What your protein actually costs, from prices you set
Set a reference price on the foods you buy and MuscleBuddy turns it into cost per serving, cost per gram of protein, and cost per 100 kcal, the numbers that actually change what a budget-conscious lifter puts in the cart. Your own prices always win; anything you haven't priced falls back to a U.S. reference price until you set one yourself.
The price you actually paid, saved once
You tell MuscleBuddy what an amount of a food costs, an amount buys a quantity in grams, milliliters, or servings, and that price always wins for that food once you've set it. There's no receipt scanning required to make the feature useful. Until you do, a food you buy in the U.S. falls back to a seeded reference price rather than counting as zero; every cost figure says which of the two it came from. Set a price once and your own number carries it from then on.
From that single reference price, MuscleBuddy derives three numbers: cost per serving, cost per gram of protein, and cost per 100 kcal. Cost per gram of protein is the one that actually separates a good buy from a bad one when protein is what you're optimizing for, since two foods at the same price per serving can cost wildly different amounts per gram of protein.
A grocery list and a meal plan that show their math
Your grocery list carries a running estimated total and a per-item cost as you build it, and your meal plan detail shows an estimated cost for the whole week. Both totals are honest about what they don't know: an item without a price you've set gets counted and flagged, never silently priced at zero and left out of the total.
Set an optional weekly food budget and both surfaces show you where you stand against it, how much you have left or how far over you are. It's an adherence display, not spending enforcement: nothing blocks a purchase or a plan for going over.
What this is, and what it deliberately isn't
This is expense tracking, planning, and optimization for the food you already log and plan, nothing more. It's not financial advice, and it doesn't touch debt, credit, or investing. Full money management, budgets across every category of your life, lives in a separate product built for exactly that, not bolted onto a fitness app.
If any of your spend touches supplements, medication, therapy, or labs, that spend is treated as health data: it's gated on the same consent as the rest of your health information, visibly withheld rather than silently dropped from your expense list if you haven't consented, and never shows up anywhere social no matter your settings.
Cost shows up on the tracker you already use
Cost isn't a module of its own here. It's a thin layer that surfaces inside whichever module already has the number worth pricing, which is why it looks a little different in each one. Cost per gram of protein is a Nutrition number: your grocery list is generated from the same meal plan Nutrition builds off your macro targets, so what you're pricing out is what you're actually eating this week, and the figure reads directly off the same food entries your Food Logger tracks. A supplement stack's monthly cost is a Health number, priced the same way, from a reference price you set, not a lookup. Cost per workout, what a gym membership or a piece of equipment works out to per workout, is a Training number.
Upkeep carries its own recurring spend, and because a pantry item counts against what the plan still needs to buy, Upkeep's pantry tracking and the grocery total stay in sync automatically, so the number you see is what's left to buy, not everything the week calls for. What none of this adds up to is a budgeting app: depth on debt, accounts, or net worth lives in a dedicated money product, not here.
Frequently asked
- Where do the prices come from?
Primarily from you: set a price on a food, an amount that buys a given quantity, and MuscleBuddy uses that to derive every cost figure, and your own price always wins over the fallback. A food you haven't priced falls back to a seeded U.S. reference price. That's the only other price the app ever uses, and every figure says which one it is.
- What happens to items I haven't priced?
For a U.S.-currency account, they price from a seeded reference figure and still count toward the total, labelled as a reference price rather than your own. Outside the U.S. that reference doesn't apply, and MuscleBuddy never prices an unpriced item at zero either way; it flags what it doesn't know instead of hiding it.
- Does going over my weekly food budget block anything?
No. The budget is a position, left or over, shown on your grocery list and meal plan. It's there to inform, not to stop you from buying or planning what you want.
- Is this a full budgeting or finance tool?
No. It's scoped to the food you're already logging and planning: cost per serving, per gram of protein, per 100 kcal, and a weekly total. It isn't financial advice and doesn't cover debt, credit, or investing.
- Is my supplement or medication spending treated differently?
Yes. Spend in supplement, medication, therapy, or labs categories is treated as health data. It's gated on your health-data consent and never appears anywhere social, regardless of your other settings.
See what your groceries are actually buying
Set your own prices and get cost per serving, per gram of protein, and per 100 kcal on the foods you log. Free: your own prices, cost per serving and per gram of protein. Pro ($9.99/mo) adds the meal plan a grocery list is built from.