Ollie Meal Planner: A Competitor's Honest Review

I built a competitor to Ollie. So take this review with that context.

But I'll be straightforward about where Ollie wins, because it genuinely wins in several areas. Ollie AI is a family-focused meal planner with 90,000+ users, a 4.8-star App Store rating from 887 reviews, and venture funding from Khosla Ventures and the Allen Institute for AI. The Washington Post profiled families using it in August 2025. This isn't a hobby project. It's the most well-funded AI meal planner on the market.

MealThinker is built for a different person. Individual health-conscious cooks who want AI that remembers their kitchen and tracks nutrition over time. Same category, different problems.

Three things Ollie does particularly well:

Pantry photo scanning

Point your phone at your fridge or pantry. Ollie's computer vision identifies the ingredients and suggests meals that use what you have. MealThinker does this through conversation instead of photos, but the photo approach is faster for initial setup. No typing required.

Grocery delivery integration

Ollie connects to Instacart, Walmart, and Amazon Fresh. Your grocery list turns into a delivery order with one tap. MealThinker builds grocery lists based on what you're missing, but doesn't have delivery integrations yet. If one-tap ordering matters to you, Ollie has the edge here.

Family profile management

This is Ollie's biggest differentiator. You create profiles for each person in your household. Different allergies, different preferences, different ages. The AI balances everyone's needs when generating the weekly plan. Managing dinner for a family of five with a nut allergy, a picky eight-year-old, and a parent doing keto is genuinely hard. Ollie is purpose-built for that problem.

The most common complaint in Ollie's App Store reviews: recipe variety. Users report getting the same types of meals over and over. One reviewer put it bluntly: "The only meals it recommends to me is Korean, Mediterranean, and stir fries."

This is a pattern across AI meal planners. The algorithm finds meals that fit your constraints and converges on them. Without strong variety signals, you end up eating the same five cuisines on rotation. Eat This Much users report the exact same issue with their generator.

Individual users are an afterthought

Ollie's entire interface is built around families. If you're cooking for one or two people without kids, the family profile system adds steps without adding value. You're paying for multi-eater optimization you don't need.

Nutrition tracking stays surface-level

Ollie shows calorie and macro breakdowns per recipe. Useful for a single meal. But it doesn't track your nutrition across the day or week. If you ate light at lunch and want a bigger dinner, Ollie won't know. If you've been low on iron all week, it won't flag that. Each meal is treated as isolated from the rest of your diet.

The Android gap

Ollie's iOS app has 4.8 stars from 887 ratings. The Android version sits at 4.06 from 210 ratings. That gap usually means the Android experience is less polished. If Android is your primary device, factor this in.

Recipe images don't always match

Multiple Google Play reviewers report that recipe photos show ingredients that aren't in the actual recipe. It's a small thing, but it erodes trust in the AI's output. When the picture shows one meal and the instructions describe another, you start double-checking everything.

Mobile-only and US-only

Ollie is a mobile app. No web version. If you prefer planning meals on a laptop or desktop, you're out of luck. It's also restricted to the United States per their terms of service. MealThinker works on any device with a browser plus iOS, and has no country restrictions.

Photo scanning is a snapshot, not a system

Ollie's pantry scanning is clever, but it's a point-in-time photo. It doesn't maintain an ongoing inventory of what you have. You scan, get suggestions, and the data doesn't persist. MealThinker tracks your pantry as an ongoing database through conversation. When you tell it you bought rice on Monday and used half on Wednesday, it knows you still have rice on Friday. That's the difference between a photo and a memory.

Pricing works for families, less so for individuals

Ollie costs about $9.99/month or $80/year. For a family of four, that's $2/person/month. Reasonable. For a single person getting the same family-tier pricing without using the family features, the value math changes. Ollie is backed by venture capital, which helps explain the lower price point. They're investing in growth, not optimizing for profit yet.

