Open Food Facts

What Open Food Facts does

Open Food Facts is a French non-profit association (Loi 1901) founded in 2012 by Stéphane Gigandet, operating the world's largest free and open database of food products. The platform holds over 4.5 million products from 180+ countries, contributed by 60,000+ volunteers who scan and submit product information through its mobile applications. It serves four primary segments: individual consumers seeking transparency on Nutri-Score, NOVA processing levels, and Eco-Score environmental impact; app developers and startups building nutrition, scanning, and diet-tracking solutions; researchers and public-health bodies citing the dataset in 600+ scientific papers; and food producers using the Platform for Producers to benchmark and improve products. Named downstream re-users include Yuka, Foodvisor, VeryDiab, Le Monde Decoders, BFMTV, Super U, Terraillon, the French Red Cross, and Santé publique France.

The technical stack combines a crowdsourced contribution model with proprietary AI. Robotoff (active since 2019) processes product photos via computer vision and OCR to extract logos, text, and structured fields, while NutriSight, launched in 2024 with EU and DRG4Food support, automatically extracts nutrition panel data from product images. The platform also computes Nutri-Score (developed by EREN/Serge Hercberg), NOVA classification (Carlos Monteiro), and Eco-Score (built with ADEME's Agribalyse data). Distribution occurs through the world.openfoodfacts.org website, native iOS and Android apps (Flutter with Kotlin/Swift legacy), a JSON/XML REST API, 17+ official SDKs, and bulk exports in MongoDB, JSONL, Parquet (hosted on Hugging Face), CSV, and RDF formats. Data is licensed under ODbL/DBCL with images under CC BY-SA.

The business model is fully non-commercial: all products, data, and APIs are provided at no cost. Operations are funded by individual donations (positioned as essential unrestricted funding) and project-specific grants from public institutions and foundations, including Santé publique France, Google.org, Ford Foundation, Mozilla MOSS, NLNet Foundation, the European Union, ADEME, and DRG4Food, with in-kind infrastructure from Free Foundation and OVHcloud. The current homepage banner requesting €120,000 to finish 2026 implies an annual operating budget in the low single-digit millions of euros, and the small permanent team is supplemented by tens of thousands of volunteer contributors worldwide.

Name

Open Food Facts

Legal name

Open Food Facts (French "Loi 1901" Association)

Website

https://world.openfoodfacts.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Open Food Facts is a French non-profit operating the world's largest free, open database of food products, serving consumers, app developers, researchers, and food producers via crowdsourced data, AI-powered extraction, and open APIs across 180+ countries.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Food Database

akta.pro primary industry

Labeling & Claims Compliance Review (Nutrition, Allergen, Country-of-Origin) (AFALADAF)

akta.pro secondary industries

Food Standards, Labeling & Claims Regulation (HLAJAEAB), Third-Party Traceability Platform Assurance (SOC/ISO-aligned controls for traceability data) (AFALAGAK), Food Industry Licensing, Registration & Compliance Audits (HLAJAEAG)

Keywords

• Open food database
• Food product data
• Nutritional information platform
• Food transparency data
• Crowdsourced food database

Headquarters

HQ city

Saint-maur-des-fossés

HQ country

France

HQ region

Europe

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Individual Donations: Monthly donations from individuals who support the platform. The organization states that individual donations are essential for unrestricted funding that covers day-to-day operations, servers, and long-term sustainability.
2. Project-Specific Grants: Funding from foundations and public institutions designated for particular developments such as mobile app features, environmental scoring, or advanced search capabilities. Examples include grants from Google.org, Ford Foundation, NLNet Foundation, European Union, and Santé publique France.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels7 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

Open Food Facts operates a free, open, collaborative database of food products from around the world, currently containing 4.5M+ products contributed by 60,000+ volunteers across 180+ countries. The platform is delivered through a public website, iOS and Android mobile apps that allow barcode scanning, a comprehensive REST API with SDKs in 17+ programming languages, and multi-format database exports (MongoDB, JSONL, CSV, Parquet, RDF). All data is provided under open licenses for free reuse by consumers, developers, researchers, producers, and public health agencies.

Product overview

Open Food Facts operates as a unified platform comprising a collaborative open database of food products (the core offering with over 4.5 million products), cross-platform mobile apps for iOS and Android, and public APIs with SDKs in 17+ programming languages. The ecosystem includes sister projects (Open Beauty Facts, Open Pet Food Facts, Open Products Facts, Open Prices) and complementary tools like DuckDB/Hugging Face integrations for data analysis. Key scoring modules include Nutri-Score (nutritional quality), Eco-Score/Green-Score (environmental impact), and NOVA classification (food processing). The Platform for Producers enables manufacturers to contribute and analyze their products. AI capabilities are delivered through Robotoff (image/logo processing) and NutriSight (automatic nutrition extraction from images).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Open Beauty Facts: A collaborative, free and open database of cosmetic products
• Open Pet Food Facts
• Open Products Facts
• Open Prices

