The best way to log your blood sugar: paper or an app

Keep a record of every reading and bring it to each prenatal visit; in pregnancy that log, not an HbA1c blood test, is what your care team reads to decide your plan. Paper works if every box is filled in at the time, but studies that compared paper logs against the meter's own memory found missing readings, added readings and smoothed-out numbers often enough to mislead the clinician. A phone app removes most of those gaps because it writes the time and the number for you.

Last reviewed 2026-10-27. Written by the First Fork team from the published guidelines listed below; not reviewed by a clinician. This page is not medical advice.

Disclosure. First Fork is made by the team behind this site, and we name it first below. The research on this page is about paper logs and glucose meters in general; none of it tested First Fork.

Why the log is the thing your team acts on

With gestational diabetes you check your blood sugar with a meter and keep a record of every reading. ACOG tells you to keep that record and bring it to each prenatal visit, and says the log can also be kept online, stored in a phone app and emailed to your ob-gyn. Your log is what helps your ob-gyn give you the right care through the pregnancy.¹

Outside pregnancy, a clinician can fall back on an HbA1c blood test, which shows an average of the last few months. In pregnancy that test is not a suitable measure, so the day-to-day readings you write down are what decisions about your treatment are made from.² That is why a gap in the log is not a tidiness problem. It is missing evidence.

What your team is reading for is a pattern: which meal, which time of day, how often. A single high number is information, not a grade (see one high reading). A pattern across two weeks is what changes a meal plan or starts a medicine.

What happens when the paper log meets the meter

Meters store every reading with its date and time, and researchers have used that memory² to check paper logbooks against what the meter actually recorded, with the patients not told the check was happening. The same findings have come back in study after study since 1984.

The 1984 study is in adults outside pregnancy and the smallest of the three, so read it as where this line of research started rather than as a number about gestational diabetes. The pregnancy figures come from the 2005 study and the review.

The four ways a paper log goes wrong

None of these need anyone to be careless. They are what paper does.

1. The reading taken but not written down. You check at the school gate or in the car, mean to copy it over later, and the slip never happens. This was the most common error in the review.²
2. The reading written down from memory. Filling in the week the night before the appointment is where added and altered numbers come from, and in the 2005 study 80% of logbooks had readings the meter had never taken.³
3. The missing time. A number with no time next to it cannot be matched to a meal, and matching readings to meals is how your team finds which meal is the problem. Your clinic asks you to check 1 or 2 hours after the first bite (see when to check after eating); without the start time, nobody can tell whether the reading landed in that window.
4. The log that looks better than the week was. When entries are copied from memory, the written numbers vary less than the meter's. The result is a log that reads as steady when the week was not, and the review gives this lack of agreement between diary and meter as its reason to doubt how useful diaries are in the clinic.² In the 1984 study, the logbook average was significantly lower than the meter average, and most people reported lower than their real average.⁴

And then there are the ordinary ones: the sheet left on the kitchen table on clinic day, the handwriting nobody can read, the dog, the toddler, the washing machine.

What a phone app changes

An app is not more honest than you are. What it does is remove the step where the information is lost: the number and the time are saved when you take the reading, and the record is on something you are already carrying.

What the trials do and do not show. A 2026 review pooled 23 randomised trials covering 3,055 women with gestational diabetes and found lower fasting and 2-hour readings, less weight gain in pregnancy and lower rates of several birth complications with telemedicine care. The authors rate the certainty of that evidence as low to very low, the results varied enormously between trials, and they say telemedicine should not replace standard antenatal care.⁵ Those trials tested whole programmes in which a care team saw the readings between visits. They are not a test of a logging app by itself, and no app should be sold to you on them.

Apps worth looking at

A short list; the long version, with how we ranked them and what each App Store listing claims, is in the best app for gestational diabetes tracking.

1. First Fork. Made only for gestational diabetes. It counts down the after-meal window from the first bite on the Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island and on an Apple Watch, so the check is hard to miss. You log a reading in two taps, or point the camera at the meter and let it read the number. Each entry holds the reading, a note and a medicine, and each reading is checked against the targets your clinic gave you (it does not set targets). Siri can start the meal timer with your hands full. If you missed a day, the plus button on the Meals tab opens a calendar and takes you to that day in your log so the reading goes on the day it belongs to. It makes a one-page PDF or CSV report for the clinic. Nothing leaves the phone: no account, no cloud, no tracking.⁶ We make it, so weigh that.
2. Malama. Also built for gestational diabetes; syncs with a Bluetooth meter and offers prenatal nutritionists.
3. Gestational Diabetes Tracker. Simple 1-hour and 2-hour reminders and a PDF export.
4. GDm-Health. Use it if a UK NHS team asked you to; readings go straight to them.
5. mySugr and Glucose Buddy are general diabetes logbooks, useful mainly if you already have an Accu-Chek meter or a Dexcom sensor.

Two things matter more than the choice. If your clinic gave you an app, use that one. And whatever you pick, check what it does with your data first: a gestational diabetes log says you are pregnant and what you take for it (see apps and your privacy).

If you want to stay on paper

Paper is not wrong, and the studies above are about how it is filled in, not about the paper. It works when the writing happens at the moment of the reading. Keep the sheet with the meter rather than in a drawer, write the time next to every number, write the high ones too, and write “missed” rather than a guess when you did not check. A reading you did not write down may still be in the meter’s memory at the clinic. The free printable log has a column for the meal start time, a notes column and a box for your targets (see blood sugar targets).

Questions

Is a paper blood sugar log good enough for my doctor?

Yes, if it is filled in at the time of each reading. ACOG asks you to keep a record and bring it to every prenatal visit, and does not require any particular format. The problem studies found is not paper itself, it is readings written up later from memory.

Why does the clinic rely so much on the blood sugar log?

In pregnancy an HbA1c blood test is not a suitable measure, so your day-to-day readings are what your team uses to decide whether your plan needs to change.

What if I forgot to write down a reading?

Write “missed” rather than a guess, and check your meter’s memory: the real number may still be there with its date and time. An honest gap is more useful to your clinic than an invented number.

Do apps make the log more accurate?

An app removes the step where readings get lost, because the number and the time are saved as you check. The studies on this page compared paper against the meter’s own memory; they did not test an app, so treat this as a reason to expect fewer gaps, not as proof.

Which is better overall, paper or an app?

Whichever one you will actually fill in every time. If you are already writing every reading down as you take it, paper is fine. If readings keep getting written up later, a phone app will hold more of them.

Sources

1. ACOG. Gestational Diabetes (FAQ 177, reviewed April 2026). https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/gestational-diabetes
2. Given JE, O'Kane MJ, Bunting BP, Coates VE. Comparing patient-generated blood glucose diary records with meter memory in diabetes: a systematic review (Diabetic Medicine, 2013). https://doi.org/10.1111/dme.12130
3. Kendrick JM, Wilson C, Elder RF, Smith CS. Reliability of reporting of self-monitoring of blood glucose in pregnant women (JOGNN, 2005). https://doi.org/10.1177/0884217505276306
4. Mazze RS, Shamoon H, Pasmantier R, et al. Reliability of blood glucose monitoring by patients with diabetes mellitus (The American Journal of Medicine, 1984). https://doi.org/10.1016/0002-9343(84)90693-4
5. He H, Deng J, Liu J, et al. The impact of telemedicine interventions on maternal and fetal outcomes in women with gestational diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2026). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13693963/
6. Apple App Store. First Fork — GDM Tracker (listing and 1.3 release notes, read 2026-10-27). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/first-fork-gdm-tracker/id6810401121

See a mistake, or something unclear? Report a problem