Best Mealime Alternative in 2026

Five million downloads. A 4.8-star rating from over 53,000 reviews on the App Store. Mealime earned those numbers by doing one thing well: making weeknight dinners simple.

Mealime is a recipe-based meal planning app that lets you pick meals from a curated library of 1,200+ recipes, automatically generates an aisle-sorted grocery list, and walks you through cooking step by step. Most recipes take 30 minutes or less and use common ingredients. The free tier is genuinely usable, which is rare.

It launched in 2013. Albertsons acquired it in 2022, giving it grocery store distribution that indie apps can't match. If you want a simple way to pick meals and generate a shopping list, Mealime still works fine.

But a specific type of person keeps looking for alternatives. You've probably used it for a few months and hit a wall.

Mealime's biggest strength is also its ceiling: simplicity. The app gives you recipes to choose from. That's it. It doesn't know what's in your kitchen, doesn't remember what you cooked last week, and can't generate anything new.

The complaints in Mealime's community forum and app store reviews follow a pattern:

The recipe library runs out

With 1,200 recipes, Mealime sounds like it has plenty. But filter for your dietary restrictions, remove ingredients you dislike, and exclude what you've already made this month. The pool shrinks fast. Users report cycling through the same meals within a few weeks. There's no way to generate new recipes based on what you want. You're stuck picking from a fixed menu.

Max 4 servings

This is the single most requested change in Mealime's community forums. Serving sizes come in increments of 2 (two or four servings). If you're cooking for five people, or meal prepping for the week, you're out of luck. Mealime was built for couples, and it shows.

No concept of your kitchen

Mealime doesn't know what's in your fridge. It doesn't track what you bought last week. It can't suggest meals based on ingredients that are about to expire. Every plan starts from zero, assuming an empty pantry. This is exactly what pantry-aware AI meal planning solves. This is the core reason food waste stays high even for people who meal plan.

Cooking times are wishful thinking

Multiple reviewers report that "30-minute" recipes consistently take 45-60 minutes. Prep time is underestimated, and the instructions can be surprisingly wordy for what should be a quick dinner.

The web experience barely works

Mealime is mobile-first to the point where the web version is almost read-only. You can't add items to your grocery list on the web. You can't search recipes. If you prefer planning meals on a laptop, this is a dealbreaker.

No AI, no learning, no memory

Mealime is a recipe database with filters. It doesn't learn your cooking habits, adapt to your schedule, or get smarter over time. In 2026, that's a limitation. The app hasn't added any AI features despite the entire category moving in that direction. Updates are limited to new recipes and bug fixes.

Mealime and MealThinker represent two different generations of meal planning software. One picks from a list. The other thinks.

	Mealime	MealThinker
Approach	Pick recipes from a curated library	Tell the AI what you want and it creates suggestions
Recipe source	1,200 fixed recipes	AI-generated based on your situation
Knows your kitchen	No	Yes, tracks pantry through conversation
Remembers preferences	Dietary filters only	Everything: taste, cooking skill, past meals, mood
Adapts over time	No	Yes, gets better with each conversation
Handles leftovers	No	"I have leftover rice and beans, what can I make?"
Nutrition tracking	Calories per recipe (Pro only)	Ongoing daily and weekly tracking
Serving sizes	2 or 4 only	Any amount
Grocery lists	Auto-generated, aisle-sorted	Built around what you already have
Web app	Barely functional	Full-featured
Free option	Yes (limited library)	7-day free trial, full access, no credit card
Price	Free or $2.99/month Pro	$15/month or $150/year

The price difference is real. Mealime Pro costs $3/month. MealThinker costs $15/month. But they solve different problems.

Mealime helps you pick from recipes someone else made. MealThinker figures out what to cook based on your actual kitchen, your actual schedule, and your actual nutrition needs. See how it works.

If you're happy picking from a recipe carousel and don't mind starting from scratch every week, Mealime at $3/month is a good deal. If you're tired of the nightly "what's for dinner?" question and want something that remembers you, the difference in cost pays for itself in reduced food waste and fewer impulse delivery orders.

Plan to Eat

Price: $5.95/month or $49/year

Plan to Eat is the best option if you want to bring your own recipes. Strong web clipper, good calendar interface, grocery lists that connect to your meal plan. No AI, no recipe library of its own. You're doing the work, but the tools are solid.

Best for: People who already have recipe sources and want an organizational tool.

Eat This Much

Price: $14.99/month or $59.99/year

Eat This Much auto-generates meal plans based on macro targets. If you think in calories, protein, and carb ratios, it's built for that. The recipes can be repetitive and it needs manual tweaking, but the macro precision is unmatched.

Best for: Fitness-focused people who want precise nutritional control.

Ollie

Price: $9.99/month or $80/year

Ollie is an AI meal planner for families. Photo-based pantry scanning, grocery delivery integration with Instacart and Walmart, multi-eater profile management. US-only, mobile-only.

Best for: Families with kids who want automated weekly plans.

MealThinker

Price: $15/month or $150/year (7-day free trial, no credit card)

Conversational AI that remembers your kitchen, your preferences, and your nutrition goals permanently. Tracks your pantry, suggests meals based on what you have, monitors nutrition across days and weeks. Works on web and iOS.

Best for: Individual health-conscious cooks who want to stop thinking about what to eat.

Is Mealime still worth using in 2026?

For quick weeknight dinners on a budget, yes. Mealime's free tier gives you access to a solid recipe library with auto-generated grocery lists. At $3/month for Pro, the price is hard to beat. The app works best for couples or individuals who want simple meals and don't need the tool to remember anything about them. If you've outgrown the recipe library or want meal suggestions based on what's in your kitchen, an AI meal planner like MealThinker is the next step.

Why is Mealime so much cheaper than AI meal planners?

Mealime doesn't use AI. It's a recipe database with filters. The computational cost of showing you pre-made recipes is close to zero. AI meal planners like MealThinker run a large language model for every suggestion, which costs real money per interaction. The price difference reflects the difference between browsing a catalog and having a conversation with an assistant that knows your situation.

Does Mealime work for families?

Not well for larger families. Mealime caps servings at 4 (in increments of 2). If you're feeding five or more people, the portions don't scale. For families, Ollie is built specifically for multi-person households with different dietary needs.

Can Mealime track what's in my kitchen?

No. Mealime has no pantry or fridge tracking. It generates grocery lists assuming you're starting from scratch each time. This means you often end up buying ingredients you already have. MealThinker tracks your kitchen inventory through conversation, so your grocery lists only include what you're actually missing.

What happened to Mealime? Is it still being updated?

Albertsons acquired Mealime in 2022. The app is still maintained with regular updates, mostly adding new recipes and fixing bugs. There haven't been major feature additions or any AI capabilities added since the acquisition. The app works, but it's essentially in maintenance mode.