Minthe vs mySymptoms
Choose mySymptoms if
- You use Android. Minthe is iPhone only.
- You want a mature, long-established app rather than a new one.
- You want deep customisation: your own foods, symptoms, medications, exercises.
- You want to control the analysis window yourself, anywhere from 1 to 72 hours.
- You need separate diaries for several family members, or password protection.
Choose Minthe if
- You want the statistical method published and checkable rather than proprietary.
- You want false positives explicitly corrected for, not left to your judgement.
- You want each suspect confirmed by a scheduled test, not just listed.
- You want photo and label scanning rather than typing every entry.
- You want lab results and menstrual cycle folded into the same analysis.
Where mySymptoms is genuinely better
This is the competitor we take most seriously, and pretending otherwise would be transparent.
- Android, and a decade-plus of refinement. mySymptoms has been developed and iterated for many years across both platforms. Minthe launched in 2026 on one. Maturity is a real feature and new apps do not have it.
- The configurable analysis window is a genuinely good design decision. Letting you set anything from 1 to 72 hours is more flexible than Minthe's four fixed windows. Minthe's windows are fixed deliberately, because a user-tunable window invites you to keep adjusting until something looks significant, which is a well-known way to fool yourself. But "more rigid on purpose" is still more rigid, and if you want to explore a 48-hour lag, mySymptoms lets you and Minthe does not.
- Customisation depth. Custom foods, meals, medications, exercises and symptoms. If you are tracking something unusual, mySymptoms will probably accommodate it.
- Multiple diaries and password protection. Useful for parents tracking a child, and Minthe has no equivalent.
- It shows you the correlation histograms. You can look at the working, which some people much prefer to a verdict.
The two things Minthe does structurally differently
1. The method is written down
Minthe publishes what it does: your personal base rate established first, risk ratio rather than odds ratio as the headline effect measure, Wilson confidence intervals because they behave at small sample sizes, four lagged windows, four surfacing gates, and unlogged days treated as unknown rather than symptom-free. It is all here, including a section on what the method cannot do.
We could not find an equivalent published description for mySymptoms. That is not an accusation that its analysis is poor, and it may well be good. It means you cannot check it, and we think you should be able to. If mySymptoms publishes a method document, we will link to it from this page.
2. Confirmation is the product, not a footnote
Both apps will tell you that a food looks suspicious. Only one then asks you to prove it.
When Minthe flags a suspect, it offers a guided trial: spaced challenge days with washout in between, or for a suspected helper food, a week-on week-off block design because carryover is real. At the end it gives a verdict, including "this did not hold up", which is frequently the more useful answer because most people arrive having cut out more than they needed.
This matters more than it sounds. A correlation from a food diary is a hypothesis. Acting on hypotheses is how people end up on diets of eleven foods.
Side by side
| mySymptoms | Minthe | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | iOS and Android | iPhone only. No Android, no web. |
| Maturity | Many years of development | New in 2026. No long track record yet. |
| Free tier | Yes, logging free; analysis is paid | Unlimited manual logging, free forever. Export included. |
| Logging method | Manual entry, extensive custom items | Photo scan, label scan, or text |
| Analysis window | User-configurable, 1 to 72 hours | Four: 0-2h, 2-6h, same day, next day. |
| Statistical method published | not verified | Published in full at /method. |
| Multiple-comparison correction | not verified | Yes. Benjamini-Yekutieli false discovery rate correction. |
| Personal base rate contrast | not verified | Yes. Every result is contrasted against your own base rate. |
| Confirmation testing | not verified | Yes. Guided with-and-without trials with washout. |
| Handling of unlogged days | not verified | Unlogged days treated as unknown, never as symptom-free. |
| Stool logging | Yes, Bristol scale | Bristol 1-7, urgency, incomplete evacuation, colour flags. |
| Custom foods and symptoms | Extensive | Limited |
| Multiple family diaries | Yes | No |
| Lab test import | not verified | Manual entry plus GI-MAP import, with evidence tiering. |
| Export | PDF and CSV | PDF and CSV, both free |
Checked August 2026. "Not verified" means we could not confirm it from public sources, not that the feature is missing.
How to choose
If you are on Android, use mySymptoms. That is the whole decision.
On iPhone, the useful question is what you want to do with a suspect food once you have one. If you are comfortable reading correlations and running your own reintroductions, mySymptoms gives you more control and more flexibility, and it has years of polish behind it. If you would rather the app corrected for the fact that it just tested two hundred foods at once and then walked you through proving the survivor, that is the gap Minthe was built to fill.
Either way, the thing that determines whether you get an answer is logging consistently for a few weeks. Both apps are useless without that, and no amount of statistics fixes a fortnight of gaps.
Minthe is a wellness and self-tracking tool, not a medical device. It does not diagnose or treat any condition and isn't a substitute for professional medical advice. If you have red-flag symptoms such as blood in your stool, unintentional weight loss, difficulty swallowing, persistent vomiting or a fever alongside gut symptoms, see a clinician rather than tracking them.
Frequently asked
Which is the closer comparison, mySymptoms or Cara Care?
mySymptoms, by a distance. Cara Care is a guided programme with a dietitian attached. mySymptoms and Minthe are both analytical food diaries trying to answer the same question, which is which foods precede your symptoms. If you are choosing between analysis tools rather than between coaching and analysis, this is the comparison that matters.
What does mySymptoms do better?
Several things. It runs on Android as well as iOS, which Minthe does not. It has been developed and refined over many years, so it is mature and stable in a way a 2026 app cannot claim. Its customisation is deeper, letting you add your own foods, meals, medications, exercises and symptoms. It supports a separate diary per family member and password protection. And its analysis window is user-configurable from 1 to 72 hours, which is more flexible than Minthe’s fixed windows.
What does Minthe do differently?
Two structural things. It publishes its statistical method in full, including the correction it applies for testing many foods at once, and it does not stop at flagging a suspect. A flagged food gets a scheduled with-and-without test with washout periods, and a verdict at the end. mySymptoms identifies suspect foods; Minthe is built around confirming them.
Why does multiple-comparison correction matter?
Because a food diary tests hundreds of foods against your symptoms at once, and with that many comparisons some will look significant purely by chance. Without a correction, a long enough food list will always produce convincing-looking culprits. Minthe applies a Benjamini-Yekutieli correction, chosen because it stays valid when the things being tested are correlated with each other, which foods heavily are. We could not find a published description of how mySymptoms handles this.
Can I move my data from mySymptoms to Minthe?
Not directly. mySymptoms exports to CSV and PDF, and Minthe also exports CSV, but there is no import path between them. In practice you would start fresh, which costs you the two to three weeks it takes Minthe to establish your personal base rate.