What users say about rival apps

Read before writing store copy, onboarding or a new feature. Numbers: raw/2026-10-31-rival-reviews-and-keywords.md. They are keyword counts from 1,600 recent reviews, so use them to rank themes, not as exact shares.

What users hate, most first

1. Being charged or trapped. Surprise charges, trials that convert early, hidden cancel. It tops Cal AI's bad reviews. Our answer is billing-transparency.
2. A paywall after a long setup. Keep the first scan reachable without paying.
3. Wrong numbers. It is near the top for every photo app, and users check against labels and scales. We cannot claim better until FEAT-0001 has run.
4. No human support. Replying yourself is an edge a large rival cannot copy cheaply.
5. Fixing a wrong entry is slow. This is what one-meal-screen solves.
6. Crashes and lost history. Our log is on the phone only, so a lost phone is the same complaint waiting to happen.
7. Basics moved behind payment, and ads for people who paid. Barcode is the usual example, and metering already keeps it unmetered.

What users love

• Easy and fast. The most common praise, so a question must stay skippable.
• Weight actually lost. Real results sell the category more than any feature.
• Streaks and staying on track. A reason people stay. Their absence here is a risk: FEAT-0004.

What this means for us

• Lead with "it stops guessing", not with oil. Homemade food and oil are a small share of the complaints; wrong numbers in general are a large one.
• Trust is the second selling point. Clear price, no card, no ads. Never say "free" in a screenshot: Apple rejected that as guideline 2.3.7 (ops/release.yml).
• Search intent is mixed. food scanner also returns apps that judge additives, and we are not one of them (nutrition-scope), so watch that keyword's conversion.

Limits

Android covers only Cal AI and Appediet. Calo's and Appediet's reviews are unusually positive, so they say little about what people dislike. None of this has been checked against AskCal's own users, because it is not live yet.