Mealime closed on October 21. Here is what to do next.

What Mealime has announced

Mealime's website carried a banner reading “Mealime will shut down on October 21, 2026”, and every download button pointed to Mealime's closing notice. That notice said the app would be discontinued as of October 21, 2026, that paid subscriptions would end with it, with all Pro recipes and features opened to every Mealime user, and that Pro subscribers would not be charged again before then.

The recipes did not disappear: Mealime's owner, Albertsons Companies, moved them into Meals Hub, a recipe and shopping feature inside its own grocery store apps — Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Shaw's, Tom Thumb, Randalls, Pavilions, Star Market, United Supermarkets, Haggen and Carrs.

Two lines in the notice mattered most for you. First, all personal data would be deleted when the app shut down. Second, nothing was said about exporting your plans, your favourites or your grocery lists, and the notice added that some preferences and settings would have to be set up again inside Meals Hub.

What was worth saving before October 21

Before the shutdown, the thing to do was open your favourites and the plans you actually cooked from, and copy out the handful of recipes you would miss: ingredients, quantities, and the two or three steps you always forget. A screenshot per recipe was enough. It was better done that week than on the last evening, because nothing is recoverable afterwards.

Writing down your settings was worth doing too — the food preferences you selected, the ingredients you excluded, how many servings you cooked for. They took a while to get right, and you will be asked for the same things by whichever app you move to.

If you were paying for Pro, the subscription ended with the app, and Mealime had said it would not charge you again.

After October 21: if Mealime has stopped working

Since October 21, 2026 the app has been discontinued. If you open Mealime after that date and it no longer loads, signs you out or has vanished from the App Store or Google Play, that is the shutdown — not a bug on your phone, and reinstalling will not bring it back.

Your plans, favourites and grocery lists went with it: the closing notice said personal data would be deleted at shutdown, so there is no account to recover and no support request that can restore them. What remains is whatever you copied or screenshotted beforehand.

What you need next is the routine, not the app: a few dinners chosen for the week, and one grocery list. The rest of this page is about where to find that again.

Outside the United States? Meals Hub is not for you

Every banner that hosts Meals Hub is an American supermarket chain, and using it means having an account with one of those stores. If you shop at Tesco, Sainsbury's, Woolworths or Coles, there is no store app for you to move into: on October 14, 2026, none of the Albertsons Companies store apps was listed on the UK or Australian App Store, so the official path simply does not reach you. If you shop at Loblaws, those apps, Safeway's among them, are listed on the Canadian App Store, but they serve US stores, and Mealime does not say whether a store account can be created from outside the US.

Inside the US, the notice says Meals Hub still lets you browse recipes, create meal plans and generate shopping lists even if you cannot shop at an Albertsons Companies store. You reach it through one of their store apps or websites, with an account there, rather than through a stand-alone planner like Mealime.

That is the gap this page is about. You do not need a replacement that knows a particular supermarket. You need a weekly menu, one grocery list, and a fair idea of what the basket will cost where you live.

What MacroRecipe does the same

The weekly routine is the one you know. You say how you eat — your food preferences, your allergies, the ingredients you never want to see, the equipment in your kitchen — and you get a menu for the week made of real dishes, not a list of nutrients.

Everything in the menu lands in a single grocery list, with quantities added up across recipes so you buy one bag of rice, not three separate lines. You can swap a dish you do not fancy, and the list follows.

When it is time to cook, each recipe opens step by step. If you like to cook once and eat several times, a batch cooking mode groups the week's preparation into one session.

What it does differently

The grocery list comes with an estimated cost, in your own currency — pounds, Canadian or Australian dollars, euros and more — adjusted for the price level of your country. You set a weekly grocery budget, and the app tells you when a week's estimated cost goes over it. It is an estimate, not a till receipt, but it answers the question Mealime never did: what will this week cost me?

You can also give the app a goal: cut, maintain, or build muscle. Portions are then adjusted so that the day lands near your estimated calorie and protein targets, and when a day falls short the app says so instead of pretending. If you never cared about numbers, you can ignore them and simply cook.

Dishes come from many cuisines, and dietary rules such as halal, vegetarian or pork-free are applied to what you are served rather than left for you to check line by line.

What it does not do

It is not free. The preview of your first menu is free, after which MacroRecipe is a paid subscription. Mealime's core was free, so this is a real difference and you should weigh it.

It cannot bring your Mealime account over. Nobody can: Mealime's notice offered no export and said personal data would be deleted. Be wary of any app that promises otherwise.

It is on iPhone today. And it has no link to a supermarket's online ordering — the grocery list is yours to shop from, in any store.

What three days of a weekly menu look like

An indicative example for someone aiming at roughly 1,750 kcal and 110 g of protein a day. Estimated figures; your own menu is built from your profile and your tastes.

Frequently asked questions