Optimally vs Yuka

How is Optimally different from Yuka?

The short answer

Yuka scores a product 60% on nutrition, using Nutri-Score, 30% on additives and 10% on whether it is organic. Optimally scores it on the ingredient list, caps anything ultra-processed, and links the study behind each of its main rules. The real difference is what the number measures: degree of processing is not one of Yuka’s criteria. Yuka is far bigger, with a stated 85 million users and 4 million food products, and it is free to scan with, which Optimally is not. Pick Optimally if processing matters most to you, and Yuka for coverage and price.

If degree of processing matters more to you than the size of the database, that is the trade Optimally is making.

Download on the
App StorePaid subscription. Requires iOS.

What each score is actually measuring

Yuka’s own help pages give the weighting: 60% nutritional quality, calculated with Nutri-Score, 30% additives, and 10% a bonus for an official organic label. There is also a hard limit: if Yuka considers an additive high-risk, the product cannot score above 49. So the score follows energy, sugar, salt, saturated fat, fibre, protein and fruit and vegetable content closely, and a risky additive can override all of it.

Optimally starts from the ingredient list. Each ingredient is matched against a fixed table and given a rating, then rules are applied for industrial seed oils, degree of processing and flagged additives, and the nutrition panel is used last rather than first.

The practical consequence is that the two disagree most on engineered products with good macros and no additive Yuka rates high-risk. A protein bar built to hit a nutrition target can score well on a nutrition-led method and still be capped by a processing-led one.

Consistency

Optimally’s rules are fixed, so the same ingredient scores the same for you and for everybody else, every time it is scanned. Every rating can be opened to see why, and its main rules link the published study behind them.

To be fair to Yuka, its score is a published formula too, so this is not a difference between these two apps. It is a difference from scanners that ask a model for a verdict on every scan, where the same product can come back scored differently. A fixed table can still be wrong, but it is wrong visibly and in the same direction for everyone.

Where Yuka is ahead, plainly

Scale. A stated 85 million users and 4 million food products.
Price. Yuka scans free. Optimally needs a subscription, and a paywall is the most common complaint in the one- and two-star reviews of apps like these, so it is a real cost and not a footnote.
Track record. 99,000 US ratings at 4.8, against effectively none. Optimally has been on the App Store since 18 August 2026.
Cosmetics. Yuka rates personal care products too. Optimally does not.

Where Optimally is different

Degree of processing is part of the score. It is not among Yuka’s three published criteria, and in Optimally an ultra-processed product is capped at 49 however good its nutrition panel looks.
Oil type counts. Industrial seed oils are flagged by name, with the honest note that the evidence behind that flag is weaker than the evidence behind the processing one.
Its main rules link the published study they came from, inside the app.

Where they are the same

Both score with a fixed formula rather than asking a model on every scan, both publish how the score is built, and both say no brand can pay for placement or for a better score. Yuka makes that last promise in its own App Store listing.

Worked examples

Real products, scored by the app itself, with every reason the engine gave.

Last reviewed 14 September 2026.