The best Mealime alternative, before October 21

What changes on October 21

Mealime announced the closure on its closing page and in its September 22 App Store release notes. The short version:

Save your recipes before the 21st

Your meal plans and lists have no export, but the recipes behind them do have a way out. Every Mealime recipe has a public page on mealime.com, and those pages carry the standard recipe data that import tools read. All five apps below can import a recipe from a link.

1. List the recipes you cooked more than once. Skip the ones you saved and never made; you'll move twenty recipes in an evening, and two hundred would take a week.
2. Find each one at mealime.com/recipes. Open the recipe page and copy its address from the browser bar.
3. Import the link into your next app. Do this first: Mealime hasn't said whether the recipe pages stay online after October 21. AnyList's free plan stops after five imports.
4. Print this week to PDF. From the web app at app.mealime.com, print the current recipes and grocery list so the week you're halfway through survives the switch.

The alternatives at a glance

Prices checked October 1, 2026 (USD; App Store and official sites). Mealime did three jobs: it chose recipes for you, built a grocery list from the plan, and kept the whole thing quick. No single app below does all three the same way, so the last two columns matter most.

Meals Hub: if you shop at an Albertsons store

US households who shop at Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco or another Albertsons Companies banner get the nearest thing to staying put. Meals Hub carries every Mealime recipe, including the former Pro ones, costs nothing, and the Mealime team runs it. You'll set your preferences up again, because nothing transfers from your Mealime account, and it lives inside a grocery store's app rather than an app of its own.

Choose it over FamilyPlate if: you liked Mealime's recipes more than its planner and you already use one of those store apps.

Samsung Food: closest free swap

Samsung Food covers the most Mealime ground for free: a recipe library, a weekly meal planner, "Add Plan to Shopping List", import by link, and apps on iPhone, Android and the web. Shared plans are free by invite, though joining someone's plan replaces your own until you leave. Food+ at $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year adds AI-tailored plans, which is the closest thing here to Mealime choosing dinner for you. Samsung's help centre recommends linking a Samsung account and warns that data may stay on the device without one.

Choose it over FamilyPlate if: your household mixes iPhone and Android, or you want a recipe library to browse rather than a plan built from your own staples.

FamilyPlate: for a household that plans together

Mealime's help centre told families to share one login. FamilyPlate gives each person their own: a household joins with a 6-character code, each person keeps their own sign-in, and everyone edits the same meal library and weekly plan. When someone swaps Thursday, the others get a notification. Importing a recipe from a web link is free and needs no account, so a Mealime recipe page goes straight into the library. The grocery list is part of Pro, at $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year for the whole household after a 14-day free trial: it builds itself from the week and can estimate what the shop will cost. Pro also adds an AI week generator plus imports from Instagram captions and cookbook photos.

Where it loses: no Android or web app, no curated recipe catalogue, and no grocery list without Pro. Mealime users who liked being handed tested 30-minute recipes will miss that; FamilyPlate plans the meals your family already cooks, and its AI invents dinners rather than drawing on a tested collection.

Plan to Eat: the deepest calendar

Plan to Eat has pitched itself to Mealime users directly, and its planner backs the pitch: drag clipped recipes onto breakfast, lunch and dinner, repeat menus, and pull a grocery list for any date range. The Recipe Clipper imports from browsers and from social apps like Instagram and Pinterest. There's no free tier after the 14-day trial, and a family shares one login; Plan to Eat says it offers no multiple logins.

Choose it over FamilyPlate if: you plan all three meals on a calendar and will pay from the first month.

AnyList: best shared grocery list

AnyList's shared lists are free and sync in real time, and the household plan is the cheapest paid option here at $14.99 a year. Complete unlocks the meal calendar, the grocery list built from it, unlimited recipe imports and the web and Mac apps. On the free plan you get five imports, which won't move a Mealime collection.

Choose it over FamilyPlate if: the shopping list matters more to you than the dinner plan, or you need Android or Mac.

Paprika 3: no subscription, for now

Paprika 3 costs $4.99 once on iOS and imports recipes from web pages through its built-in browser, with a meal calendar that sends chosen meals to the grocery list. A family shares one cloud account. Paprika 4 entered open beta on September 28 with separate family logins and social-media importing, and Paprika says premium features will need a subscription after the beta. Mealime refugees picking it for the one-off price should know that model may change.

Choose it over FamilyPlate if: you collect recipes, want desktop apps, or refuse subscriptions.

The verdict

Match the app to the Mealime job you'll miss most:

• Mealime's recipes, US Albertsons shopper: Meals Hub.
• Free, iPhone and Android in one home: Samsung Food.
• A household planning its own dinners on iPhone: FamilyPlate.
• Three meals a day on a calendar: Plan to Eat.
• The grocery list above all: AnyList.
• A recipe collection with no subscription: Paprika 3, while it lasts.

For the wider field beyond Mealime switchers, the best meal planning app comparison weighs the same apps for whole households, and how to meal plan as a family covers the weekly routine that keeps any of them in use.