Yuka vs Oasis: which food scanner app should you trust?

Yuka scores Coke 0 and Oasis scores it 50. We scanned the same products in both to show what each app measures, what it costs, and which to pick.

Maddox Schmidlkofer

October 1, 2026

Yuka gives a can of Coca-Cola 0 out of 100. Oasis gives the same can 50.

Yuka gives Kerrygold butter 30. Oasis gives it 80.

They're the two names that come up most when people look for an app to scan their groceries, and they disagree on almost everything. That's not because one of them is broken. They're measuring two completely different things, and once you see which is which, choosing between them gets easy.

(Disclosure: I build Tallow, which competes with both. On October 1, 2026, I scanned the same 10 products in all three apps on the same phone. Every score below is a screenshot from that afternoon, and I've included where Tallow is the outlier.)

The short version

Pick Yuka if you mainly want to cut sugar, salt and additives and want a free app with a long track record. Pick Oasis if you mainly care about contaminants, especially in water, filters and supplements, and you're willing to pay. Neither one will tell you about seed oils, and only one of them will let you see lab results at all.

Same products, three apps

*Oasis only lists unsalted Kerrygold; Yuka and Tallow scored salted.

Three patterns explain nearly every row.

Oasis is grading contaminants, not nutrition

Oasis is built to answer "what's in this that shouldn't be?": metals, pesticides, plastics, risky ingredients. It doesn't weigh nutrition the way Yuka does, so a can of Coke with 39 grams of sugar lands at 50, and the Nature Valley bar and the hummus land at 80 and 71. Yuka, which is mostly a nutrition score, puts all three in the red.

If you've ever wondered how a contaminant-focused app can rate a sugary snack above a whole food, this is how. It's answering a narrower question.

Yuka is grading the nutrition label, and nothing else

Yuka scores butter 30 because Nutri-Score penalizes saturated fat by the gram. Yuka tells you so directly: "All butters have bad ratings on Yuka." It also can't see anything a lab would find, which is how the dandelion tea gets a perfect 100.

When both have the same lab report, they still disagree with Tallow

The dandelion tea is the interesting one. Lead Safe Mama had it tested in March 2026: 301 ppb lead, 191 ppb cadmium and 95.9 ppb arsenic in the dry tea. Oasis and Tallow both have that report.

Oasis converts it to a per-serving dose, about 0.45 µg of lead per tea bag, which is just under California's Prop 65 warning line of 0.5 µg a day, and scores the tea 83. Tallow compares the concentration against the strictest published limit it has on file and scores it 4. Same test, two defensible readings, and Tallow is the stricter one. (How to read a lab report like this yourself.)

The strawberries are the reverse case. Oasis's own test of Driscoll's found 2 pesticides out of 378 it screened for, and scored them 94. A separate Mamavation test of Driscoll's strawberries earlier the same month detected residues of about a dozen pesticides and their breakdown products. Tallow counts both tests, so Driscoll's strawberries on Tallow land at 13. Different samples, different results, which is exactly why knowing whose test you're looking at matters.

Where Oasis is stronger than Yuka

• It actually has lab data. Oasis pays for its own testing, and that's expensive. Many products in its database have been measured for metals, pesticides or plastics. Yuka has none.
• Water. Oasis started as a bottled-water ranking app, and it's still the best-known option for comparing water brands, filters and local tap water.
• Supplements and protein. Yuka often can't rate them at all ("Yuka doesn't know how to rate meal replacement drinks"). That's exactly where heavy-metal testing finds the most problems.

Where Yuka is stronger than Oasis

• Price and independence. Scanning is free, Premium is pay-what-you-want, and Yuka takes no money from brands. Oasis's useful features sit behind a $47–$70 a year subscription.
• Nutrition. If sugar, sodium and additives are your concern, Yuka's score reflects them and Oasis's barely does.
• Track record. Yuka has been around since 2017 and publishes its scoring method. Oasis launched in 2024 and is still changing fast; it has been renamed several times.

The caveat with Oasis: you often can't see whose test it is

Left: Oasis's "Lab results" for the tea. Right: Tallow's sheet for the same test.

On the dandelion tea, Oasis's lab results screen lists "Heavy metals · Mar 26," and its linked report page calls it a "verified third-party lab report." Neither says who ordered the test or which lab ran it. It was Lead Safe Mama's test, run by Purity Laboratories.

That matters because "lab tested" only means as much as the lab, the sample and the math. In June 2026, LMNT sued Oasis and its founder in federal court in Delaware (Drink LMNT, Inc. v. Live Oasis, LLC). LMNT alleges that Oasis took a lead concentration measured in micrograms per kilogram of powder, treated it as a per-serving dose, told followers LMNT had "seven times" a lead limit, and scored LMNT 3 out of 100, below Oreos at 40. By LMNT's math, the real figure is about 0.09 µg per serving, roughly a fifth of the Prop 65 line. These are allegations in a complaint, not findings, and the case is ongoing. The complaint also says Oasis later posted corrections; LMNT's Watermelon Salt now shows 93 in the app.

None of that makes Oasis's data worthless. Most of the reports in it are real tests. But it's a strong argument for using an app that shows you the source so you can check the number yourself.

Yuka vs Oasis: which should you download?

• "I want to eat less junk." Yuka.
• "I want to know what's in my water and supplements." Oasis.
• "I want lab results and I want to see where they came from." Neither does that well.
• "I avoid seed oils." Neither will flag them.

If you want both, plus what neither covers

Tallow does the two jobs together. It scores the label (ingredients, additives, ultra-processing and packaging) like Yuka, and it folds in independent lab results like Oasis. Every lab result shows who tested it, who paid for it, the date and a link to the original report, whether it came from Lead Safe Mama, Mamavation, PlasticList, Consumer Reports, the brand, or Oasis's own testing program.

It also covers what both of them skip: a seed-oil standard that flags canola, soybean and "vegetable oil" on any product, and a restaurant map that scores places on what their kitchens cook with.

If you've already got Yuka or Oasis on your phone, scan a couple of your staples in Tallow too. When the scores disagree, Tallow will show you why, and whose lab report it's using.

Method: products scanned by barcode (or searched, in Oasis) on a Moto G 5G (2024), October 1, 2026, current Play Store versions. Ratings from the US App Store on the same day. Pricing from each app's App Store listing. Lab sources: Lead Safe Mama/Purity Laboratories (dandelion tea), Oasis report #1960 and Mamavation (Driscoll's strawberries). Lawsuit: complaint, Drink LMNT, Inc. v. Live Oasis, LLC, No. 1:26-cv-00677 (D. Del., filed June 10, 2026). Allegations in a complaint are not findings of fact.