Yuka App Review: Is It Accurate and Worth It?

Yuka is one of the most popular food scanner apps in the world. You scan a product’s barcode, and it gives you a score out of 100 with a color. It explains what’s good and bad about the product and suggests a healthier option. In the US App Store, it has a 4.8-star rating from over 100,000 reviews.

The short answer: Yuka is a well-made, easy app and a good way to start reading labels. Its nutrition rating is based on the reliable Nutri-Score method. It has some weak points. Its additive ratings are sometimes stricter than the science supports. The score doesn’t look at portion size. It doesn’t track calories. And it’s only available in 15 countries. Use it to compare similar products – not to judge every food as “good” or “bad”.

Features and availability checked in October 2026 on Yuka’s website and help center.

What is Yuka?

Yuka is a French app launched in 2017. It scans the barcodes of food and cosmetic products and rates them on a scale of 0 to 100, with four colored ratings: excellent and good (green), poor (orange) and bad (red).

For each product, Yuka shows the good and bad points – for example “too much sugar” or “contains a high-risk additive”. For products with a low score, it suggests a better product of the same kind. Yuka says it’s independent. It doesn’t show ads or take money from brands, and it’s paid for by its Premium membership.

How Yuka’s score works

For food, Yuka combines three criteria (Yuka):

• Nutritional quality – 60%. Based on Nutri-Score, which looks at calories, sugar, salt, saturated fat, fiber, protein and fruit and vegetable content per 100 g.
• Additives – 30%. Each additive gets a risk level: no risk, limited, moderate or high. If a product contains a high-risk additive, its score can’t go above 49.
• Organic – 10%. A bonus for products with an official organic label.

For cosmetics, the score is based only on the ingredients. Each one is rated by how risky it may be (for example, substances that may upset hormones, or allergens).

What’s free and what’s Premium

	Free	Yuka Premium
Scan food and cosmetics	✓	✓
Score, details and healthier alternatives	✓	✓
Search for products without scanning	⁠–⁠	✓
Offline mode	⁠–⁠	✓
Alerts for food preferences (palm oil, gluten, vegetarian…)	⁠–⁠	✓
Unlimited history	⁠–⁠	✓

The free version covers what most people use the app for. Premium is a yearly membership where you choose how much to pay, within a range.

What Yuka does well

• It’s very easy to use. Point, scan, and you get a clear color and a short explanation in a second.
• It makes you read labels. Many people discover for the first time how much sugar is in their yogurt or how many additives are in their bread.
• The nutrition rating is solid. Nutri-Score is an official method used on packs in several European countries. Studies have found it helps people choose healthier products.
• It suggests alternatives. Instead of only saying “bad”, it shows a better product in the same category.
• It covers cosmetics too, which most food scanners don’t.

Yuka’s limits

• Additive ratings can be stricter than the studies. Yuka’s risk levels are its own reading of the research. Some additives that food safety agencies call safe in normal amounts are rated orange or red. And one red additive can hold an otherwise good product at 49.
• Portion size isn’t counted. Like Nutri-Score, Yuka rates foods per 100 g. So foods eaten in small amounts – olive oil, cheese, nuts, dark chocolate – can look worse than they really are in your diet.
• It doesn’t track what you eat. There’s no calorie counter, macro tracking or meal plan. If you want to lose weight or eat a balanced diet, you’ll need another app as well.
• It depends on its database. If a product isn’t in it, you’ll need to add it with photos before you see a score.
• It’s only available in 15 countries – the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, the UK, Ireland and eight other European countries (Yuka). In the rest of Europe, including Romania, Poland and the Netherlands, you can’t download it from the local App Store or Google Play.

Is Yuka accurate?

Mostly, if you use it the right way. Yuka’s score is a useful shortcut for comparing two products of the same kind – two breakfast cereals, two yogurts, two loaves of bread. The one with less sugar, more fiber and fewer additives will usually score higher. And that’s a good choice.

It’s less useful as a final judgment. A score of 30 doesn’t mean a food is dangerous. A score of 80 doesn’t mean you can eat as much as you want. Look at why a product scored low. Too much sugar or salt matters more than one additive with little proof against it.

The best Yuka alternatives

NutriSmart

NutriSmart combines a food scanner with a calorie counter, so you can check what’s in your food and track how much you eat in one app:

• Check any label: photograph the ingredient list or scan the barcode. The app highlights harmful additives and ultra-processed ingredients, explains each one and gives the product a health score out of 100 (65% from additives and risky ingredients, 35% from nutrients based on Nutri-Score)
• Count calories from a photo of your plate, and track macros, water, steps and weight
• Plan your week: a 7-day meal plan with AI recipes and a shopping list
• Available in English, Romanian, French, German and Spanish, including in countries where Yuka isn’t available

Every feature is free. Scans use scan points, which you get by watching a short video ad. Each friend you invite gives you 7 days of Premium, and Premium removes the limit.

Open Food Facts

Open Food Facts is a free, non-profit, open database built by volunteers. Its app shows a product’s Nutri-Score, additives and impact on the planet. It has no ads and no paid version. But the app looks less polished, and some product data can be missing.

Yuka vs NutriSmart at a glance

	Yuka	NutriSmart
Food scanner	✓ Barcode	✓ Barcode or photo of the label
Cosmetics	✓	–
Product score	0–100: 60% nutrition, 30% additives, 10% organic	0–100: 65% additives and risky ingredients, 35% Nutri-Score
Calorie and macro tracking	⁠–⁠	✓
Meal plans and recipes	⁠–⁠	✓
Paid plan	Premium: offline, search, preferences, history	Premium: unlimited scans (all features are free)

The bottom line

Yuka is a good, simple tool for learning to read labels and comparing products. Its free version is enough for most people. Just treat the score as a guide, not a rule – especially the additive ratings. And look at why a product got the score it did. If you also want to count calories and plan meals, or Yuka isn’t available in your country, NutriSmart does the scanning and the tracking in one app.

Yuka is a trademark of Yuca SAS. NutriSmart is not affiliated with Yuka.