Does Yuka detect seed oils?

Not as a category. Yuka's food score weighs nutritional quality, additives and organic certification; seed oils are not a separate dimension, so a product high in soybean or sunflower oil is not flagged for that reason. The ingredient list still shows the oil if you read it.

Is Olive Detective free?

It offers a 7-day free trial, then $49.99 per year on iOS. On Android there is a limited free tier — three product scans and three chat questions per product — before a subscription is needed.

Do the two apps give the same score for the same product?

No, and they should not. The methods differ: Yuka weights nutrition, additives and organic status, while Olive Detective weights nutrition quality and processing level first, adds seed-oil and contaminant flags, and then re-weights everything against your personal preferences.

Answer

What is a good alternative to Yuka?

Short answer

Yuka scores food on nutrition (60%), additives (30%) and organic status (10%), and scans cosmetics too. The main alternatives are Olive Detective, which adds seed-oil detection, pet-food scanning and personalised scoring, and the free Open Food Facts app, which shows raw ingredient data without a proprietary score.

What Yuka does well

Yuka is the category leader for good reasons. Its scoring method is published, its database coverage is strong in Europe, the core scan is free, and it has enough users that food manufacturers have reformulated products to score better on it. If you want a well-known, free, general-purpose nutrition scanner, it is a reasonable default.

Where Olive Detective differs

Seed oils are a first-class category — eleven oils detected by name, across languages; Yuka's method has no seed-oil dimension
Natural-first scoring — whole foods are not penalised for inherent salt or fat, which is where a generic nutrition score tends to misjudge cheese, olives, nuts and cured meat
Personalised 'For You' score — the same product scores differently depending on the allergens and topics you choose to avoid
Pet food — dog and cat food scored with a species-aware hazard method; Yuka does not scan pet food
Category-level contaminant flags anchored to FDA monitoring
Seed-oil-free restaurant map and live US FDA recall alerts

Where Yuka is the better pick

It is free for the core scan; Olive Detective is $49.99/year after a 7-day trial
Stronger product coverage in several European markets
A larger community and longer track record
If you do not care about seed oils specifically, the extra category buys you nothing

The free option: Open Food Facts

Both apps read Open Food Facts data, and Open Food Facts publishes its own free, open-source app. It gives you the ingredient list, Nutri-Score and NOVA group with no proprietary scoring layer on top. If you are comfortable interpreting an ingredient list yourself, it costs nothing and hides nothing.

Frequently asked questions

Does Yuka detect seed oils?: Not as a category. Yuka's food score weighs nutritional quality, additives and organic certification; seed oils are not a separate dimension, so a product high in soybean or sunflower oil is not flagged for that reason. The ingredient list still shows the oil if you read it.
Is Olive Detective free?: It offers a 7-day free trial, then $49.99 per year on iOS. On Android there is a limited free tier — three product scans and three chat questions per product — before a subscription is needed.
Do the two apps give the same score for the same product?: No, and they should not. The methods differ: Yuka weights nutrition, additives and organic status, while Olive Detective weights nutrition quality and processing level first, adds seed-oil and contaminant flags, and then re-weights everything against your personal preferences.

Keep reading

Last updated 26 August 2026.

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