Nime vs Yuka

Two barcode food scanners have most of the EU consumer attention in 2026: Yuka, the French app that pioneered the category in 2017, and Nime, launching now with a different scoring philosophy. Both scan a barcode and return a score. The interesting question is what each one actually measures underneath, where their methodologies overlap, and where they diverge.

This page lays the two out side by side. We’ve tried to be fair to both — the goal is to help you decide which methodology you trust, not to argue that one is universally better.

At a glance

What Yuka does

Yuka launched in France in 2017 and effectively created the consumer food-scanning category in Europe. The proposition was simple: point your phone at any barcode and see a single number that tells you how good the product is for you. That simplicity is what made it work, and it’s why Yuka has become a household name in much of the EU.

Yuka’s scoring is a weighted blend of three things: nutritional quality (60% of the score), additive risk (30%), and organic status (10%). Nutritional quality is computed largely on the Nutri-Score axis — energy density, sugar, salt, fibre, protein. Additives are flagged from a published list of risk classifications. The organic factor is a binary bonus for certified-organic products. Yuka publishes these weightings, which is unusual for the category and earns the app a lot of justified trust.

The app covers both food and cosmetics — you can scan a shampoo bottle and see an ingredient breakdown the same way you scan a yoghurt. It’s available in most of Europe, the US, the UK, and parts of Asia, with a free tier covering unlimited barcode scans and a paid Yuka+ tier for offline access, scan history features, and additional ingredient detail.

What Yuka deliberately does not cover: pesticide exposure beyond the binary organic-status flag, microplastic exposure as a separate dimension, and processing depth as an explicit measurement (it gets folded into the nutrition score).

What Nime does differently

Nime takes a different approach. Instead of a single weighted score with three inputs, Nime computes four risk measures and surfaces them independently: additives, ultra-processed level, pesticides, and microplastics. Each measure has its own score, visible on the per-product page. A single composite Harmfulness number sits on top, weighted from the four, for shoppers who want a glance-speed answer.

The full methodology is documented at /methodology. The short version of what differs from Yuka:

• Pesticides as a first-class dimension. For raw and minimally-processed produce, Nime estimates pesticide exposure risk by category using EU pesticide residue monitoring data and the EFSA pesticide review programme. Categories with consistently higher residue findings score worse; categories with consistently lower residue findings score better. Yuka captures this only via the binary organic flag.
• Microplastics as a first-class dimension. Microplastic exposure is estimated from packaging type, processing steps, and category-level research on contamination patterns. Categories with documented contamination — teabags releasing particles in hot water, bottled water in certain plastics, tinned and microwaveable foods, salt — score higher. Yuka does not cover this dimension at all.
• Ultra-processed level as an explicit measure. Nime grades processing depth on a continuous spectrum informed by the NOVA framework, not collapsed into nutritional quality. Two products with similar Nutri-Score letters can differ meaningfully in additive density and ingredient engineering — the high-protein category is one example of where this distinction matters.
• Plain-English explanations for every ingredient. Yuka labels additives with a risk-level dot. Nime gives a one-line plain-English description for every item on the ingredient list — what it is, what it does in the product, what current EFSA and research say about it, whether it has had recent regulatory attention. The same depth the editorial blog covers, applied per ingredient.
• Proprietary database, EU-rooted framing. Nime’s product data is its own. Locale-specific food authorities (Voedingscentrum in the Netherlands, BfR in Germany, ANSES in France, AESAN in Spain) are referenced where their positions matter. Yuka uses Open Food Facts as its primary database, which is open and contributor-driven — a different trade-off, not strictly worse or better.

Net effect: where Yuka returns a single number that compresses nutrition, additives, and organic status, Nime returns a structured per-dimension view that includes two risk surfaces Yuka does not cover at all.

How the four risk measures line up

A measure-by-measure comparison — where the two apps overlap and where they diverge.

Additives

Both apps cover this. Yuka classifies additives from a published risk list, flagged on the product page with a colour-coded dot. Nime classifies every E-number and named additive against a combination of EU regulatory position (EFSA, Regulation 1333/2008) and independent research, including the French NutriNet-Santé cohort findings (BMJ 2023, PLOS Medicine 2024, Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 2024) and the EFSA 2026 mixture-effect guidance. The blog post on emulsifiers walks through one category in depth.

Ultra-processed level

Yuka covers this indirectly — processing depth tends to correlate with poorer nutritional quality, so it gets penalised through the 60% nutrition weight. Nime measures it explicitly, on a continuous spectrum informed by the NOVA framework. Two products with the same Nutri-Score can have very different Nime ultra-processed scores depending on additive density, ingredient engineering, and processing signals.

Pesticides

Yuka captures pesticide concerns only via the 10% organic-status weighting — certified organic gives a bonus, non-organic doesn’t. Nime estimates pesticide exposure risk at the category and ingredient level using EU residue monitoring data, so non-organic categories with consistently low residue findings score better than the binary organic flag captures, and high-risk categories score worse.

Microplastics

Yuka does not cover this dimension. Nime estimates microplastic exposure risk from packaging type and category-level research. This is an estimate, not a per-product lab measurement — Nime says so explicitly on the score breakdown. The 2026 BPA and PFAS packaging ban covers why packaging chemistry is hard to verify per-product.

Where Yuka still wins

A few things to be honest about.

Maturity and user trust.Yuka has been at this since 2017, with 50M+ users, a stable product, years of refinement, and a brand most EU shoppers already recognise. Nime is launching now. If a long track record matters to you — and reasonably, it should for an app you’re going to use to make decisions about what your family eats — Yuka has earned its position. We don’t expect that to change overnight.

Cosmetics coverage.Yuka scans cosmetics; Nime does not. If you want one app for both food and personal-care products, Yuka covers ground Nime currently doesn’t.

Geographic reach. Yuka is live in most of Europe, the US, the UK, Canada, and parts of Asia. Nime launches in five EU locales (EN, NL, DE, FR, ES). If you shop outside those five, Yuka is currently the broader-coverage option.

Single-glance simplicity.Yuka’s single number with a colour band is faster to interpret than Nime’s structured view, if all you want is a yes/no signal. The trade-off is what gets hidden behind the single number — but trade-offs go both ways.

Which one is right for you

Honest framing, not a sales pitch.

• If you scan cosmetics as well as food: Yuka covers both; Nime is food-only. Either Yuka, or both apps.
• If you want microplastic and pesticide visibility: Nime makes those first-class; Yuka does not. Nime is the broader-risk-surface option.
• If you want plain-English explanations for every ingredient: Nime translates every item on the label, including additives, sweeteners, fillers, and stabilisers, into a sentence a non-specialist can read. Yuka surfaces additive names with risk bands.
• If you’ve used Yuka for years and the workflow works: keep using it. Nothing here is an argument for switching cold-turkey. Running both for a few weeks is a reasonable way to see whether the extra dimensions Nime surfaces change any of your shopping decisions.
• If you’re picking a scanner for the first time: try both, see which framing fits how you think about food. Methodology preference is personal — there’s no objectively-correct choice.

The honest summary: Yuka and Nime are different products solving adjacent problems. Yuka is simpler, broader (food + cosmetics, more countries), and more mature. Nime is deeper on food specifically, with two risk dimensions Yuka doesn’t cover and a per-ingredient explanation layer Yuka doesn’t provide. Which one fits your shopping is a question only you can answer.

Frequently asked questions

Try Nime when it launches

Nime is in pre-launch. Join the early-access waitlistand we’ll let you know when the app is ready on iOS and Android. Read the full methodology page if you want to understand exactly how the four risk measures are computed before you sign up.