What is Open Food Facts used for?

Open Food Facts is the Perl server software behind Open Food Facts, a crowdsourced database of food products and their ingredients and nutrition. It is a good fit for building apps that scan and look up food products, and running a local Open Food Facts instance for development.

Is Open Food Facts open source?

Yes. Open Food Facts is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-server.

Is Open Food Facts free?

Yes. Open Food Facts is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Open Food Facts?

Yes. Open Food Facts can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What are some alternatives to Open Food Facts?

Similar open-source tools in the Productivity category include Wger, SparkyFitness and Feedbin. SaaS products in the same category include AvoCal, Babycheck and Better Gym & Calorie Tracker.

Is Open Food Facts actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Open Food Facts was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.112.0, published on 2 October 2026. The project has 1.2k stars on GitHub.

Open Food Facts: open-source productivity

About Open Food Facts

This repository contains Product Opener, the server software for Open Food Facts and Open Beauty Facts. It provides the database, API server and web interface for a crowdsourced collection of food product data. It is written in Perl, HTML and JavaScript and released under the AGPL license, and the maintainers welcome Perl, CSS and JavaScript contributors.

Open Food Facts is a database of food products with ingredients, allergens, nutritional facts and other label information. The README describes it as a non-profit association of volunteers, and the project topics mention crowdsourcing, nutrition, allergies and allergens, recycling and the environment. Product Opener works alongside Robotoff, the project's AI system written in Python, the Open Food Facts mobile app, a query service and an upcoming authentication service.

Developers can run a local instance for testing, and the mobile app can work with it after enabling dev mode. The README links to the API documentation separately and to an architecture diagram in the organization's repositories. The latest release listed is v2.112.0.

Key features

Food product database with ingredients and nutrition
Allergen information from product labels
Public API server
Web interface for browsing and editing products
Works with Robotoff AI and the mobile app

Good fit for

→Building apps that scan and look up food products
→Running a local Open Food Facts instance for development

Built with: HTML
Tags: food; nutrition; database; crowdsourcing; perl; allergens; api; open-data

Open Food Facts: questions and answers

What is Open Food Facts used for?: Open Food Facts is the Perl server software behind Open Food Facts, a crowdsourced database of food products and their ingredients and nutrition. It is a good fit for building apps that scan and look up food products, and running a local Open Food Facts instance for development.
Is Open Food Facts open source?: Yes. Open Food Facts is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-server.
Is Open Food Facts free?: Yes. Open Food Facts is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Open Food Facts?: Yes. Open Food Facts can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What are some alternatives to Open Food Facts?: Similar open-source tools in the Productivity category include Wger, SparkyFitness and Feedbin. SaaS products in the same category include AvoCal, Babycheck and Better Gym & Calorie Tracker.
Is Open Food Facts actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Open Food Facts was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.112.0, published on 2 October 2026. The project has 1.2k stars on GitHub.