Best Yummly Alternative Now That It's Gone

Yummly shut down on December 20, 2024. If you're here because your favorite recipe app disappeared, you're not alone. Twenty million people used it.

The best Yummly alternative depends on what you used it for. If you want a recipe clipper and organizer, Paprika is the closest match. If you want AI-powered meal suggestions that remember your preferences and track your kitchen, MealThinker picks up where Yummly's Taste Profile left off and goes further.

Whirlpool acquired Yummly in 2017 for a reported $100 million. Seven years later, they laid off the entire team in April 2024 and killed the app by December. The reason? Whirlpool is pivoting to generative AI.

The worst part: there was no bulk recipe export. If you had hundreds of saved recipes, you could only download them one at a time before the shutdown. A lot of people lost years of saved recipes overnight.

Most recipe apps are search engines. You type in a keyword, scroll through results, pick one. Yummly was different because of its Taste Profile.

You told it what cuisines you liked, what ingredients you hated, what dietary restrictions you had. Then it watched your behavior. What you saved, what you skipped, how long you browsed. Over time, it got better at suggesting recipes you'd actually cook. It was Netflix for food.

That's the part people miss. Not the recipe database (there are plenty of those). The feeling that the app knew them.

The smart shopping lists were a close second. One tap added all ingredients from a recipe, organized by store aisle. Connected to Instacart for delivery. Simple, but nobody else did it that cleanly.

The guided cooking mode was solid too. Step-by-step instructions with auto-detected timers. Nothing groundbreaking, but it worked well.

What people don't miss: the ads got aggressive after the Whirlpool acquisition. Sitejabber reviews dropped to 1.1/5 stars. Paywalls, broken links, spam emails. By the end, the app Whirlpool killed wasn't the same app people fell in love with.

I looked at every option people are migrating to. Here's the honest version.

Paprika Recipe Manager

Price: $4.99 mobile, $29.99 desktop (one-time, per device)

Paprika is the best pure recipe organizer. Its clipper pulls recipes from almost any website with 95% accuracy. You own your recipes offline. No subscription.

The catch: meal planning and shopping lists aren't connected. Adding a recipe to your calendar doesn't add ingredients to your list. You have to do it manually. And there's zero discovery. No recommendations, no AI, no "what should I make?" You bring your own recipes or you have nothing.

Best for: People who already know what they want to cook and need a place to store it.

Plan to Eat

Price: $5.95/month or $49/year

Plan to Eat has a great calendar and shopping list that actually work together. Drag a recipe onto a day and the ingredients show up on your list. They even published a "Yummly is closing" blog post to capture migrating users.

The catch: Plan to Eat has no recipes. None. You clip them from the web, type them in, or import them. It's a planning tool, not a recipe tool. If you loved Yummly's recommendations, this won't replace that.

Best for: Organized planners who already have recipe sources they like.

Mealime

Price: Free basic, $5.99/month Pro

Mealime generates weekly meal plans and builds grocery lists sorted by aisle. Recipes are quick (25-40 minutes). It supports common diets. The free tier is usable.

The catch: it's limited to weeknight dinners. Serving sizes come in increments of 2. No pantry tracking. No personalization beyond dietary filters. If you want variety or cook for one, it's rigid.

Best for: Couples who want fast, healthy weeknight dinners without thinking too hard.

SideChef

Price: Free basic, $4.99/month Premium

SideChef is the closest to what Yummly was trying to be. Guided step-by-step cooking with photos and videos, smart appliance integration, 18,000+ recipes. USA Today called it the "best cooking app."

The catch: smaller recipe library than Yummly had. The AI personalization isn't as deep. Premium is required for the best features.

Best for: People who loved Yummly's guided cooking and want the most similar experience.

Copy Me That

Price: Free for 40 recipes, then $1/month

Dead simple. Clip recipes, make a shopping list, plan meals. A dollar a month. It does what it says.

The catch: no AI, no recommendations, minimal customization. It's a digital recipe box with a shopping list stapled on.

Best for: Budget-conscious users who want the basics.

