Two IBD trackers with different priorities
Aidy and Clairop are closer than most pairs in this category. Both are iPhone apps, both log stools on the Bristol scale, both calculate a disease activity score from what you record, and both produce a report for your gastroenterologist. The difference is what each one is built around. Aidy is built around treatment: biologic schedules, reminders and an AI chat, offered free. Clairop is built around triggers: a published method for working out which foods line up with your symptoms, including reactions days later.
Where Aidy is the better choice
It is free. Aidy has no subscription, in-app purchases or ads; it is funded by health plans, employers and researchers. Clairop is free to download but needs a subscription to use.
Biologic support. Aidy covers the common biologics and biosimilars with dose schedules, reminders, injection-site rotation and post-dose check-ins. If keeping track of infusions and injections is your main headache, that is a real advantage.
Text-message logging. Anyone with a US phone number can log by text, which makes Aidy usable on Android. Clairop is iPhone only.
An AI chat on your logs. Aidy's chat answers questions using your history. Clairop also has an assistant, which logs from a plain sentence and explains symptoms in general terms.
Clairop logs meals, symptoms and stool in seconds, then looks for the foods your gut reacts to, including reactions that land days later.
Where Clairop goes further
A documented trigger method. Aidy offers food and symptom correlations but does not publish how they are calculated. Clairop tests each food in three windows (under six hours, six to twenty-four hours, one to three days), compares symptom severity after meals with and without the food, reports the effect size, applies false discovery correction, and shows nothing until it has five meals of each. The full method is on the method page.
FODMAP scanning. Many people with IBD in remission still have IBS-type symptoms, and some use a low FODMAP approach with a dietitian. Clairop's barcode scan breaks a product's FODMAP load into all six subgroups, citing a published source for each value. Aidy documents no FODMAP data feature. See is low FODMAP good for Crohn's.
PRO-2 for colitis. Aidy uses the SCCAI (Walmsley 1998) for ulcerative colitis; Clairop uses PRO-2, the two-item stool frequency and rectal bleeding measure used in many recent UC trials. For Crohn's, Aidy uses a modified Harvey-Bradshaw Index and Clairop the Harvey-Bradshaw Index (Harvey 1980) with exam items left out and labelled.
Export in the app. Clairop lets you export or delete everything from inside the app, with or without a subscription. Aidy's privacy policy describes export by email request.
The honest bottom line
If you want a free app, are on a biologic, or need text-message logging, Aidy is an excellent choice. If your question is which foods affect you, or you want a trigger analysis you can explain to your gastroenterologist, Clairop is built for that. Neither replaces your IBD team, and bleeding, fever, severe pain or unexplained weight loss always need a doctor promptly.
