Is Spoonful Free? Spoonful Unlimited Price and Refund Rules
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Spoonful is free for 5 barcode scans and 5 searches a month, and its paid plan, Spoonful Unlimited, costs $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year in the US, according to Spoonful's pricing page. The paid plan starts with a 7-day free trial. Billing runs only through Apple and Google, which matters when you want to cancel or ask for money back.
I work on the NutriScan team, which makes a food tracking app, so treat this as a competitor's reading of public documents. Every price and rule below comes from Spoonful's pricing page, its terms, its support center, the app store listings and customer reviews, and each one is linked so you can check it.
Prices checked on October 24, 2026. Spoonful says prices outside the US can differ from the US figures quoted here.
IMPORTANT
Spoonful pricing at a glance
- The free plan, Spoonful Basic, gives "5 scans per month" and "5 searches per month", per the pricing page.
- Spoonful Unlimited is $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. The yearly plan costs about the same as six monthly payments.
- The trial lasts 7 days. One App Store reviewer describes a $30 charge after missing the cancel date.
- Three Spoonful documents give three different refund answers: contact us within 30 days, ask Apple or Google, and "final and non-refundable".
- You cancel in your Apple or Google account. The terms say Spoonful "cannot assist with any cancellation or refund requests".
TL;DR
Spoonful is free for 5 scans and 5 searches a month. Spoonful Unlimited is $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year in the US, with a 7-day trial. Spoonful's own pages disagree on refunds, so the sentence you quote and the order you ask in matter.
IMPORTANT
Your checklist for this guide
⏱️ Progress 0/5 • ~0 minutes in
⏳ Step 1: What the free plan includes, and what Unlimited costs
⏳ Step 2: The 7-day trial and what happens after it
⏳ Step 3: The refund rules, which three Spoonful documents state differently
⏳ Step 4: How to cancel, and ways to pay less
🔍 The one sentence to quote if you are charged (revealed in the last step)
Spoonful's pages give three answers about refunds. Step 3 sorts them out.
Is Spoonful free? The quick answer
Partly. Spoonful has a free plan with a monthly limit and a paid plan called Spoonful Unlimited.
The pricing page lists the free plan at "$0/forever" and describes it as "Perfect for trying out Spoonful". It includes 5 scans a month, 5 searches a month and community reviews. A support article titled How does Spoonful make money? explains the limit in plain words: "Though we'd love to offer the app for free, we have to keep the lights on somehow. Thus, we charge a small fee for the Spoonful Unlimited plan."
Five scans is a small allowance. One grocery trip for a person who has just started a low FODMAP or gluten-free diet can use all five in the first aisle.
Who runs Spoonful
Spoonful is made by Spoonful Inc. The About page names Deepa Krishnan as co-founder and CEO and Sam Laber as co-founder and CMO. The copyright section of the terms gives a mailing address of PO Box 338, 29 Orinda Way, Orinda, CA 94563.
The money article, last updated on February 22, 2022, says "We have 3 full-time employees and 1 part-timer".
A few facts from the listings describe the product today:
- Size. The App Store shows 4.6 from 1.9K ratings. Google Play shows 3.6 from 946 reviews and more than 100,000 downloads. The App Store version (3.45.65) was updated within the last week and Google Play on October 16, 2026. Spoonful's homepage claims "500K+ Downloads".
- Diets. The homepage counts 26 supported diets, including low FODMAP, gluten free, vegan, alpha-gal and the major allergens.
- Countries. The store coverage article lists the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
- Residency. The terms ask you to confirm you are "a legal resident of the United States".
Spoonful Unlimited price list
Spoonful publishes its prices, and three of its own pages agree on the US numbers.
| Source | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing page | $4.99 | $29.99 |
| What is Spoonful Unlimited? (updated October 16, 2023) | $4.99 | $29.99 |
| Basic vs. Unlimited (updated July 30, 2024) | $4.99 | $29.99 |
The US App Store page lists the same amounts as in-app purchases: "Monthly Unlimited" at $4.99 and "Yearly Unlimited" at $29.99. It also lists a third item, "Monthly Unlimited (Old)", at $2.99. Google Play shows a range of "$2.99 - $29.99 per item".
The old item points to a price history. In an interview with FODMAP Everyday, first published on April 13, 2022, co-founder Sam Laber said: "If you'd like to receive unlimited scans and searches, it's $3.99/mo or $24.99/yr." Today's prices are $1 a month and $5 a year higher than that.
Two more points about the list:
- Prices are in US dollars. The Unlimited article warns that they "may not be the same as the pricing listed in the app if you're using Spoonful outside of the US."
- Prices can change during a subscription. Section 7 of the terms says "we may change our prices for Premium Services at any time, both during and after your subscription."
