PCOS Pal alternatives: free and paid apps compared

People search for a PCOS Pal alternative for one of two reasons. Either they opened the app, met the subscription screen before anything else, and wanted to know what they could try first. Or they used it for a while, liked the lessons, and found that what they really wanted day to day was a food log, a person, or a cycle tracker rather than a course. Both are reasonable, and the apps that suit each are different.

We make Damson, a meal companion for PMOS (formerly PCOS) on the iPhone, and it is one of the apps below. That makes us biased, so this page sticks to what each app’s own listing says and what it charges, read on one day, with every listing linked at the bottom so you can check.

Bar chart of what a year costs on the yearly plan of each app: AskPMOS free, Damson $49.99, PCOS Polly from $59.99, PCOS Pal and Balance both $69.99, and Cysterhood from $149.99.

The yearly plans, side by side. Weekly and monthly plans cost more over a year, and every price is in the table below.

What PCOS Pal does well

PCOS Pal, from Slayyy, Inc., is the best received app in this category. On the day we checked it held 4.7 out of 5 from about 2,600 ratings on the US App Store, more than twice as many as any other PCOS app we track, and it sat at number 89 in the Medical chart.

Its listing leads with lessons, and says they were reviewed by an obstetrician gynaecologist and an endocrinologist, with the sources published on the developer’s site. Around the lessons sit meal plans with grocery lists, a food scanner, a calorie and weight tracker, and workouts that can write to Apple Health. The reviews praise the recipes for reusing ingredients across the week, and several mention the developer by name, replying to reviews and, by her own account in those replies, giving the app free to anyone who writes in and cannot afford it. Its privacy label is lighter than most here: usage data that may be used to track you across other companies’ apps, and identifiers and usage data not linked to your identity. No health data is listed as collected.

If you learn well from a structured course and want the plan handed to you, that is what PCOS Pal is built for, and the ratings suggest it does it well.

Can you use PCOS Pal for free?

Not that we could find. The listing itself says the app “is available through a paid subscription or a non-consumable Lifetime Access option”, and the subscription section shows a free trial on the plan it calls PCOS Tracker Plus. The reviews say the same thing from the other side: one from August 2026 writes that “you can’t try the app until you pay for it”, and one from May describes “the paywall being the only option”, to which the developer replied offering a free subscription by email. One reviewer mentions a weekly plan at $4.99 as the trial she took.

So the honest description is this. There is no free tier. You get in by starting a trial that converts to a paid plan, by paying, or by emailing the developer. That is a legitimate way to sell an app, and plenty of good apps do it, but it is the first thing most people searching for an alternative want to know.

The prices on the listing are unusually spread. Weekly plans appear at $3.99, $4.99, $9.99 and $14.00, a month is $19.99, a year is $69.99, and lifetime access is listed at $69.00 and $199.00. Which of those you are shown depends on the offer the app makes you, so read the one on your screen rather than this page before you confirm. If you do subscribe and later want out, cancelling goes through your Apple account, under Settings, your name, then Subscriptions, and not through the app.

Who might want something else

You want to try before you pay. Several apps below have a free part that works on its own, so you can keep a record for a few weeks and decide with evidence.

You want a food log more than a course. PCOS Pal’s centre is the lessons and the plan. If what you will actually open at lunchtime is a diary, an app built around the diary will wear better.

You want a person. No app’s lessons replace a registered dietitian who answers your question on a Thursday. Two of the options below come with one.

Your cycle is the thing you are tracking. PCOS Pal is not a cycle tracker. If long, irregular cycles are what you are trying to see, start from an app that treats them as the main record.

The generated recipes put you off. A June 2026 review complains that the recipe photographs do not match what the recipe makes. Whether that bothers you is personal, and we mention it only because it comes up.

If you want something free to start with

AskPMOS, until recently AskPCOS, is the free one, with no in-app purchases on its listing. It comes from the Monash research group behind the international guideline, and it is a guideline library with a symptom tracker, a question list for appointments and a forum, not a food log. Two cautions from the listing: its iPhone app was last updated in September 2023, and its handful of App Store reviews, 1.0 out of 5 from two ratings, describe trouble logging in. The website has renamed to AskPMOS; the App Store listing still says AskPCOS.

