Apps like Mealime after the October 21 shutdown

Mealime's shutdown in brief

Mealime's closing notice is short. The app will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026. Paid subscriptions are being wound down, every Pro recipe and feature is open to all users until then, and Pro subscribers will not be charged again before the shutdown.

All personal data will be deleted when the Mealime application is shut down.

The recipes move to Meals Hub, a recipe and meal-planning feature that Mealime says is supported by the same core team that developed its recipes. You find it in an Albertsons Companies store app such as Safeway: tap More, then Meals Hub. The notice says you create or sign in to a store account and that certain preferences and settings have to be set up again inside Meals Hub, and it describes no way to export your saved plans or favorites.

Until the shutdown, Mealime says you can ask for your personal data to be deleted under the rights set out in its privacy policy.

Before October 21: three things to do now

• Copy or screenshot the recipes you actually cook from your favorites: ingredients, quantities and the steps you always forget. The notice mentions no export button, so copying them now is the simplest way to keep them.
• Write down your settings: the food preferences you picked, the ingredients you excluded, the number of servings. Meals Hub, Eat This Much, Prospre and MacroRecipe ask for the same kind of settings.
• If you paid for Pro, open the subscriptions page of your Apple or Google account and make sure nothing is set to renew. Mealime says it will not charge you again; checking takes a minute.

Our guide to replacing Mealime goes through these steps in more detail, including what to expect if the app has already stopped loading on your phone.

Is Meals Hub an option where you live?

For many US households it is the obvious next step. Mealime says Meals Hub is free, carries all of its recipes and is supported by the same core team, and that it still lets you browse recipes, make meal plans and build shopping lists even with no Albertsons store nearby. There is also a web version on the chains' store websites, which starts by asking you to select your local store.

Outside the US the picture changes. On October 14, 2026, we checked the US, Canadian, UK and Australian App Stores for the 20 shopping apps Albertsons Companies publishes in the US (its employee app aside), from Safeway Deals & Delivery to Vons, Jewel-Osco and ACME Markets. All 20 are listed in the US and in Canada; none is listed in the UK or Australia, where the Safeway listing returns a “not found” page. In Canada you can download them, but Mealime says you create or sign in to an Albertsons store account to use Meals Hub, and it does not say whether one can be created from outside the US; we could not check. If you live in the UK or Australia, the official path is not something you can download on your iPhone. Every other app in the table below was listed on the UK, Canadian and Australian App Stores that same day.

How we compared the apps

Mealime did one job well: you picked a few dinners from its recipes and it turned them into one tidy grocery list. So the table asks the same five questions of every app: who picks the meals, whether your macro targets play a part, whether the grocery list builds itself, which devices it runs on, and what it costs.

We only recorded what each company says on its own website or store listing on October 14, 2026. We did not test the apps hands-on. Prices are the US ones shown that day, in US dollars; they can differ in your country and they change, so check the current price before you subscribe.

If you cooked the same favorites every week: Plan to Eat, Paprika, AnyList

Plan to Eat keeps the plan-then-shop routine, except that you bring the recipes. Its Recipe Clipper saves them from any website, Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest; you drop them on a calendar, and the grocery list builds itself, organized by store and aisle. It also shows nutrition facts and daily totals for what you planned. There is no free plan, by choice: the company says it is customer-funded and shows no ads. You get a 14-day trial with no credit card required.

Paprika is the one-off purchase in the list: $4.99 for the iPhone and iPad version on the US App Store, with the Mac, Android and Windows versions sold separately. Its built-in browser saves recipes from anywhere on the web, the grocery list merges similar items (its own example is 1 egg plus 2 eggs making 3 eggs) and sorts them by aisle, and the meal planner covers a week or a month. Paprika's website also announces an open beta of Paprika 4.

AnyList is first and foremost a shared grocery list. Items sort themselves by category, everyone you share a list with sees changes instantly, and you can add things with Siri or Alexa. Recipes and a meal-planning calendar sit on top. The basic lists cost nothing; AnyList Complete, at $9.99 a year for one person or $14.99 for a household, adds the calendar, unlimited recipe imports (the basic plan allows five) and the Mac and web apps.

