Amongst the pages and pages of meal planning apps out there, few offer everything you need for free, but thankfully, some free tiers are efficient enough. First, there’s Recipe Keeper,, which is like a digital recipe box. It’s minimalistic and super easy to navigate, allowing you to meal plan, categorize recipes, and build shopping lists to make your trip more efficient –– all for free. The Pro version is a one-time fee of $19.99 on iOS, which offers some bonuses like device syncing and unlimited recipe saves, but they’re not necessary.
Mealime Meal Plans & Recipes
Our team of licensed nutritionists and dietitians strive to be objective, unbiased, honest and to present both sides of the argument. You start by importing recipes manually or by copying recipe URLs from supported websites. You are then able to organize your recipes into customizable categories.
Adding recipes will also automatically create an organized grocery list based on the recipes you’ve saved. The app merges similar ingredients and provides the option to create categories within the grocery list to make shopping easier. One drawback to this app is the user interface may not be as easy to navigate as some of the other meal planning apps on this list. With browser integrations and a somewhat complicated online user guide, getting started with this app may be a challenge for some. Mealime offers user-friendly, customizable meal plans that you can tailor to your diet while excluding specific foods you don’t like. This app is the best budget planning app because of the comprehensive features offered for free when using the app.
Start Simple with MyPlate
After selecting the date range of the recipes you’d like to shop for, the app will automatically create your shopping list. You can sign up for a 2 week free trial and then it’s only $8 a month to keep getting meal plans delivered to your inbox each week. We offer a range of recipes, from nutritionally balanced meat-free meals, through to the best protein options. Workweek Lunch is a subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of recipes including meal prep, freezer-friendly snacks, and dessert recipes. Members receive access to all current and future recipes in the recipe index for Less than $10/month.
Cheap Sheet Pan Meal Prep Recipes for an Easy Sunday Prep
Users can easily import recipes from any website, organize them into collections, and drag-and-drop them into a weekly calendar. The Prepear Gold subscription unlocks premium recipes and meal plans from a curated network of creators, offering endless inspiration. The workflow moves effortlessly from selecting your weekly menu to populating your digital grocery cart in seconds. This significantly reduces the time spent on both planning and shopping.
What are the benefits of meal-planning apps?
One drawback to the app is that there isn’t a free version outside of the 7-day free trial. When you save recipes, you can organize them into separate meal categories, such as breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Otherwise, the app doesn’t come with a preset recipe database making it a better choice for those who have a good recipe collection already or who enjoy searching the web for new recipes. The app will keep your screen turned on while you’re working from a recipe. It can also detect timer directions within a recipe so that you can set cooking timers directly from the app.
Meal kit convenience, grocery price & experience
BigOven is a long-standing and robust contender among the best meal planning apps, appealing to users who value a massive, community-driven recipe database. Its strength lies in its sheer volume, offering over one million recipes that can be easily saved, organized, and added to a calendar-style meal planner. Features like the RecipeScan tool, which digitizes handwritten recipes, and a web clipper make it a powerful hub for all your culinary inspiration. Mealime (odd name isn’t it?) is another free meal planner with all the basic features, including grocery lists and a recipe library with quick and easy meals. This is a great app for time-poor mums or anyone who wants dinner on the table fast. The only downside is that you can’t save recipes from the web.
Avocado Meal Planner
If you want more info, check out my friend’s thorough platejoy review. The 67-mile Backbone Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains offers numerous adventures, including this 9.8-mile section through stunning landscapes dappled with blooming wildflowers. After having tried several nutrition analysis companies, Axxya has delivered the quickest and most reliable nutrition information to us.
Once you’ve found which method works for you, we find it’s easiest to do it all in one go – check your supplies, make a plan, then write your list. You can also add notes to each recipe so you don’t forget what ingredients are needed or how much time a recipe takes to prepare. You simply input the diet you’d like to try and the app becomes your personal diet assistant. You just tell the app how much weight you want to lose or gain, then put in how many grams of each nutrient you want per meal on a scale from one to five.
The app also offers the ability to customize your dietary preferences including allergies and dislikes. Rounding out my round-up of best free meal plan apps is the Allrecipes Dinner Spinner. While you’ve likely searched their site for meal ideas before, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve checked out the Dinner Spinner. This simple app organizes recipes, helps you plan your meals, and streamlines grocery shopping with a few easy clicks.
America’s Test Kitchen
This is a feature not often found in other recipe management apps and is included as part of your CookBook plan. Stop stressing over what’s for dinner and wasted grocery money. With WiseList’s AI meal planner app, Australian households can save time, reduce waste, and plan meals with confidence. Prepear’s interface is designed for connection and customization.
This Kitchen Scale Has Been With Our Senior Test Kitchen Editor for Over a Decade
With Paprika, you’re in charge of saving and entering recipes to build meal plans. Therefore, it’s probably best for people who can structure a meal plan with minimal support. Those of you who nominated and praised Cook Smarts explained that for the money you spend, it makes meal planning about as hands-off as you can get, and the results are worth it. The service also has a robust and active community around it of home cooks and food lovers eager to explore new foods, try new things, and eat well. There are smart design features, too, like the ability to split screen while you cook, so you can see the recipe up to three ingredients and steps side by side.
- If apps are more your thing, there’s heaps of dedicated meal planning apps for you to test out to find one that works for you.
- You can plan meals around individuals–whether it’s special diets or nutritional goals–and the whole family.
- These 18 best meal planning apps help you find recipes, create meal plans, and order groceries from home.
- Importing recipes from the web is easy enough, you just need the URL of the recipe you want to add.
- We are a small, personal team that values customer feedback and are always looking for ways to improve our app.
- One of the biggest drawbacks of the app is the lack of a calendar-style meal plan and grocery shopping integration.
Reviews Foodzilla, FoodWorks, Nutrium, Nutritics, and more for APDs. If you’re not feeling the app’s recipe collection (which, fair), you can take meal ideas from literally anywhere else and upload them to the Whisk collection. To get started, download the app and either register or continue as a guest. The app gives you the option to take a short quiz about your current dietary habits. From there, recommendations for what to eat are added to your daily plan.
Prepare meals for weeks in minutes with a few taps, reuse old menus and add notes. Some apps even track freezer meals, such as date cooked, serving size and number of meals. There are a bunch of meal planning apps out there—some good, some bad, and others that are downright atrocious, but don’t cost a thing. Just so you don’t have to sift through your app store and skim the review sections, I went ahead and curated this tip-top meal planning app guide. Below you’ll find the six best meal-planning apps, from the most budget-friendly option to the one designed for picky eaters (I see you, chicken tender girlies) to everything in between.
Restaurant Menus made easier
There are key criteria that you should seek when selecting the ideal kitchen companion. Above all, a meal unimeal review planning app should give you access to a trove of recipes. Depending on the app, you can find the recipes using an in-app browser, a recipe importing tool, or a robust library pulled from the web. Concluding this exploration of meal planning apps, it’s clear how they’ve revolutionised my cooking and shopping routine.