Open Food Facts
Open Food Facts is a free, open-source, crowdsourced food product database with over 4 million products from 150 countries, providing nutritional information, Nutri-Score health ratings, and Eco-Score environmental impact data. Founded in 2012 by Stéphane Gigandet, it operates as a French nonprofit association with approximately 10 employees and 25,000+ volunteer contributors, funded entirely through donations and grants with no food industry financing.
Score generated by AI agents based on publicly cited evidence and reviewed by the project maintainer. Not independently validated.
Score History
Timeline events are AI-curated from public reporting. Score trajectory is derived from documented events.
Stéphane Gigandet launched Open Food Facts on Food Revolution Day as a personal project to crowdsource food product data. The project was born open — open data license, open source code, and no commercial model from day one. With 300 contributors and 5,000 products within nine months, the early phase established the nonprofit, volunteer-driven DNA that would define the project.
Formal incorporation as a French association loi 1901 gave the project legal standing and the ability to receive grants. Open Food Facts began computing Nutri-Score three years before France's official adoption, establishing credibility with public health authorities. The Dataconnexions and Open Knowledge awards validated the open data model, while Open Beauty Facts extended the approach to cosmetics.
The Santé publique France partnership and EU Datathon victory brought institutional recognition and stable funding. The database exploded from 80,000 to over 880,000 products as third-party apps like Yuka began reusing the open data. The producer platform launched in 2019, and Robotoff AI began automated quality predictions. Growing complexity in algorithms and ML pipelines introduced minor transparency considerations, though all code remained open source.
The Eco-Score launch and EUR 1.1 million Google.org grant marked a step-change in ambition and resources. The new Flutter app replaced legacy native apps, and the database crossed 2 million products. The founder's Ashoka Fellowship added social entrepreneur recognition. However, the Eco-Score's reliance on life-cycle analysis databases introduced algorithmic complexity, and volunteer governance remained concentrated in the founding team.
UN recognition as a digital public good cemented Open Food Facts' status as global food transparency infrastructure. The database surpassed 4 million products, Open Prices launched as a new crowdsourced vertical, and open-source LLM models for ingredient spellcheck outperformed proprietary alternatives. Minor concerns persist around crowdsourced data completeness and the growing complexity of ML-powered scoring systems, though all code and algorithms remain fully open.
Alternatives
Calorie and nutrition tracking app with a large food database. Better for personal diet tracking and calorie counting, but owned by Francisco Partners (PE) and heavily monetized with ads and premium subscriptions. Moderate switch — different focus (diet tracking vs. food transparency).
Food and cosmetics scanning app with health ratings and product recommendations. More polished interface than Open Food Facts with personalized recommendations, but operates as a for-profit company with premium subscriptions. Easy switch — just scan products with either app.
Dimensional Breakdown
Summaries below were written by AI agents based on the cited evidence. They are editorial interpretations, not independent research findings.
Dimension History
Timeline (38 events)
Open Food Facts Launches on Food Revolution Day
French programmer Stéphane Gigandet launched Open Food Facts during Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day, creating a free, crowdsourced food product database. The project began with contributors photographing and cataloguing food products using mobile phones, making ingredient and nutrition data freely accessible.
First Mobile Apps Released for iOS and Android
Open Food Facts released its first native mobile applications for iOS and Android, enabling barcode scanning to access food product data. The apps allowed contributors to photograph products and upload ingredient information directly from their phones.
Database Reaches 5,000 Products with 300 Contributors
Nine months after launch, Open Food Facts had attracted 300 contributors who catalogued over 5,000 food products. The platform existed in 10 languages, demonstrating early international appeal for the crowdsourced model.
Wins Dataconnexions Award from French Government Agency Etalab
Open Food Facts won the 2013 Dataconnexions Award in the General Public category from Etalab, the French government's open data agency. The award recognized the project's use of open data to allow consumers to scan barcodes and discover food product contents.
Incorporates as French Nonprofit Association (Loi 1901)
Open Food Facts formally incorporated as a French association loi 1901 at an assembly meeting at NUMA coworking space in Paris. The nonprofit structure ensured the project could gather funds, employ people, and hold legal standing while maintaining its mission-driven, non-extractive governance model.
Begins Computing Nutri-Score Before Official Adoption
Open Food Facts started computing the 5-color nutrition score (later named Nutri-Score) for all products in its database, after obtaining the formula from Professor Serge Hercberg's research team. This preceded France's official adoption of Nutri-Score by three years, making Open Food Facts the first platform to compute the score at scale.
