Best free meal planning app: what each one gives you for $0
Samsung Food is the best free meal planning app for most people: it saves recipes from any website, plans your week and turns it into a shared shopping list without paying. Mealie is the free pick if you can run your own server. Gluten, made by this site's publisher, has no paid tier and suits families with allergies.
The short list
- Best free all-rounder: Samsung Food. Recipe saving, a weekly plan and a shopping list, free on iPhone, Android and the web.
- Best if you can host it yourself: Mealie. Open source, every feature free, runs on your own server.
- Best for families who eat differently: Gluten (our app). No paid tier; one dinner for everyone, with a swap for anyone who needs one.
- Best for a small recipe collection: Paprika. Free up to 50 recipes, on one device.
- Best free shared grocery list: AnyList. The meal calendar costs $9.99 a year.
- Best family calendar with dinner on it: Cozi. Free, with ads.
- Best for calorie and macro targets: Eat This Much. Free one day at a time.
- Best for Walmart pickup: Prepear. Free do-it-yourself plans and lists.
- Often listed as free, but isn't: Plan to Eat. A 14-day trial, then $49 a year.
Free plans side by side
| App | The free plan gives you | Weekly plan, free | Grocery list, free | Recipe import, free | Paid plan | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung Food | Recipes from any site, weekly planner, smart shopping list, shared lists, nutrition goals | Yes you plan it; 2 tailored week plans | Yes | Yes | Food+ $6.99/mo or $59.99/yr | iPhone, iPad, Android, web |
| Mealie | Everything; open source | Yes you plan it | Yes | Yes | None; you run the server | Web app on your own server |
| Gluten our app | The whole app: a profile per person, a week of dinners, swaps, the food check | Yes dinners made for you | No | No | None (a $39.99 gift is the only purchase) | iPhone, iPad, Android, web |
| Paprika 4 | 50 recipes, meal planner, 1 grocery list; one device, no sync | Yes you plan it | One list | Yes from recipe sites | Premium $14.99/yr (introductory) | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, Windows |
| AnyList | Shopping lists, shared lists, recipe box | No calendar is paid | Yes | 5 recipes | Complete $9.99/yr; household $14.99/yr | iPhone, Android; web with Complete |
| Cozi | Family calendar, shopping and to-do lists, recipe box, meals on the calendar; ads | Yes you plan it | Yes | Yes paste a link | Gold $39/yr; Max $79/yr | iPhone, Android, web |
| Eat This Much | A generated plan for one day at a time, food tracking | No one day at a time | No | Add your own | Premium $5/mo, billed yearly | Web, iPhone, Android |
| Prepear | Recipe box, do-it-yourself meal plans, grocery lists | Yes you plan it | Yes | Yes | Gold $119.99/yr | Web, iPhone, Android |
| Plan to Eat | Nothing after a 14-day trial | Trial only | Trial only | Trial only | $5.95/mo or $49/yr | Web, iPhone, Android |
What's free in each app
Samsung Food
Best free all-rounder
Samsung Food (formerly Whisk) gives away the parts most people need: save a recipe from any website, add it to a weekly plan, and turn the week into a shopping list you can share with family. Nutrition goals became free in 2025, and you can order groceries through its 23 partner retailers in four regions.
Food+ costs $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year. It adds AI-tailored weekly plans (free accounts can apply a full week plan twice), Smart Cooking Mode and pantry tracking. Unlimited saved meal plans is also a Food+ feature, so free accounts have a cap on saved plans.
Mealie
Best if you can host it yourself
Mealie is open-source software (AGPL-3.0) with no paid tier. It imports recipes from a link, plans breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks on a calendar, can pick a random recipe for you, and builds shopping lists from recipes. It can also import collections from Paprika, Plan to Eat and Recipe Keeper.
The catch: you install and run it yourself, usually on a home server with Docker, and use it in a browser. If that sentence sounds like work, skip it.