Products and services

• Open Food Facts Database The collaborative, free, and open database of food products containing ingredients, allergens, nutrition facts, and product label information; serving as the foundation platform with over 4.5 million products contributed by volunteers worldwide.
• Open Food Facts Mobile App Cross-platform mobile application for iOS and Android that enables consumers to scan product barcodes, view nutritional and environmental information, and submit pictures and data for missing products.
• Open Food Facts API Live REST API in JSON and XML for reading product data, used by the mobile application and by hundreds of third-party developers and applications.
• Open Food Facts SDKs Official software development kits in 17+ programming languages (Python, JavaScript, Kotlin, Swift, Dart, Go, Java, PHP, Ruby, Rust, .NET/C#, React Native, Elixir, Spring Boot, Cordova, R, PHP Laravel) enabling developers to consume data and contribute new data via the Open Food Facts API.
• Platform for Producers Free dedicated platform for food manufacturers and producers to publish official product data, receive independent reports on nutritional quality and environmental impact, and obtain suggestions for product improvements.
• Open Beauty Facts Sister project providing a collaborative, free, and open database of cosmetic products with ingredients, allergens, and vegan/vegetarian information.
• Open Pet Food Facts Sister project providing a collaborative, free, and open database of pet food products with ingredients and nutritional quality information.
• Open Products Facts Sister project extending the open database concept to everyday consumer products beyond food and cosmetics, tracking product materials, reusability, and end-of-life options.
• Open Prices Database project for tracking price evolution of products over time, monitoring inflation, identifying shrinkflation, and building a transparent price database for consumers.

Quantifiable outcome

• 8 million visitors monthly, with many more through API usage
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration21 records

AI capability10 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Free Foundation (Fondation Free)coreTechnology or IntegrationSite and database hosted on servers generously provided by the Free Foundation (8, rue de la Ville l'Évêque, 75008 Paris, France). Started in 2018 with 2 new servers.
• OVHcloudcoreTechnology or IntegrationAI algorithms and many Open Food Facts projects running on servers generously provided by OVHcloud.
• DRG4FoodminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDevelopment of NutriSight technology for automatic extraction of nutrition information from product images, funded by European Commission and DRG4Food program.
• Accélérateur d'Initiatives Citoyennes (AIC)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerFrench government program through DINUM providing methodological, technical, administrative, and financial support to citizen initiatives serving public interest.
• EREN (Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerNutri-Score was developed by EREN which uses Open Food Facts database to check the validity of Nutri-Score in different countries. Ongoing scientific collaboration.
• NutriNet-SantécoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFrench cohort study tracking nutrition and health of volunteers. EREN uses NutriNet data cross-referenced with Open Food Facts data to study long-term effects of food additives.
• DIVINFOODminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerEU Horizon 2020 project aiming to develop food chains emphasizing under-utilized agrobiodiversity. Open Food Facts is a project partner.
• AFNIC FoundationminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerFoundation supporting Open Food Facts's environmental and educational efforts to make food good for health and the planet.
• ADEMEcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFrench environmental agency fighting global warming. Open Food Facts uses Agribalyse database data on environmental impact of food products for Eco-Score calculations.
• XWikiminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerXWiki regularly hosts Open Food Facts events including the association general assembly in its Paris office.

Scale indicators10 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• FoodData Central (USDA): USDA's authoritative open food composition database. Directly comparable as a government-backed open food product dataset, although US-focused and not crowdsourced.

Broad incumbents

• Nutritionix: Commercial food data API serving restaurants, apps, and grocery platforms. Comparable as a comprehensive branded-food database with API/SDK access, but operates on paid commercial licensing rather than open data.
• Edamam: B2B food and nutrition data API powering health/wellness apps. Comparable in serving app developers with structured food data, though it monetizes via paid APIs while OFF offers data freely.
• Spoonacular: Food, recipe, and nutrition API offering product data, meal planning, and grocery tools. Comparable as a developer-facing food data API, though it combines recipe/recommendation features and operates on a paid model.

Emerging players

• HowGood: Sustainability intelligence platform with product-level environmental impact scoring for CPG brands. Comparable on the Eco-Score / sustainability-scoring axis but operates as a paid B2B SaaS for retailers and manufacturers.
• Eaternity: Database and methodology for climate scoring of food products and meals, widely used in foodservice and academia. Comparable to OFF's Eco-Score in scoring environmental impact of food, but commercial and focused on foodservice clients.
• Yuka: Leading consumer food-scanning app that builds directly on Open Food Facts data to provide health-impact scoring. Comparable consumer value proposition (Nutri-Score, additive analysis) but operates as a commercial product layered on top of OFF's free data.
• Foodvisor: AI-powered nutrition tracking app using Open Food Facts data. Comparable on the consumer food-scanning use case, though positioned as a personalized diet-tracking product rather than an open data platform.

Regional players

• Blonk: Dutch consultancy and data provider for sustainable food systems, with the Agri-footprint database used for LCA work. Comparable on the food sustainability-data axis but serves a regional (EU) B2B market via paid licensing.

Others

• Wikidata / Wikimedia Foundation: Open, community-edited knowledge base operated by a non-profit on open licenses. Comparable as a sibling non-profit open-data ecosystem using crowdsourced contributions, ODbL licensing, and multilingual community governance.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/openfoodfacts
• GitHubgithub.com/openfoodfacts
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UC3swwiqkVNKC3V_r7l_vqJw
• Facebookfacebook.com/OpenFoodFacts
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/open-food-facts
• Instagraminstagram.com/open.food.facts

Compliance4 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Open Food Facts