Open Beauty Facts Sister Project Launches
Open Food Facts expanded its open data model to cosmetics with the launch of Open Beauty Facts, a crowdsourced database for cosmetics and hygiene products. The sister project followed the same open data, collaborative contribution model.
Wins Open Knowledge Award in Madrid
Open Food Facts won the 2015 OKFN Award for Open Knowledge, Open Data and Transparency, announced in Madrid on Open Data Day. At the time, 1,500 contributors had opened data for 35,000 food products from 112 countries and territories.
Database Reaches 80,000 Products from 141 Countries
Open Food Facts grew to over 80,000 products sourced from 141 countries. The database expansion demonstrated the viability of the crowdsourced model for building a global food transparency resource, four years after launch.
Open Pet Food Facts Launched as April Fools Joke Turned Real
Open Pet Food Facts launched on April 1, 2017, originally as an April Fools' joke that became the third sister project after Open Beauty Facts. The project applied the same open data model to pet food products, building a crowdsourced database of pet food ingredients and nutrition.
Database Reaches 880,000 Products via App Ecosystem Growth
Open Food Facts' database grew to 880,000 products, a tenfold increase in just one year. The growth was driven by a growing ecosystem of third-party apps importing data and expanding contributor communities across countries.
Presents at FOSDEM as 'Wikipedia of Food Products'
Open Food Facts presented at FOSDEM 2018 in Brussels, positioning itself as the 'Wikipedia of food products.' The presentation outlined the open data model, crowdsourcing methodology, and growing international contributor base to the open-source developer community.
Wins First Prize at EU Datathon 2018 for EFSA Data Integration
Open Food Facts won first prize in the EU Datathon 2018 challenge 'European Food Safety Authority — Fostering data reuse and innovation' in Brussels. The winning entry integrated EFSA's OpenFoodTox chemical hazard data with Open Food Facts' database of 650,000 products, helping consumers identify food additives.
Santé Publique France Partnership Formalized for Nutri-Score
Open Food Facts formalized a multi-year partnership with Santé publique France, the French National Public Health Agency, to develop the open database and support Nutri-Score adoption. The partnership provided financial support and institutional legitimacy for the project's health mission.
Producer Platform Launches with Santé Publique France Support
Open Food Facts launched a free professional platform (pro.openfoodfacts.org) for food manufacturers and retailers to manage their product data. Inaugurated with support from Santé publique France, the platform enabled producers to upload product information, compute Nutri-Score, and identify improvement opportunities — all at no charge.
Database Reaches 1 Million Products Milestone
Open Food Facts passed the 1,000,000 products milestone in October 2019, seven years after launch. Tens of thousands of contributors had built the world's largest open food database through barcode scanning and product photography.
Mozilla Foundation Awards MOSS Grant for New Mobile App
The Mozilla Foundation awarded Open Food Facts a $10,000 MOSS (Mozilla Open Source Support) seed grant to fund development of a new cross-platform mobile application. Pierre Slamich pitched the app rewrite concept at FOSDEM, leading to what became Project Smoothie — a Flutter-based replacement for the native apps.
Stéphane Gigandet Elected Ashoka Fellow
Open Food Facts founder Stéphane Gigandet was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship in 2020, recognizing his work as a social entrepreneur leveraging citizen power to transform food industry transparency. The fellowship connected him to a global network of social entrepreneurs.
Eco-Score Launched as Collaborative Environmental Rating
Open Food Facts co-developed and launched the Eco-Score, an environmental impact rating for food products, as part of a consortium of 8 independent actors including Yuka, Marmiton, and Etiquettable. The Eco-Score used ADEME's Agribalyse life-cycle analysis database covering 2,500 product categories, initially computing scores for 240,000+ products sold in France.
Google.org Awards EUR 1.1 Million Climate Impact Grant
Open Food Facts received a EUR 1.1 million grant from Google.org through the Google Impact Challenge for Climate, along with volunteer support from 10 Google employees for six months. The funding supported development of the new Flutter mobile app and machine learning models for Eco-Score computation.
10th Anniversary: 2.3 Million Products from 182 Countries
Open Food Facts celebrated its 10th anniversary with 2.3 million products from 182 countries in its database. The celebration included a new visual identity designed by graphic designer Quentin Lagrange and Open Food Facts Days events in Paris at the Académie du Climat.
New Flutter Mobile App Released Replacing Native Apps
Open Food Facts released its new cross-platform Flutter mobile application (Project Smoothie), replacing the legacy native iOS and Android apps. The app provided a smoother user experience and sleeker interface, enabled by the Google.org grant and MOSS seed funding from Mozilla Foundation.