What Spoonful Unlimited costs over a year
The two plans are far apart once you add up twelve months. I calculated these totals from the published prices.
| Plan | What you pay | Cost over 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | $0 |
| Unlimited, monthly | $4.99 each month | $59.88 |
| Unlimited, yearly | $29.99 once | $29.99 |
| Unlimited, yearly with a clinician code | 20% off the first year | about $23.99 |
The pricing page says the yearly plan will "Save $30", and the math agrees: $59.88 minus $29.99 is $29.89. The same page also says the yearly plan gives "2 months free". By my calculation it is closer to six, because six monthly payments come to $29.94.
Figure 1: what each Spoonful plan costs over 12 months in the US, assuming no price change.
So the decision is about time. If you need the scanner for more than six months, the yearly plan is cheaper. If you need it for a few weeks, the monthly plan is. The pricing page says so itself: it calls the monthly plan "Best for managing a short-term diet".
Spoonful Basic vs Spoonful Unlimited: what each plan includes
Spoonful describes the two plans in three places, and the three descriptions differ in small ways.
The support article Spoonful Basic vs. Spoonful Unlimited Plans has a table. Only two rows differ between the plans:
| Feature | Basic | Unlimited |
|---|---|---|
| Scans | 5 a month | Unlimited |
| Searches | 5 a month | Unlimited |
| Multiple diet support | Yes | Yes |
| Scan history | Yes | Yes |
| Favorites and swaps | Yes | Yes |
| Dietitian notes | Yes | Yes |
| Email support | Yes | Yes |
The pricing page lists more differences. It gives Basic "Basic support", gives the monthly plan "Full scan history" and "Full support", and adds "Early access to features" to the yearly plan. A third article says Unlimited comes with a "guaranteed 2-day turnaround on all products that aren't in our database", while the table shows turnaround as "Instant" on both plans.
My reading: the limit on scans and searches is the real difference, and it is the only one all three pages agree on. Reviewers describe it the same way. One wrote on May 10, 2024 that during a search "the little counter is counting down from 5 to 0". Another wrote on August 18, 2025: "Can't even search through their lists more than 6 times before you HAVE to use the 7 day free trial".
One more rule sits in the troubleshooting article: "guest profiles cannot access premium features." You need an account before you subscribe.
✓ Step 1 done: free plan and prices → Step 2 next: the trial 🔍 The sentence to quote if you are charged (still ahead)
The 7-day free trial
Spoonful's homepage promises "Free to download", "7-day free trial" and "Cancel anytime". The pricing page repeats the trial and says: "Download the app to start your free trial".
None of the pages I read says which plan the trial turns into. The reviews suggest the yearly one. A reviewer wrote on May 3, 2026 that they did not cancel in time and "now I'm stuck with a $30 app that I have no use for". Another wrote on May 10, 2024 that after one search they were "prompted to sign up for a yearly subscription".
The offer screen in the app is the only place that states the amount and the date of the first charge. Read it before you confirm with Face ID or your Google password, and take a screenshot.
✓ Step 1: free plan and prices ✓ Step 2: the trial → Step 3: refunds, coming up. Spoonful's documents contradict each other.
Spoonful refund policy: three documents, three answers
This is the part of Spoonful's pricing that needs the most care. I found three statements, and they do not match.
The pricing page says contact us within 30 days. Under "Do you offer refunds?" it answers: "We offer a 7-day free trial so you can try before you buy. If you're not satisfied within the first 30 days of your paid subscription, contact us."
The support center says ask Apple or Google. The Refund Requests article, last updated on March 20, 2023, says: "our subscriptions and payments are managed by Apple and Google. To request a refund, you will want to reach out to them directly".
The terms say no refunds. Section 7 of the terms of service, last updated on July 27, 2021, says: "All purchases of Premium Services are final and non-refundable." It adds that subscriptions bought in the iOS app "are managed solely by Apple and we cannot assist with any cancellation or refund requests", and says the same about Google.
The reviews show what happens in practice. A reviewer wrote on February 4, 2025 that they emailed on the day of a yearly renewal and were told three days later that "they can't give partial refunds". The May 2026 reviewer wrote that Apple denied a refund request twice.
If you are charged and want the money back, I would use both routes on the same day. Send the store request first, through Apple's refund form or Google Play's refund steps. Then email [email protected], quote the 30-day sentence from the pricing page, and include the date of the charge. Neither route is guaranteed.
Auto-renewal: what the terms allow
Section 7 of the terms sets the renewal rules:
- Renewal is automatic. "Your subscription for Premium Services will auto-renew unless you elect to cancel your subscription."
- Payment is in advance. Fees are "billed automatically at the start of the monthly or annual Premium Service period".
- Sales do not apply backwards. "we do not offer price protection or offer refunds in the event of a price drop or promotional offering."
- Your account survives. "When your subscription for Premium Services ends, your account will remain and become a free subscription."