Gluten our app
Best for families who eat differently
Gluten is a meal planner for families where people eat differently. You add everyone you cook for, with their allergies, diets, health conditions and ages, and it plans a week of dinners all of you can eat. When one person needs something different, it says what to change on their plate: the toddler's sweet potato gets mashed, the five-year-old's portion skips the mushrooms. It covers 50 conditions, diets, allergies and life stages, from celiac and AIP to pregnancy and toddlers, and checks every ingredient against each person.
All of it is free. There is no paid tier, its terms say the app has no in-app purchases or subscriptions, and the only thing sold is a $39.99 gift. You don't need an account to start.
What it doesn't do yet: there is no weekly grocery list (each recipe lists its ingredients), no recipe import, no calorie targets, and it plans dinners only.
Visit Gluten iPhone · Android · Web
Paprika
Best for a small recipe collection
Paprika 4 came out on November 6, 2026 and is now free to download everywhere. The free version keeps up to 50 recipes, saves them from recipe websites, plans meals by day, week or month, and keeps one grocery list. It has no time limit, but it doesn't sync, so it lives on one device.
Premium launched at $14.99 a year with a 7-day trial ($9.99 for owners of older versions) and adds unlimited recipes, sync, family sharing, recipe scanning and nutrition.
AnyList
Best free shared grocery list
AnyList's free plan is a very good shared shopping list: lists the whole family can edit, items sorted into grocery categories, a recipe box, and online ordering through Walmart, Instacart and Kroger. You can import five recipes from websites.
The meal planning calendar is not free. It comes with AnyList Complete, $9.99 a year for one person or $14.99 a year for a household, along with the web app and unlimited imports.
Cozi
Best family calendar with dinner on it
Cozi is a family organizer first. The free version gives everyone a shared calendar, shopping and to-do lists, and a recipe box: paste a recipe link, add its ingredients to the list, and put the meal on a day everyone can see.
The free app shows ads. Gold ($39 a year) removes them and adds calendar extras; Max ($79 a year) adds an AI meal planner.
Eat This Much
Best for calorie and macro targets
Eat This Much writes the plan for you around calorie and macro targets. Free accounts get one day at a time, which you can regenerate and edit, plus food tracking and your own recipes.
A full week at a time, the grocery list and grocery delivery are Premium, $5 a month on a yearly plan.
Prepear
Best for Walmart pickup
Prepear's free account covers the do-it-yourself basics: save recipes from the web with your phone's share button, build your own meal plan, and turn it into a grocery list you can send to Walmart for pickup or delivery.
Gold, $119.99 a year after a 14-day trial, adds ready-made meal plans from food bloggers, every cookbook, and ad-free Cook Mode.
How to choose a free meal planner
- Do you want the app to plan, or a place to plan? For free, Gluten writes a week of dinners and Eat This Much writes one day at a time. Samsung Food, Paprika, Cozi, Prepear and Mealie give you a calendar and leave the choosing to you.
- Is the grocery list free? It is in Samsung Food, Paprika (one list), Cozi, Prepear, AnyList and Mealie. It isn't in Eat This Much's free plan, and Gluten doesn't have one.
- Can you bring your own recipes? If you already have favorites saved around the web, pick an app that imports them: Samsung Food, Paprika, Mealie, Cozi or Prepear.
- Will everyone see the same plan? Samsung Food, Cozi and Gluten share the plan for free. Paprika's family sharing and AnyList's shared meal plan are paid.
- Does it handle everyone at the table? A diet filter applies one set of rules to the whole plan. If one person is celiac, another is pregnant and a third won't eat anything green, look for a profile per person, which is what Gluten is built around.
- Where is the catch? Usually it's ads (Cozi), a cap (Paprika's 50 recipes, AnyList's five imports, Samsung Food's saved plans) or a trial dressed up as a free plan (Plan to Eat, MealPrepPro).
Where Gluten wins, and where it doesn't
We make Gluten, so here is the plain version.