None of the three chooses meals for you, so they suit people whose Mealime favorites had become a fixed rotation. Our guides to Plan to Eat and Paprika look at what changes when you move from your own recipe box to menus that are suggested for you.

If you want the app to suggest the week: Samsung Food, Eat This Much, Prospre

Samsung Food is built around a large catalog: its App Store listing mentions over 240,000 public recipes, and with the free version you can save recipes from any website, plan the week and turn it into a shopping list you share with your household. Since September 2025 every user can set nutrition goals and see a macro breakdown of the meals they planned, and since October 2025 anyone can apply a tailored week plan twice before needing the subscription. Samsung Food+, at $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year in the US, adds AI weekly meal plans tailored to your health goals. More in our Samsung Food guide.

Eat This Much starts from numbers. You give it a calorie target, a number of meals and macro minimums, and it generates the day; a virtual pantry makes it use up what you already have first. Its free tier plans one day at a time. Premium, at $5 a month with a yearly subscription, plans whole weeks, builds the grocery list automatically and connects to grocery delivery such as Instacart and AmazonFresh. It runs on iPhone, Android and the web, and it also records what you eat.

Prospre works the same way with more control over each number: you enter calories, protein, fat and carbs, it generates a week, and you swap the days or meals you don't like. A “Fit Into Plan” button reshuffles the day around a treat. It doubles as a macro tracker with a barcode scanner, and you can also use it from a laptop or desktop. Prospre says it costs nothing to download and use; Pro is an in-app purchase, with $49.99 a year among the options on the US App Store.

Eat This Much and Prospre start from your targets rather than from a recipe box. If you never counted anything with Mealime, you do not have to start now; Samsung Food's free planner or Plan to Eat's calendar will feel more familiar. If you are weighing the trade-off between planning and logging, our Eat This Much guide goes into it.

Where MacroRecipe fits, and who it is not for

MacroRecipe belongs with the second group, with one difference: it plans menus and is not a food tracker. You tell it how you eat (food preferences, allergies, ingredients you never want to see, the equipment in your kitchen), pick a goal such as maintaining or building muscle, and choose the recipes you want to cook. It then proposes a week of real dishes from many cuisines, with portions sized so each day lands near your estimated calorie and protein targets, and it tells you when a day falls short instead of hiding it.

Swap a dish you don't like and the portions and the grocery list follow. Everything ends up in one list for the week, with quantities added up across recipes, so rice appears once on the list instead of on three separate lines. Each recipe opens step by step when it is time to cook.

It is not the right app for everyone. Skip it if:

• you are not on iPhone: MacroRecipe has no Android version;
• you want to log what you eat: it keeps no complete food diary, while Eat This Much and Prospre both track;
• you mainly want to save recipes from websites: that is what Plan to Eat, Paprika and AnyList are built for;
• you want to avoid a subscription: after a preview of your first menu and a 3-day trial, it is a paid subscription, and its weekly and monthly plans are listed at $3.99 and $11.99 on the US App Store on October 14, 2026;
• you hoped to bring your Mealime account across: Mealime's notice offers no export, and MacroRecipe cannot import a Mealime account.

It also has no link to a supermarket's online ordering. The grocery list is yours to take to any store.

So which one should you pick?

• You shop at Safeway or another Albertsons Companies chain in the US: start with Meals Hub, which is Mealime's own continuation.
• You kept a rotation of favorite recipes and mostly want the list: Paprika if you would rather pay once, AnyList if your household shares the shopping, Plan to Eat if you want your recipes and calendar on phone and web.
• You want a huge recipe catalog and a shared list for free: Samsung Food.
• You want the app to choose meals from calorie and macro targets and to track what you eat as well: Eat This Much or Prospre.
• You want a week of dishes chosen around your estimated calorie and protein targets on iPhone, with one grocery list and without having to keep a food diary: MacroRecipe.

Frequently asked questions