The yearly plan renews at the full yearly price. A reminder set for the week before the renewal date is the cheapest protection against a second year you did not plan for.
How to cancel Spoonful Unlimited
Spoonful's cancel article, last updated on October 14, 2025, says "subscriptions are managed entirely through the App or Play Store." The same steps cancel a trial.
On iPhone or iPad:
- Open the Settings app on the device. The article stresses that this is the phone's Settings app and has nothing to do with the menu inside Spoonful.
- Tap your name at the top.
- Tap Subscriptions.
- Tap the Spoonful subscription.
- Tap Cancel Subscription.
On Android:
- Open the Google Play Store app.
- Tap Account.
- Tap Payments & Subscriptions.
- Select the Spoonful subscription.
- Tap Cancel Subscription and follow the prompts.
The pricing page says that after you cancel, "You'll continue to have access to premium features until the end of your billing period."
Deleting your Spoonful account is a separate action. The delete article removes your scans, favorites and reviews, and the terms say "You will not receive any refunds if you cancel your account." Cancel the subscription in the store first.
Three ways to pay less for Spoonful
Ask your dietitian for a code. The Spoonful Care program gives licensed nutrition professionals an offer code for "20% off the first year of our annual subscription of $29.99 USD / yr." The support article says you enter it under "Redeem Code" on the subscription screen. It also says "current subscribers will not be able to take advantage of these offers until their subscription term has ended", so ask before you subscribe.
Share it on iPhone. The family sharing article answers "Yes! On iOS at least." You switch on "Sharing with Family" in the subscription settings, and the article says "it takes about 1 hour for the app to be shared." Android subscriptions cannot be shared.
Pay monthly for a short diet. Two months of the monthly plan cost $9.98. If you only need the scanner while you learn a new diet, that is a third of the yearly price. One reviewer chose Spoonful for this reason on June 11, 2025: "I went to another really popular app first and they charge yearly so I gave up but then found this one and it works great!"
✓ Steps 1 to 4 done. The reveal is the last step.
What users say about Spoonful
I read the 100 most recent reviews on the US App Store page. They run from February 19, 2024 to August 5, 2026, and only 11 of them are from 2026, so written reviews arrive slowly.
Sixty-seven of the 100 gave five stars and 19 gave one star. Thirty used a billing word such as charge, refund, cancel, subscription, trial, price, pay or free. Of those 30, ten were one-star reviews and twelve were five-star reviews.
The complaints fall into three groups:
- The free limit. People who expected a free scanner hit the counter fast. "Really? Limiting the amount of times you can search stuff?", one wrote on September 6, 2025.
- The trial charge and refunds. These are the two reviews quoted in the refund section.
- Results they did not trust. A reviewer following a low FODMAP diet wrote on November 28, 2025: "On more than one occasion I have messed up my stomach trusting this app". Another wrote on October 1, 2025 that the app found no almond in an almond butter smoothie.
The praise is about time saved in the store. "Spoonful is one of the only apps i have a subscription for because it's so useful", a reviewer with celiac disease wrote on July 2, 2024. Another wrote on March 29, 2024: "When I submit a product, the response is usually a day or less."
Reviews are self-selected, and I could not verify any single report. The gap between the two stores is larger than the gap inside the App Store sample: 4.6 on iPhone against 3.6 on Android.
What Spoonful can and cannot tell you
Spoonful is open about how its results are made, and its own explanation is the best guide to how far to trust a green icon.
- Nothing is lab tested. Section 2 of the terms says "We do not lab test any of the products." Results come from the ingredient list.
- Green means likely. The FODMAP method article says green products "contain only foods that are likely low FODMAP at 1 serving." It also says "no product is 100% safe unless lab tested".
- Yellow needs a second app. The Monash guide says of a yellow result: "it does NOT mean you can't eat it. It just means that you'll need to do a bit more research first." Spoonful recommends checking serving sizes in the Monash University app, which is a separate app.
- Gluten results follow the same pattern. The gluten-free colors article defines green as "likely gluten free". For unclear ingredients such as flavors, the yellow icon article says "We recommend you contact the manufacturer for more information."
- Coverage depends on the store. The coverage article says Spoonful covers about 90% of products scanned in the US and 75% in the other four countries. It rates Costco and Sam's Club as low coverage, under 40% of scans, and Aldi and Trader Joe's as 40% to 70%.
The terms add that the service "is not meant to serve as a substitute for professional advice" (section 2).
What the research says about diet scanner apps
Spoonful sells help with two main jobs: following a low FODMAP diet and avoiding gluten. I searched PubMed for a published study of the Spoonful app and did not find one, so the papers below are about the diets and about similar tools.
The low FODMAP diet has good evidence for IBS. A network meta-analysis in Gut (Black et al., 2022) pooled 13 randomized trials with 944 patients and ranked the diet first for global symptoms against a habitual diet. The authors noted that most trials took place in specialist care.
