Once we had clearance to eat out, finding a restaurant that could accommodate our needs felt overwhelming. It’s best to look for features that meet your dietary needs, such as an app that filters for allergens or special diets, or a goal of eating high protein foods or less calories. Her husband, Clint, tried to find a digital solution to make meal planning easier, but in the early 2000s, nothing existed. So Clint, a designer and web developer, set out to create a digital meal-planning program for his wife. WWL is an online meal plan subscription, food blog and cookbook dedicated to helping people all over the world make meal prep happen to get more out of life.
eMeals preset menus with grocery connections
There are over 1,000 vegan recipes available, with new ones added weekly. Instead of simply filtering out animal products, this app is built entirely around whole-food, plant-based eating. As you’d expect, the Grocery List allows you to check off items as you purchase them. If you’d prefer to shop from a Reminders list, Paprika will export your Grocery List to the iOS Reminders app. Items you check off in Reminders don’t get synced back to the Grocery List in Paprika.
Best Food Tracking Apps
I’ve taken advantage of the option to save recipes in collections I label with the weeks in the month, creating a meal plan that’s easily accessible right from the home screen of the app. EMeals emphasizes that it’s meal planning “made simple,” and they mean that. You get pre-loaded, dietitian-curated menus that come in “themes.” Themes can be kid-friendly, keto, quick, etc. The apps on this list with thousands of recipes to scroll through are great, but if you just want someone or something else to pick for you, start here. The app questionnaire asked about dietary preferences, allergies, the number of people you’d be cooking for, and how many days a week you were planning to cook. Then the app suggests meals based on your diet preferences, which is a nice feature that not all the apps on our list offer.
Meal Planner, Grocery & Pantry
Our food philosophy is aligned with Intuitive Eating and we’re here to help you develop a system around food that supports the lifestyle you want. Another great feature in the Grocery List is the Pantry (apple icon in sidebar). You can use the Pantry to keep track of all the ingredients you already have in your kitchen. When adding recipes to your Grocery List, any items already in your Pantry will automatically be unchecked. If you’ve never used a recipe unimeal scam app before, or have never settled on one, Paprika is the one you want.
Meal Planner & Grocery List
Below, I’m breaking down the best meal planning apps in 2026, based on different needs and lifestyles, so you can find the one you’ll actually stick with. Paprika looks great, does an awesome job of clipping recipes from the web, and helps you plan, shop, and cook all your meals. If you’re looking for the best recipe app that is easy to use and full of features, look no further than Paprika on iOS and Mac.
- Meal planning apps can save you hours every week, cut food waste, and make healthy eating easier.
- Recipes can be saved in your “recipe box” and the ingredients added to a grocery list that you can email, text, share in Facebook Messenger, or save to a “note” on your smartphone.
- When you add recipes to your calendar, the shopping list will automatically populate an organized list of ingredients you need to buy.
- Check out our list of the best meal delivery services for weight loss.
- There is no login process or any type of quiz you need to complete to get started,” he said, rating it a 5 out of 5 for setup and getting started.
- If you ever catch me eating a single mushroom, call the authorities because I’m sending a distress signal.
The Sweet Setup Staff Picks for 2022
The app does not suggest recipes based on your meal preferences, rather, you create or import recipes from the web yourself. Paprika supports many special diets such as dairy-free, gluten-free, low-calorie, paleo, keto, vegan, and vegetarian. When asked about customization, Pete noted that “you can’t customize or modify the recipes that are already included in the app. However, you are able to create your own recipes, which allows for full customization.” He rated personalization a 5 out of 5, as you can input and store your fridge/pantry inventory for easy recipe creation.
The Power of Paprika’s Built-In Grocery List
That’s not exactly a small cost, but if you’re serious about meal prepping, give it a look. Whisk is truly the best budget pick outta this bunch simply because you get all of its perks for zero cost. I mean, this bb is free with a capital F and comes with customizable recipes, how-to tutorials from food influencers like The Korean Vegan, and custom shopping lists! Every week, Whisk provides a calendar where you’ll add your recipes for each day. Then, you can request a shopping list, which it will automatically make for you, complete with any dietary preferences you put in. Oh, and you can send your grocery list straight to your preferred shopping service too.
Best app for more recipe control: Plan to Eat
Low FODMAP Diet is a food tracker for checking useful qualities of products, counting calories, and managing meal planning for users with IBS problems. It’s one of the best free apps for following a diet for people with gut problems. Yes, the meal planning apps that we tested allow you to create and customize your own recipes within the apps. Pete would use this app regularly, and recommends it for someone who struggles to decide what to cook each night. “This app makes it extremely simple to find recipes, create a meal plan for the week, and make an easy-to-follow grocery list,” he said. While the app doesn’t suggest meals, you can filter the recipes by meal type, cuisine, cook time, special diets, audience, and allergies.
Favorite Meal Prep Tools
Shop our online store for free and discreet shipping on all orders. Chris is a writer and editor who hails from Oklahoma City but full-time RVs with his wife Chelsea and their son Brendon. In addition to contributing here at The Sweet Setup, he is known for writing The Spark Journal and contributing daily over at our sister site, Tools and Toys.
What are the benefits of meal-planning apps?
Items are also sorted by category, making it easy to find everything in the store without having to backtrack while shopping. If notes and spreadsheets are working and feel easy, you may not need an app. A planner becomes helpful when you want automatic menu suggestions, grouped grocery lists, and faster swaps, especially when you are tired or busy and do not want to rebuild the plan yourself every week. Yazio is an all-in-one calorie, fasting, and health tracker, and also a meal planner. BodyFast is the No.1 Health & Fitness app in 48 countries, with over 50 million downloads and a 4.8-star rating.