Gluten is the better choice when
- People at your table eat differently. It keeps a profile per person and checks every recipe against each of them.
- You want the week written for you at no cost. Eat This Much, Cozi and Prepear charge for that, and Samsung Food allows two tailored weeks.
- You want a planner with nothing to pay for and no server to run. (Meals Hub, inside Albertsons grocery apps, is the other one, and it has a grocery list.)
Pick something else when
- You need a grocery list: AnyList or Samsung Food.
- You want to import your own recipes: Samsung Food, Paprika or Mealie.
- You plan breakfast and lunch too: Mealie, Paprika or Cozi.
- You count calories or macros: Eat This Much.
- You want groceries delivered: Samsung Food, AnyList or Prepear.
Often listed as free, but not free (or gone)
- Plan to Eat shows up in "free" lists and in Google's AI answer for this search, but it has no free plan: a 14-day trial with no card, then $5.95 a month or $49 a year. It's a strong recipe-collector's app if you're willing to pay. Visit Plan to Eat
- MealPrepPro has a 7-day free trial, then a subscription; its most popular plan works out to about $5 a month. Visit MealPrepPro
- Mealime shut down on October 21, 2026. Its recipes moved to Meals Hub, a free planner inside Albertsons Companies grocery apps such as Safeway and Vons. Mealime's notice
- Yummly is gone: yummly.com now redirects to KitchenAid's recipe pages.
Questions
Is there a meal planning app that's completely free?
Yes. Gluten (our app) has no paid tier: planning, swaps and the food check are free on iPhone, Android and the web. Mealie is free and open source, but you run it on your own server. Meals Hub, inside Albertsons Companies grocery apps, is free too. Most other planners are free with limits and sell an upgrade.
Which free meal planning app makes a grocery list?
Samsung Food, Paprika (one list), Cozi, Prepear, AnyList and Mealie all make a grocery list for free. Eat This Much puts its grocery list in Premium, and Gluten doesn't have one yet.
Is Samsung Food free?
Mostly. Saving recipes, planning your week, shopping lists and nutrition goals are free. Food+ costs $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year and adds tailored weekly plans beyond two free uses, Smart Cooking Mode, pantry tracking and unlimited saved meal plans.
Is Plan to Eat free?
No. Plan to Eat has a 14-day free trial with no card, then costs $5.95 a month or $49 a year. It says it has no free plan because its customers fund it, not ads.
What happened to Mealime and Yummly?
Mealime shut down on October 21, 2026. Its recipes moved to Meals Hub in Albertsons Companies store apps, which is free. Yummly's website now redirects to KitchenAid's recipe pages.
What's the best free meal planner for a family with food allergies?
If people at your table eat differently, Gluten is built for that: a profile per person, every recipe checked against each of them, and one dinner with a swap where someone needs one. It's free, and it's made by this site's publisher. You'll still want a list app, such as AnyList, for groceries.
Can ChatGPT make a meal plan?
Yes, a chatbot can draft a week of meals from a prompt. A meal planning app adds structure around it: a calendar you can move meals on, saved recipes, a shopping list that follows the plan, and a plan the rest of the family can open on their own phones.
About this page
Published by Winding AI, Inc., the company that makes Gluten. We wrote this page because the top results for "best free meal planning app" rarely say what is actually free in each app, and some recommend apps with no free plan at all.
How we checked: on November 7, 2026 we read each app's pricing page, feature comparison and app store listings, and wrote down what the free plan includes, what the upgrade costs and where it runs. Samsung Food's website blocked our reader, so its facts come from its App Store and Google Play listings. We didn't give anyone a score or a star rating, and we put Gluten first only where it fits: families with mixed diets. It has no grocery list or recipe import, and we say so.
We earn nothing from links to other apps. Links to Gluten carry a tag so Gluten can count visits from this page. Prices change; if something here is wrong, write to support@winding.ai and we'll fix it.