There are a lot of expiry trackers on the App Store and very little honest comparison between them. This page is written by the people who make one of them, which you should factor in — so everything below comes from each app's own App Store listing, fetched automatically, with the date it was checked.
How this was built. Prices, rating counts, language counts and minimum iOS versions are read directly from the App Store on 2026-10-19. The feature columns record what each developer claims in their own description, which is the only thing verifiable from outside. A dash means the listing does not mention it, not that the app cannot do it.
The comparison
| App | Price | Ratings | Languages | Reads dates | Barcode | Documents | Offline claim | Min iOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timely | Free | none yet | 10 | yes | — | yes | — | 16.4 |
| ExpiryDay | Free | 3 (5.0★) | 1 | — | yes | yes | — | 17.0 |
| Deadlinr | Free | 5 (5.0★) | 17 | — | yes | yes | yes | 15.1 |
| Expiry Date Tracker Pro | Free | none yet | 1 | — | — | yes | — | 12.0 |
| Bestfor | Free | none yet | 18 | yes | yes | — | yes | 16.0 |
| ExpiNotif | Free | 1 (5.0★) | 7 | — | yes | yes | yes | 15.0 |
| Expiring | $0.99 | none yet | 1 | — | — | yes | yes | 18.0 |
| PROvisions | Free | 1 (5.0★) | 2 | yes | — | yes | — | 26.0 |
| Expiry Guard | Free | none yet | 1 | — | yes | yes | yes | 15.5 |
Including where it makes us look worse. Timely's own "offline claim" cell is a dash, because the live App Store description does not currently mention offline support — even though the app does work offline, as described elsewhere on this site. Rather than hand-edit our own row, we left the method alone. It will flip to yes when the next version's description goes live, and you can judge the table knowing we did not put a thumb on it.
The thing nobody says out loud
This category is almost entirely unproven. Of the nine apps above, 4 have any ratings at all, and the most-reviewed one has 5. Not one has the kind of review count that tells you a product is dependable.
So treat every listing here, including ours, as a claim rather than a track record. Download two, put ten real things into each, and see which one you still have in a fortnight. That is a better test than any table.
Where the apps actually differ
How the date gets in
This is the real split. Most of these apps want you to scan a barcode — ExpiryDay, Deadlinr, Bestfor, ExpiNotif, Expiry Guard do — which looks the product up and estimates a shelf life. That is fast for packaged groceries and useless for a passport, a receipt or anything without a barcode.
Only 3 of the nine describe reading the printed date itself: Timely, Bestfor, PROvisions. That approach is slower on a tin of beans and the only one that works on a warranty document.
Food app, or everything app
Several of these are food apps that mention documents, rather than apps built for both. If all you want is to stop wasting groceries, a dedicated food tracker with barcode scanning may genuinely suit you better. If the passport and the car insurance are the dates that actually worry you, most of this list is the wrong shape.
Languages
Most of these ship in one language. Bestfor leads with 18, and Timely covers 10. If you want the app in something other than English, this column narrows the field fast.
Where Timely is the weaker choice
Worth saying plainly, because a comparison that only flatters its author is worthless:
- No barcode scanning. If your use case is a weekly shop full of packaged food, a barcode app will be quicker to add items than pointing a camera at each printed date.
- No ratings yet. We have none. Two apps on this list have a handful, which is not much, but it is more than none.
- Not the widest language support. Ten is good; it is not the most here.
- Subscription for the full version. The free tier is real but capped at five items. One app on this list is a one-off purchase instead, which some people prefer.
Where Timely is the stronger choice
- It reads the date off anything — a label, a receipt, a PDF contract — rather than looking up a barcode. That is why documents and warranties work as well as groceries.
- Documents are first-class, not a line in the description. Passports, insurance, warranties and subscriptions have their own reminder schedules.
- It works with no connection, including adding new items, which sync later.
- Ten languages, with dates and month names following the language you pick rather than your phone's region.
The others, briefly
- ExpiryDay - Expiry Tracker — aimed at home and business use, with barcode scanning and an inventory slant.
- Deadlinr - Expiry Tracker — the broadest language support of the group, covering subscriptions, pantry, warranties and documents.
- Bestfor - Food Expiry Tracker — squarely a food app, with barcode and camera capture and a strong offline story.
- ExpiNotif: Expiration dates — leans towards documents, licences and bills rather than groceries, with cross-device sync.
- Expiring — the only paid-up-front app here, and it makes a point of working entirely on-device.
- PROvisions: Expiry Tracker — camera date capture plus shared family lists; note it requires a much newer iOS than the rest.
- Expiry Guard: Doc Reminder — a document organiser first, with renewal reminders and a scanner attached.
- Expiry Date Tracker Pro — documents, food and medicine in a timeline view, and the lowest iOS requirement of the group.
All of them are free to try except one, so the cost of forming your own opinion is an evening.
Common questions
What is the best expiry date tracker app for iPhone?
There is no settled answer yet, because no app in this category has enough reviews to call it. If you mainly track packaged groceries, an app with barcode scanning will add items fastest. If you also track passports, warranties, insurance and subscriptions, you want one that reads printed dates off labels and documents, which far fewer of them do.
Do any of these apps work offline?
Several say they do, and the table above records which listings claim it. It is worth checking what offline means in each case: being able to view items you already saved is a much weaker promise than being able to add new ones with no connection and have them sync later.
Are expiry tracker apps free?
Most are free to download with a paid upgrade, and one on this list is a single up-front purchase. Free tiers usually cap how many items you can track, so the number that matters is the cap, not the price.
Is this comparison biased?
It is written by the makers of Timely, so yes, you should read it with that in mind. What we have done to keep it useful is take every figure straight from the App Store rather than from memory, record what competitors claim rather than characterising them, state where Timely is the weaker choice, and date the whole thing so you can tell when it goes stale.
Track it before it catches you out
Timely is free on the App Store. Scan a label, a receipt or a document and it remembers the date for you.
Download on theApp Store