Tired of building your own week in Plan to Eat?

What Plan to Eat does well

Recipe import is the headline feature, and it works broadly: a French reviewer tested it against Marmiton, Ricardo and NYT Cooking and got clean imports from all three. If you have bookmarks scattered across a dozen food blogs, Plan to Eat is built to catch them.

The basics are mature and reliable — drag-and-drop weekly planning, a shopping list generated from whatever you've scheduled, sync across phone, tablet and web. Long-time users credit it with cutting food waste and takeout spend, and call out responsive customer support.

It rates well beyond the App Store too: 4.8/5 on Capterra (161 reviews) and 4.8/5 on G2 (24 reviews). For a recipe organizer, that is a strong, consistent track record.

Who it's for

Plan to Eat suits someone who already knows how to cook and what they like to cook — the tool's job is to store those recipes and turn a chosen week into one shopping list. It is not trying to decide what you eat; it is trying to organize what you've already decided.

It also suits households that plan collaboratively around a shared calendar rather than a fixed target: swap a Tuesday, drag in a favorite, done.

Where it stops

The interface shows its age for a tool meant to be opened every week: "It works, but it's not a pleasure to use."

There's no way to capture a recipe that isn't already online — a cookbook page or a handwritten family card has to be retyped by hand: "photo import for physical recipes is still missing."

The shopping list only partially merges overlapping ingredients across recipes, so you can end up checking quantities by hand before you shop.

Reviewers increasingly weigh the price against newer, cheaper tools: "whether those basics are worth $49/year... for less."

Real-time collaboration is limited — no simultaneous shared editing between household members, and sharing a recipe or list takes several steps.

What Macro Recipe does the same

You still end the week with one consolidated grocery list, quantities added up across every recipe so you buy one bag of rice instead of three lines for it.

Recipes open step by step when you cook, and swapping a dish you don't fancy updates the week and the list around it, the same drag-and-swap spirit as a weekly calendar.

It works across a real range of cuisines and diets, not a narrow set of house recipes — vegetarian, halal, pork-free and more are respected in what you're served.

What it does differently

Plan to Eat starts from recipes you already chose and organizes them. Macro Recipe starts from your goal — cut, maintain, or build muscle — and your estimated calorie and protein target, then builds the week's real recipes to land near it. You are not assembling the week yourself; you tell the app how you eat and it proposes one.

The grocery list carries an estimated cost in your own currency, adjusted to your country's price level, and you can set a weekly grocery budget the menu is built to respect. Plan to Eat's list totals quantities; it does not estimate what they'll cost.

You don't need to already own a recipe collection. There's nothing to import, curate or maintain — the menu is generated fresh each week from your profile.

What it does not do

It does not let you import and store your own arbitrary recipes from any website — it is not a general-purpose recipe manager, and if your goal is to organize a personal recipe box, Plan to Eat still does that job better.

Your first menu is free and there is a 3-day trial, after which Macro Recipe is a paid subscription — 9.99 € a month or 69.99 € a year. There is no permanently free tier beyond the trial.

It is on iPhone today, and it does not connect to any store's online ordering — the grocery list is yours to shop from, anywhere.

Switching in practice

Keep what still works from Plan to Eat: if there's a household favorite you cook from memory anyway, nothing stops you cooking it the week Macro Recipe doesn't happen to include it — the two aren't mutually exclusive during a trial period.

A first week looks like this: set your goal, diet and any excluded ingredients, and Macro Recipe generates a menu with a grocery list and an estimated weekly cost. Cook from it for a few days before deciding whether the fit is right — the first menu costs nothing.

Price, compared

Plan to Eat is $49 a year or $5.95 a month billed through the web, 14-day free trial, no card required — though subscribing through the iOS App Store costs $54.99/year because of Apple's in-app purchase fee.

Macro Recipe is 9.99 € a month or 69.99 € a year, with a free first menu and a 3-day trial before billing starts. Both are estimated figures at checkout in your local currency; neither company publishes a lifetime price.

What three days of a weekly menu look like

An indicative example for someone aiming at roughly 1,800 kcal and 120 g of protein a day. Estimated figures; your own menu is built from your profile, your tastes and your budget.

Frequently asked questions