How the diet is taught matters. A feasibility trial (Dimidi et al., 2023) randomized 51 patients to learn the diet from a booklet, an app or a dietitian. Adequate symptom relief was reported by 80% of the dietitian group, 63% of the app group and 39% of the booklet group. The dietitian beat the booklet. The difference between dietitian and app was not statistically significant, and the authors asked for a larger trial.
A pilot trial of a FODMAP app called Heali (Rafferty et al., 2021) enrolled 58 people, and 25 finished. Quality of life improved more in the app group, 31.1 against 11.8 points. The difference in total symptom severity was not statistically significant.
For gluten, labels leave a gap. A study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology (Samaan et al., 2026) had dietitians review 100 packaged products. They judged 64 compatible with a gluten-free diet, and only 37.5% of those 64 carried a gluten-free label. The AI app tested in that study, which was not Spoonful, agreed with the dietitians on 99% of products.
My reading of these four papers: the diets work, a dietitian teaches them better than a booklet, an app may come close, and no trial shows that an ingredient scanner alone improves symptoms.
Who Spoonful Unlimited is worth paying for
Spoonful Unlimited fits these people well:
- You are in the first months of a low FODMAP or gluten-free diet and scan many products each week.
- You follow more than one diet at once. Multiple diet support is in both plans.
- You work with a dietitian who can give you a Spoonful Care code.
- You shop at the large chains Spoonful rates as good coverage, such as Kroger, Walmart, Target, Tesco or Woolworths.
The free plan is enough only if you check one or two new products a month.
Spoonful fits poorly if you shop mainly at Costco, if you need certainty about cross-contact for a severe allergy, or if you want a health score for packaged food. For that last job, our Yuka pricing guide and Fooducate pricing guide cover two scanners with free barcode scanning. Our Fig pricing guide covers a food scanner with unlimited search and a 5 scan monthly cap. Our roundup of barcode scanning apps compares more.
People with celiac disease or a diagnosed food allergy should keep following their clinician's instructions. An app result is a starting point for reading the label.
The sentence to quote, and 5 steps to try Spoonful without an unwanted charge
You have waited for it, so here it is. Quote this line from the pricing page in your email: "If you're not satisfied within the first 30 days of your paid subscription, contact us." It is the only one of the three documents that gives you a window, and Spoonful published it itself.
- Use the free plan first. Create an account and spend the five scans and five searches on products you buy every week.
- Read the offer screen before you start the trial. Find the amount and the date of the first charge, and screenshot it.
- Pick the plan by time. Choose monthly if you need the scanner for under six months and yearly if you need it longer.
- Set a reminder for day five. Cancel in your Apple or Google subscriptions, where the trial is managed, and keep the confirmation email.
- Act the same day if you are charged. Send a refund request to Apple or Google, then email [email protected] and quote the 30-day line from the pricing page.
Tracking food with a free tier
Spoonful answers one question: does this product fit my diet? It does not count calories or log meals. If you also want to know how much you eat, a food tracker does that job. NutriScan, the app my team makes, has a Free plan with 5 AI food scans a week and a Premium plan at about $59 a year, and the plans are listed in our pricing breakdown. NutriScan estimates calories and macros from a photo. It does not screen ingredients against a FODMAP or gluten list, so it does not replace Spoonful.
Five scans go fast in one grocery trip.
Bottom line
Spoonful is free to try and cheap to run for a short diet, at $4.99 a month, or $29.99 a year if you need it longer. The risk sits in the trial and the refund wording, not the price. Screenshot the offer screen, set a day-five reminder, and keep the 30-day sentence ready. If you want to see how many calories and macros are on your plate, try NutriScan and scan a meal.
Spoonful pricing FAQ
Is Spoonful free?
Partly. The free plan, Spoonful Basic, includes 5 scans and 5 searches a month, per the pricing page. Unlimited scans and searches need a Spoonful Unlimited subscription.
How much does Spoonful Unlimited cost?
Spoonful Unlimited costs $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year in the US. Paying monthly for a year comes to $59.88. Prices in other countries can differ.
Does Spoonful have a free trial?
Yes. Spoonful offers a 7-day free trial of the paid plan. The trial is managed by Apple or Google, so you cancel it in your store subscriptions before day seven to avoid a charge.
Can I get a refund from Spoonful?
It is uncertain. The pricing page says to contact Spoonful within the first 30 days of a paid subscription. The support center sends refund requests to Apple or Google, and the terms call purchases final and non-refundable.
How do I cancel Spoonful Unlimited?
Cancel in the store you paid through. On iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions, then Spoonful. On Android, open the Play Store, tap Account, then Payments & Subscriptions. Access continues until the end of the billing period.