Featured in data.europa Academy Webinar as 'Wikipedia of Food'
Stéphane Gigandet presented Open Food Facts at a data.europa academy webinar on October 7, 2022, demonstrating how citizen-contributed open data creates systemic impact. The European Data Portal featured Open Food Facts as a use case for collaborative open data.
Eco-Score Expanded to 50+ Countries at COP27
Open Food Facts expanded the Eco-Score experimentally to over 50 countries including the US, UK, Egypt, Belgium, and Germany, announced alongside COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh. Over 2 million products now had environmental impact scores. Major grocery chains including Lidl and Colruyt had begun adopting the label.
ADEME Partnership Launches 'Tackling Food Packaging' Campaign
Open Food Facts partnered with ADEME (French Agency for Ecological Transition) to launch the 'Tackling Food Packaging' campaign, collecting detailed packaging data — shapes, materials, weights, recyclability — on over 10,000 products. The project focused particularly on yogurt packaging, noting that only 2% of France's 15 billion annual polystyrene yogurt pots are recycled.
Database Used by Researchers for Ultra-Processed Food Studies
The Open Food Facts database became a foundational resource for academic studies on ultra-processed food classification using the NOVA system. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and others published studies in the British Medical Journal using Open Food Facts data to analyze food additives and processing levels.
Successful Server Migration Completed
Open Food Facts completed a successful server migration in 2023, improving infrastructure reliability. The migration supported the growing database which had surpassed 3 million products and handled increasing API traffic from over 200 third-party applications.
Open Prices Project Launches as Crowdsourced Price Database
Open Food Facts launched Open Prices, the first open crowdsourced database of food product prices. Within 15 days, contributors had added data on over 5,000 products. Within less than a year, over 100,000 prices were collected, demonstrating the model's scalability to price transparency.
Nutri-Score V2 Algorithm Computed on 3 Million+ Products
Open Food Facts implemented the updated Nutri-Score v2 algorithm across its database of over 3 million products. The revised formula incorporated new scientific evidence, penalized artificial sweeteners in beverages, and better aligned scores with dietary guidelines — affecting 30-40% of product scores.
Reboots Sister Projects with Unified App Integration
Open Food Facts rebooted Open Products Facts, Open Beauty Facts, and Open Pet Food Facts with new logos, brand designs, and the ability to scan cosmetics, pet food, and other products directly from the main Open Food Facts app. The integration simplified the user experience across all open data verticals.
Open-Source LLM Ingredient Spellcheck Outperforms Proprietary Models
Open Food Facts trained an open-source ingredient spellcheck model on Mistral-7B that outperformed proprietary LLMs including GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet on OCR-extracted ingredient correction. The model reduced unrecognized ingredients in the database by 11%, demonstrating that open-source AI can match commercial alternatives for domain-specific tasks.
International Board Members Elected at Association Meeting
Open Food Facts expanded its governance by welcoming international members to the association and electing new board members. The move broadened the project's governance beyond its French founding team, adding international representation to the board of directors.
Recognized as UN Digital Public Good by DPGA
The Digital Public Goods Alliance, an initiative endorsed by the UN Secretary-General, recognized Open Food Facts as one of 180 digital public goods worldwide. The designation affirmed Open Food Facts' role in accelerating the Sustainable Development Goals through open data in food transparency.
Eco-Score Renamed to Green-Score
The Eco-Score was renamed to Green-Score at the end of 2024, with the new name reflecting its broader environmental assessment scope. Open Food Facts updated its platform to reflect the new naming while maintaining the same underlying methodology.
Database Surpasses 4 Million Products from 150 Countries
Open Food Facts passed the 4 million product milestone, with contributions from over 25,000 volunteers across 150 countries. The database quadrupled in size in just three years, from 1 million in 2019 to 4 million by early 2025.
Presents at FOSDEM 2025 Keynote as Digital Public Good
Open Food Facts presented in the main Janson auditorium at FOSDEM 2025 during a keynote on 'Scaling Open-Source Solutions to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.' Pierre Slamich shared how the project contributes to SDGs. For the first time, Open Food Facts also had a dedicated presentation stand at the conference.
Nutri-Score V2 Becomes Legally Enforceable in France
The new Nutri-Score v2 computation became legally in force in France following the signature of the official 'Arrêté' in March 2025. Open Food Facts had already implemented the updated algorithm months earlier, ensuring consumers could access accurate scores during the transition period.
Open Prices Surpasses 200,000 Crowdsourced Prices
The Open Prices project exceeded 200,000 contributed food product prices, with acceleration in contributions since October 2025. The community also organized a price contribution challenge for Nutella and hazelnut spreads, collecting over 1,000 prices for a single product category.