Meal Planner App
What I love is that each recipe has a gluten-free, vegetarian, and Paleo version to suit different dietary needs. Check out the free sample meal plan to see if it will work for you. For its simplicity of use and fairly low cost, this is a favorite of mine. The app also comes with a feature that allows you to reduce food waste—type in the ingredients you already have and it will find recipes that use as many of them as possible.
Paprika: Best for Recipe Organization
Our tester noticed that Mealime’s grocery list is a bit different from the other apps on our list. “The shopping list is helpful in the sense that it pulls automatically from the meal plan you’ve selected,” Pete said. “However, there’s no way to customize the grocery list itself or quickly edit items already on the list. For example, if your grocery list had two apples on it, you can’t easily change it to three. You’d have to click on the plus (+) button, then type in apple, and then add it to the list.” Because of this, he rated the shopping list feature a 3 out of 5. Plan to Eat is for people who have a general sense of what they like or want to eat, but just need a little push on the organization.
Love it!
What does seem to help is a blank sheet of paper on my fridge with the main things I have in it (meats, fishes, main perishables), and the various days I plan on fixing them. I generally enjoy cooking but sometimes after work my brain is just too fried to think and having a “sane default” helps me go on autopilot. With the sheet being structureles, I can annotate, cross-out, and change on a whim. I think having a way to import recipes without the fluff is a table stakes feature for any recipe app (and was the very first part of it I built). The only downside is that it’s quite pricey as you have to buy it seperately on each platform (ios, android, mac, pc).
AnyList — Best for shared grocery coordination
Eat This Much creates personalized meal plans based on your food preferences, budget, and schedule. Reach your diet and nutritional goals with our calorie calculator, weekly meal plans, grocery lists and more. I’m sure you’ve heard it before — meal planning has a ton of benefits. It helps you save money, reduce meal time stress, reduce food waste and saves you time at the grocery store. If you’re dieting or trying to be more mindful about your food choices, meal planning is a powerful tool in that journey. And because it’s about cooking at home more, you may even find yourself enjoying more family-time around the table.
You’ll also be able to access previous meal plans so you can refer to them again later instead of recreating them from scratch. The upgraded version does have a small monthly recurring fee. There are existing meal plans that you can utilize, or you can completely build your own from scratch. If you opt for one of the existing meal plans, you do have the option to edit it by removing any recipes you don’t like and adding ones that you do. If you choose a from-scratch plan, you’ll start with the app’s recipe database and completely build your plan from the ground up.
The 6 Meal-Planning Apps That’ll Take All the Brainwork Outta Making Dinner
MealPrepPro is the perfect meal planner if you and your family members all like different foods. It has thousands of recipes for you to choose from, and you can assign who wants to eat each one. Cozi calls itself the unimeal review surprisingly simple family organizer.
My Favorite Features
You can import recipes from any website or add your own and then place them on the calendar, then Plan to Eat builds a grocery shopping list for you. It also allows you to assign grocery items to different grocery stores, which is how many folks shop (meat at one store, pantry staples at another). Prepear is our pick for the best overall meal planning app because it runs like a true kitchen manager, which we think is perfect for busy professionals. You can save recipes and then quickly tap to add them to your weekly calendar.
If you ever catch me eating a single mushroom, call the authorities because I’m sending a distress signal. Yummly helps you plan meals based on your food preferences. It started as an app to search for recipes, but it now allows you to plan meals that are easy and quick to cook.
How to use Pinterest for meal planning
If you’re using it for meal planning, you may not need to upgrade; I was able to build out an entire schedule of recipes without paying. Cozi is a family organizer, so you might not think of food and recipes when you first hear about it—but don’t be fooled. In addition to its daily calendar and to-do lists, Cozi provides space for you to keep a grocery list (which any family member can add to in real time) and even offers up recipes. Not only can you plan your meals’ content, but you can schedule them for when everyone is available.
The app supports special diets like vegan, vegetarian, paleo, low-calorie, gluten-free, and dairy-free. Since you don’t input any personal information or answer a survey, the app doesn’t align to any particular goals. To remove an item from the list, simply tap the check mark. Once you’ve tapped the items you don’t need to buy, you can tap the menu button on the top right corner. Click that and you’ll see those items you don’t need to purchase removed from your shopping list. This doesn’t remove the ingredient from the recipe, of course, just the shopping list.
- However, all this planning and prepping takes time, so now you’re on the lookout for the perfect meal planning app to give you hours back in your week.
- However, for most people looking for a true, automated solution that takes the stress out of eating well, Eat This Much is the clear winner.
- You can filter recipes by dietary restrictions or preferences, generate a grocery list, and get on with your day.
- She spent most of her pre-Lifehacker career covering media and politics for outlets like Us Weekly, CNN, The Daily Dot, Mashable, Glamour, and InStyle.
- What does seem to help is a blank sheet of paper on my fridge with the main things I have in it (meats, fishes, main perishables), and the various days I plan on fixing them.
- Try Eat This Much for free today and take control of your diet.
Do I need a Maple+ subscription to use the meal planner?
If you want to focus on weight loss and the thought of developing a healthy recipe collection sounds like way too much work, then Eat This Much might be a suitable option. An annual membership to 8fit costs $79.99 without any other monthly options. There is a free trial of the app that you can try before committing to the purchase. You can choose a monthly ($12.99), 6-month ($69), or 12-month ($99) subscription to PlateJoy. Before you commit to PlateJoy, you can try their 10-day free trial.
Food is Love
“This is a cool idea, because it basically compiles a grocery list based on the recipes you selected for the day or week. However, if multiple recipes use the same ingredient, instead of collating and adding up the amount of the ingredient, the ingredient will be shown multiple times on the grocery list. An example of this would be common seasonings like salt and pepper, which show up in almost every recipe.” Because of this, he rated the shopping list feature just a 2.5 out of 5. 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.
I’m working on a tool where you can basically start from a super basic meal plan / grocery list and then expand the meal variety over time. I found this [0] cooking blog that has atleast 90 meal plans. It provides a clean, flexible, drag-and-drop calendar that you fill with your own curated recipes. Like Paprika, it has a great web importer for saving recipes you find online. It doesn’t suggest meals for you, instead, it gives you the perfect toolset to build your own plan from scratch, exactly the way you want it. Paprika 3 is the gold standard for digital recipe collection.
Family Sharing
And whatever that reason is for you, will be your deciding factor. Ask yourself, “What do I want this app for?” before you start downloading, and you’ll find the right pick. If you’ve never thrown out a plastic container of rotten mixed greens, I can’t trust you. I have felt bad lately about all my food waste and one of my tricks to cutting back is this handy dandy tool, Cooklist, which lets you know when your food is nearing its expiration date. You can either manually add your groceries in the system or load your shopping list straight into the app. But, sorry to say, those college eating habits aren’t gonna cut it.