MealThinker

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

This is what I built. MealThinker is an AI meal planning assistant, not a recipe database. You tell it what's in your kitchen through conversation and it suggests meals based on what you have, what's expiring, your dietary preferences, and your nutrition goals. It remembers everything between sessions.

The difference from Yummly: Yummly matched you to recipes from a fixed database using recommendation algorithms. MealThinker generates personalized meals on the fly using generative AI. It doesn't pull from a recipe library. It creates suggestions around your actual ingredients and situation. "I'm tired, I have rice and black beans, give me something easy" gets a real answer. See the full feature breakdown for how it all works together.

The catch: no recipe clipper, no guided cooking mode, no appliance integration. It does one thing (figuring out what to cook) and does it well. If you want a recipe organizer, Paprika is better. If you want something that handles the thinking, this is how it works.

Best for: People who are tired of deciding what to cook and want AI that actually remembers them.

How they all compare

	Paprika	Plan to Eat	Mealime	SideChef	Copy Me That	MealThinker
Recipe library	Yours only	Yours only	Built-in	18,000+	Yours only	AI-generated
Recipe clipper	Excellent	Good	No	Yes	Good	No
Meal planning	Basic	Great	Auto-generated	Basic	Basic	Conversational
Shopping list	Manual	From meal plan	From meal plan	From recipes	Manual	From inventory gaps
Remembers preferences	No	No	Diet filters	Basic	No	Yes (permanent)
Tracks your pantry	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
AI recommendations	No	No	No	Limited	No	Yes
Prioritizes expiring food	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Price	$5-$30 once	$49/year	Free-$72/year	Free-$60/year	$12/year	$150/year

Yummly's real insight was that people don't want to search for recipes. They want someone to tell them what to cook. The Taste Profile was the first real attempt at solving that.

But Yummly's approach had a ceiling. It could only recommend recipes from its database. It didn't know what was in your kitchen. It didn't track what you'd eaten recently. It couldn't adjust when you said "I'm exhausted, give me something I can make in 15 minutes with whatever I have."

That's the gap. Not "where do I find recipes now?" That problem is solved by a dozen apps. The real gap is "who will figure out dinner for me?"

PlateJoy met the same fate. Acquired by RVO Health in 2021, dead by 2025. Same pattern: big company buys small product, strips it, abandons the users.

If you're looking for a recipe organizer to replace Yummly's recipe box, get Paprika. If you want what Yummly was trying to become, an AI that knows your kitchen, your preferences, and your life, try MealThinker free for 7 days. No credit card required.

Why did Yummly shut down?

Whirlpool, which acquired Yummly for $100 million in 2017, laid off the entire Yummly team in April 2024 as part of a strategic pivot toward generative AI. The app and website shut down permanently on December 20, 2024. Users received a discontinuation notice in November 2024.

Can I still export my Yummly recipes?

No. Yummly's website and app are permanently offline as of December 20, 2024. Before the shutdown, there was no bulk export option. Users could only save recipes one at a time. If you didn't export before the shutdown, those recipes are gone. Some users have had luck finding cached versions through the Wayback Machine.

What's the best free Yummly alternative?

Mealime offers the best free tier for meal planning with built-in recipes, weekly plans, and grocery lists. Copy Me That is free for up to 40 saved recipes. For AI-powered meal suggestions, MealThinker offers a 7-day free trial with full access and no credit card required.

Is there a Yummly alternative with AI recommendations?

Yummly's Taste Profile used recommendation algorithms to match you with recipes from a fixed database. MealThinker takes a different approach using generative AI. Instead of matching you to pre-existing recipes, it generates personalized meal suggestions based on what's in your kitchen, your dietary preferences, nutrition goals, and what you've eaten recently. It remembers your preferences permanently, similar to what Yummly's Taste Profile did. For families specifically, Ollie is an AI meal planner designed for households with multiple eaters and different dietary needs.

What happened to the Yummly Smart Thermometer?

The Yummly Smart Thermometer app stopped functioning on December 18, 2024, two days before the main app shutdown. Whirlpool offered partial reimbursements ranging from $30 to $87 via Visa debit cards, depending on device age and proof of purchase. Contact Whirlpool at (844) 907-0001.