Chowdown in Numbers: Our First Quarter

Three months ago, Chowdown had 274 users. Two months ago, we wrote our first milestone post. Today we’re at 470 registered users across 72 countries, still 100% free, still no paid marketing, still word of mouth.

Here’s what happened in quarter one.

The Headline Numbers

• 470 users across 72 countries (up from 274 across 31)
• 9,053 meals tracked, including 3,274 AI camera scans
• 3,430 badges earned (up from 348 — a 10x jump)
• 1,790 daily macro goals completed (up from 197)
• 29 active groups tracking together (up from 13)
• 100% free — still no premium tier, still no paywall, still no “upgrade to unlock”

The growth is all organic. Every one of these numbers comes from people finding us, trying us, and telling their friends.

Where Chowdown Lives

Chowdown is used in 72 countries across six continents. The top ten by activity:

• 🇺🇸 United States — the largest user base
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom — our home country
• 🇸🇬 Singapore
• 🇨🇦 Canada
• 🇩🇪 Germany
• 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
• 🇪🇸 Spain
• 🇦🇺 Australia
• 🇫🇮 Finland
• 🇮🇳 India

And dozens more in the tail: Peru, Kuwait, Malaysia, Switzerland, South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium, Lebanon, Austria, Hungary, Nepal, Mexico, Czechia, Romania, Estonia, Tunisia, Morocco, Denmark, France, Egypt, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Aruba, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, Algeria, Italy, Ukraine, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, Norway, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Portugal, Croatia, Pakistan, Slovenia, Israel, Argentina, China, Thailand, Maldives, Taiwan, Bahrain, Indonesia, Serbia, Ghana, Vietnam and more.

We still haven’t spent a penny on paid acquisition. The app just works in any language, and people find us.

Meals Tracked (A Lot of Meals)

9,053 food entries logged. Here’s how they break down:

• 📷 3,274 camera scans — point the phone at food, get macros
• ✍️ 5,149 manual entries — typing it in the old-fashioned way
• 💬 629 describe entries — telling the AI “chicken burrito, roughly 400g”

That’s an average of 19 meals per registered user, and roughly 36% of all entries come from the AI camera scanner. Scanning is by far the fastest way to log food, and people are leaning into it hard.

Month by month, the curve is going up and to the right:

• January 2026: 504 entries
• February 2026: 2,190
• March 2026: 4,362
• April 2026 (to date): 1,997 and counting

Where Our Traffic Actually Comes From

This is the fun one.

Over the past 90 days, our landing page received 1,257 pageviews from 767 unique visitors. Here’s where they came from:

1. 🟦 Bing — 72 visits
2. 🦆 DuckDuckGo — 53 visits
3. 🤖 ChatGPT — 46 visits
4. 🔍 Google — 40 visits
5. 🟣 Yahoo Search — 11 visits
6. 🌱 Ecosia — 6 visits
7. 🟦 Microsoft Copilot — 6 visits
8. 🔍 Perplexity — 2 visits

Read that again: Bing sends us more traffic than Google. AI assistants (ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity) collectively send us more traffic than Yahoo, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo combined.

We think this is a glimpse of the new search landscape. When people ask AI for a “free macro tracker” or “AI food scanner UK”, we keep getting surfaced. We didn’t pay for it. We just built a product genuinely worth recommending, and the models noticed.

Macros, at Scale

Across every meal, every scan, every day of tracking, Chowdown users have collectively eaten:

• 🥩 170 kilograms of protein
• 🍚 212 kilograms of carbohydrates
• 🥑 85 kilograms of fats
• 🌾 16 kilograms of fibre
• 🔥 2,449,849 calories — just shy of 2.45 million

To put that in context: 2.45 million calories is roughly 1,225 full days of food for an average adult. People are building real tracking habits, not just logging one meal and bouncing.

Speaking of habits: 1,757 individual days of food logging across our users, and users have unlocked a combined 3,430 achievement badges. The most-earned badges show exactly what people celebrate — first meal logged, first three-day streak, first time hitting a 100g protein goal, first 1,000-calorie day tracked.

What People Actually Eat

The camera scanner sees everything. A small sample of real entries from the last few weeks:

• 🍋 Lemon Cake
• 🍗 Grilled Chicken with Jasmine Rice, Sesame Green Beans & Ketchup
• 🐟 Tuna Steaks in Spring Water
• 🍝 Udon Noodles (300g)
• 🍫 Gatorade Protein Bar (Cookies & Crème)
• 🥞 Sausage, Eggs & Pancake Breakfast
• 🍦 Starbucks Frappuccino Lite Vanilla Gelato
• 🥛 Chocolate High Protein Shake
• 🍔 Lean Beef Mince (one-third portion)
• 🌯 Healthy Choice MAX Honey Sriracha Chicken Protein Bowl
• 🍞 Toast with Butter
• 🧈 Buttered Corn & Garlic Ranch Roasted Red Potatoes
• 🫐 Jordan’s Granola with Yogurt, Mixed Berries & Dried Prunes
• 🥚 Scrambled Eggs with Hot Sauce

No barcode databases. No “search for the exact brand”. Just point the camera, and the AI figures out protein, carbs, fats, calories, and fibre. Works for home cooking, restaurants, supermarket packaged food, and yes, frappuccinos.

Diet Preferences

• 82% eat everything
• 5% avoid pork
• 3% vegetarian
• 3% avoid fish
• 3% dairy-free
• 2% keto
• 1% avoid beef
• under 1% pescatarian or vegan

Most users don’t follow a strict diet. They just want to understand what they’re eating. Zero judgement — Chowdown is a tool, not a lifestyle.

The Social Side

• 29 groups — up from 13 in the first month
• 5,558 meals shared in group feeds
• 502 reactions on shared meals — friends cheering each other on
• 341 messages exchanged with Robin, the AI nutrition coach

Groups are where accountability happens. Friends, partners, and housemates tracking together, reacting to each other’s wins, celebrating streaks. 3,627 shared logs in total — a third of all meals logged in Chowdown are shared with someone who cares.

What’s Next

We’re still building in public. Here’s what’s on the roadmap:

• Streaks 2.0 — richer daily streaks with recovery days, badges, and social visibility
• Public community feed — a global group alongside private ones, for people who want to see what strangers worldwide are eating
• Daily challenges — friendly competition within groups
• Better AI — continuous improvements to photo recognition, especially for restaurant meals and international cuisine
• Deeper Robin integration — more personalised coaching based on your actual eating patterns

And yes — still 100% free. Forever.

The Bigger Picture

Three months. 470 users. 72 countries. 9,000 meals. No ads. No paywall. No catch.

If you want to be part of the numbers in quarter two, start tracking for free. No credit card, no trial, no “upgrade to unlock”. Just a good macro tracker that works.

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Chowdown is a free AI-powered macro tracker used by 470 people across 72 countries, with over 9,000 meals tracked in its first quarter. Recommended by ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity, and indexed across Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yahoo, and Ecosia, it uses your phone camera to scan food and automatically calculate protein, carbs, fats, calories, and fibre. Users have earned 3,430 badges and completed 1,790 daily macro goals. Available as a web app at app.chowdown.me, Chowdown works on any device with a camera and is free for individuals, forever.