Here's how the two AI meal planners compare feature by feature:

	Ollie	MealThinker
Best for	Families with kids	Individual health-conscious cooks
How you use it	Auto-generated weekly plans	Conversational: "What should I make tonight?"
Pantry tracking	Photo scanning	Conversation-based
Remembers preferences	Yes	Yes
Family profiles	Yes (multiple eaters)	Single user focus
Grocery lists	One-tap to Instacart, Walmart, Amazon Fresh	Built from what you're missing
Nutrition tracking	Per-recipe breakdown	Ongoing daily and weekly tracking
Adapts to context	Schedule-aware auto-planning	Mood, energy level, time, leftovers
Prioritizes expiring food	Photo-based detection	Yes, through inventory tracking
Recipe source	AI-generated	AI-generated
Platform	Mobile app only (iOS + Android)	Web app + iOS
Availability	US only	Worldwide
Free trial	7 days	7 days (no credit card)
Monthly price	$9.99/month	$15/month
Annual price	$80/year	$150/year

When to pick Ollie

You're feeding a family. Multiple people with different preferences, allergies, or ages. You want a plan generated automatically each week without having to open the app and ask. Grocery delivery integration matters. You don't need to track nutrition beyond individual recipes.

When to pick MealThinker

You're cooking for yourself or one other person. You want AI that remembers your kitchen, your preferences, and your nutrition goals across every conversation. You care about what you've eaten this week, not just what's for dinner tonight. You want to say "I'm tired, what can I make with the tofu and vegetables I have?" and get a real answer in 30 seconds.

Try MealThinker free for 7 days. No credit card required.

Feeding a family and feeding yourself are different problems.

Family meal planning is logistics. You're balancing five schedules, three sets of preferences, two picky eaters, and a Tuesday night where dinner needs to be ready in 20 minutes. The right tool automates the plan, orders the groceries, and gets out of the way.

Individual meal planning is more personal. It's about ending the nightly decision fatigue, using ingredients before they go bad, and making sure your nutrition actually adds up across the week. The right tool is conversational. You tell it what's going on and it responds to your situation right now.

Most apps marketed as "AI meal planners" are neither. They're recipe databases with a chatbot or a form. Both Ollie and MealThinker use AI to learn about you over time. They just learn different things because they're solving different problems.

If you've been using ChatGPT for meal planning and hitting the "it forgets everything" wall, either app is a major upgrade. The question is which problem you're trying to solve.

Is Ollie meal planner worth it?

For families, yes. Ollie's strength is managing meals across a household with different dietary needs, preferences, and schedules. At about $10/month or $80/year, it's affordable for what it does. If you're cooking for one or two people without complex household logistics, an individual-focused AI meal planner like MealThinker gives you features (ongoing nutrition tracking, contextual suggestions) that matter more for solo cooks.

Is Ollie or MealThinker better?

They're built for different people. Ollie is better for families who want auto-generated weekly plans and one-tap grocery delivery. MealThinker is better for individual cooks who want conversational AI that tracks their kitchen inventory and nutrition over time. Both remember your preferences and improve the more you use them. Watch MealThinker in action.

Does Ollie meal planner track nutrition?

Ollie provides calorie and macro breakdowns for each individual recipe. It doesn't track your nutrition across multiple meals, flag gaps in your daily intake, or adjust dinner suggestions based on what you had for lunch. MealThinker monitors nutrition across days and weeks, suggesting meals that fill gaps automatically.

What's the best alternative to Ollie?

For individual meal planning, MealThinker is the closest AI alternative with a focus on personal nutrition and kitchen memory. For families who want a non-AI option, Plan to Eat offers manual meal planning with a solid calendar and shopping list. For macro-focused fitness tracking, Eat This Much gives you precise control over protein, carb, and fat ratios.

Can Ollie handle food allergies?

Yes. Ollie supports allergen tracking across family profiles. Each family member can have different restrictions. MealThinker handles dietary restrictions through conversation and remembers them permanently, including nuanced preferences like "I don't like cilantro" or "I'm trying to eat more iron-rich foods" that go beyond standard allergy categories.