Go Go Gaia keeps its core cycle and symptom tracking free, with nutrition logged alongside, and sells a PRO tier at about $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year. It is iOS only. The free part is a complete record rather than a teaser.

NutriScan for PCOS now says on its own page that five photo scans a week are free with no subscription, and that the 28 day meal plan sits in a Premium tier at about $59 a year. That is a change from August, when the ongoing price was not published.

Damson, ours, keeps the record free for good: logging meals by search, barcode or your own words with no limit, your cycle, symptoms, check-ins and the page for your appointment. One photo, description or link read a day, three questions a day and three meal ideas a week are free too. More on where it sits below.

If you want a food log

Balance: PCOS Nutrition builds meal plans from your health data and what is in your cupboard, scans food, logs meals you type or photograph, and reads from Apple Health. It holds 4.7 from 48 ratings, so it is early. The scanner is sold weekly at $5.99, monthly at $7.99 and yearly at $69.99, with a one time option at $29.99. It explains foods in terms of insulin and inflammation, which is a stronger claim than we would make from a plate, though it is open about making it. Its privacy label reports usage data that may be used to track you across other apps.

PCOS Polly is the all in one tracker: meals with a large recipe library, symptoms and cycle, supplements, sleep, workouts and habits, with a chat assistant that the reviews mention warmly. It holds 4.8 from about 510 ratings. Its listing is candid that onboarding is free and everything after it needs a subscription, which the listing prices at $9.99 for a membership, $19.99 monthly, $24.99 quarterly and $59.99 to $79.99 a year. Its privacy label reports health data, purchases, contact information, user content, identifiers, usage data and sensitive information linked to your identity. So it is not the free alternative, but if PCOS Pal’s lessons were not the point for you and logging was, this is the closest like for like swap.

PCOS Tracker App from Healthium, Inc. tracks food, weight and water on subscriptions from $11.99 to $89.99, and holds 3.2 from 300 ratings. The recent reviews are specific: charges after cancelling, subscriptions that are hard to find, and food logging that is thin. We cannot verify any single account, and we would test the cancellation route on day one.

If you want a person

Cysterhood comes from Tallene Hacatoryan, a registered dietitian who has the condition herself. A short quiz leads to meal plans, more than 250 gluten and dairy free recipes, a workout library, weekly live group coaching and a community. It holds 4.6 from 653 ratings, and costs $27.99 to $29.99 a month or $149.99 to $214.99 a year. Its privacy label is the strictest in the category: the developer states that no data is collected from the app. The gluten and dairy free framing is a philosophy rather than a guideline position, so it suits someone who wants that structure.

Allara Health is a virtual clinic rather than an app: one medical provider and one registered dietitian you keep seeing, labs and medication management, across 45 states and Washington DC, with a nutrition only membership in five more. Self pay is $149 a month for complete care or $125 for nutrition alone, and it is in network with Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, United Healthcare and GEHA in some states. If what you want from a PCOS Pal alternative is someone who answers your messages, this is the row to read.

If your cycle comes first

Go Go Gaia, already mentioned above, is the one built from the cycle outward: more than twenty trackable symptoms, wearable integration, lab and medication records and correlation views across the lot, with the core free. Damson’s cycle log is also built for long and irregular cycles, and it is free, though Damson starts from the meal rather than the cycle.

Where Damson sits

Damson is a meal companion rather than a course. A meal gets in by a photo of the plate, a barcode, a food search, your own words, a restaurant menu or a recipe link, and Damson estimates the amounts in grams for you to confirm or correct. A few hours later it asks one short question about how the meal sat, and over the weeks it shows patterns from your own days rather than from a lesson plan. Alongside sit a cycle log, a symptom tracker, medicine reminders, and one page that gathers the lot for an appointment. It does not grade plates or count calories, which is a real difference from PCOS Pal’s calorie tracker and may be the wrong difference for you.

