatically via Apple Health (version 2.0), and Google Health Connect sync is coming to Android this July.

Read Next

• Indian Diet Guide — Eat Right for Your Health Goals
• Calorie Tracking in India — Beginner's Guide
• Try the Indian Food Calorie Calculator — Free Web Tool
• Weight Loss Diet Plan for Indians
• Diabetes Diet Plan India
• PCOS Diet Plan India
• Thyroid Diet Plan India
• Muscle Gain Diet Plan India
• Insulin Resistance Diet India
• Best Garmin Watches in India (2026) — Buy with Free Hint Premium
• Apple Watch Price in India — Buy with Free Hint Pro

About the Author

Dr. Krishna Athmakuri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clearcals, where he leads the development of data-driven health technology for India.

With a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, his expertise spans computational modelling, bioprocess engineering, and health data systems.

Earlier in his career, he developed biotherapeutics for diabetes and metabolic diseases at companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer.

At Clearcals, he now applies that scientific rigour to build personalised fitness tools — including the Hint app — grounded in Indian nutritional science and clinical evidence.

Connect with Dr. Krishna on LinkedIn