SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 — A consumer class-action complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that MyFitnessPal’s May 1 paywall changes — which moved scan-a-meal photo logging, recipe URL import, and macro-by-meal goal tracking from the free tier into its Premium subscription — constitute deceptive marketing because the app’s app-store metadata continues to describe it as “free.”
The complaint, brought by a single named plaintiff with class allegations on behalf of similarly situated U.S. users, seeks restitution for users who downloaded the app between May 1 and the date paid notification of the changes is found to have been adequate. It does not challenge MyFitnessPal’s right to move features behind a paywall, only the description of the resulting product as “free” in the App Store and Google Play listings during the transition period.
MyFitnessPal declined to comment on pending litigation.
“This is a categorization fight, not a feature fight,” said an antitrust attorney unaffiliated with either side who reviewed the complaint at Consumer Tech Wire’s request. “The legal question is whether you can call your product ‘free’ when the features that gave the free tier its market value have been moved upmarket. The plaintiff’s lawyers will argue that the answer is no. MyFitnessPal will argue that a feature reorg doesn’t make the underlying free tier — which still includes calorie logging and barcode scanning — non-free.”
User reaction to the May 1 changes has been visible across MyFitnessPal-related forums, app store reviews, and social media since the changes shipped. Forum threads on r/loseit, r/CICO, and the MyFitnessPal community itself include extended discussions of users either downgrading to the still-free workflow, switching to alternative apps, or paying for Premium against their preference.
The case file is Roberts v. MyFitnessPal, Inc., with a docket number pending. The Northern District of California has been a frequent venue for consumer-tech class actions over the last decade.
Consumer Tech Wire’s May 1 coverage of the paywall changes, written before the litigation was filed, is at /news/myfitnesspal-paywall-expansion-may-2026/.