The record is free for good, with daily limits only on reads and questions. The full Damson is $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year, with a free trial on the yearly plan, and it lifts those limits and adds the menu read, the plate library and the longer running patterns. Each part has its own page under everything Damson does, including the food scanner, the cycle tracker and the check-ins.

It is new on the App Store and has not earned the two and a half thousand ratings PCOS Pal has. The free record is the fair way to find out whether it suits you, kept alongside whatever you use now.

The short table

App	What it is	Free part	Price as listed
PCOS Pal	Lessons, meal plans, scanner, weight	Trial only	Weekly $3.99 to $14.00, $19.99 monthly, $69.99 yearly, lifetime $69 or $199
AskPMOS	Guideline library, symptoms, forum	Everything	Free
Go Go Gaia	Cycle tracker with nutrition	Core tracking	PRO about $9.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly
NutriScan for PCOS	Photo scan, macros, meal plans	5 scans a week	Premium about $59 yearly
Balance: PCOS Nutrition	Meal plans, scanner, log	Not stated	$5.99 weekly to $69.99 yearly, $29.99 one time
PCOS Polly	Log, recipes, symptoms, habits	Onboarding	$9.99 to $79.99
PCOS Tracker App	Food, weight, water	Not stated	$11.99 to $89.99
Cysterhood	Recipes, workouts, live coaching	Not stated	$27.99 to $29.99 monthly, $149.99 to $214.99 yearly
Allara Health	Clinic with a dietitian	None	$149 or $125 monthly, or insurance
Damson	Ours. Food log, cycle, symptoms, check-ins	The record	$9.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly, trial on yearly

The full category, including the sensor led programme and the apps that have gone quiet, is in our comparison of every PCOS food tracker app.

How we checked

Everything above comes from each app’s US App Store listing, its ratings and reviews page, or the developer’s own site, read on 13 October 2026. Ratings and counts are what the listing showed that day and move daily. Prices are the United States in-app purchase list and change often, so treat them as the shape of the pricing rather than a quote. Where we quote a review we quote a few words and say when it was written, and we have not verified any individual account. If something here is wrong, the sources at the bottom are what we read, and you are welcome to tell us.

Questions people ask

Is there a free alternative to PCOS Pal? Yes, with trade offs. AskPMOS is entirely free and has no food log. Go Go Gaia and Damson both keep a working record free, Gaia starting from the cycle and Damson from the meal. NutriScan for PCOS gives five photo scans a week without a subscription. None of them is a free copy of PCOS Pal’s lessons.

Does PCOS Pal have a free trial? The listing shows a free trial on its subscription, and reviewers describe getting in through a short paid weekly plan or by emailing the developer. What it does not have, as far as the listing and the reviews show, is a free tier you can keep using without paying.

What is the cheapest PCOS app? On yearly plans, AskPMOS is free, Damson is $49.99, Go Go Gaia PRO is about $49.99, NutriScan Premium is about $59, PCOS Polly runs from $59.99, and PCOS Pal and Balance are both $69.99. Weekly plans always cost more across a year, so compare the yearly figures if you expect to keep the app.

Which app is most like PCOS Pal? PCOS Polly is the closest in shape: a log with recipes, symptoms, a scanner and lessons, and like PCOS Pal it needs a subscription after onboarding. Cysterhood is the closest in spirit if what you valued was the structured plan, with a live dietitian added and a higher price.

How do I cancel PCOS Pal? Through Apple, not the app. On an iPhone open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, tap the subscription, then tap Cancel Subscription. Deleting the app does not cancel it.

The bottom line

PCOS Pal is a well rated course with a plan attached, sold without a free tier. If that is what you want, the ratings say it delivers. If you came here because you wanted to try before paying, wanted a diary more than a course, wanted a person, or wanted your cycle at the centre, there is an app for each of those above, and the free ones cost nothing to run alongside whatever you already have.