Best Recipe Keeper Apps Compared: Which One Suits You?

There is no single best recipe keeper app. There are several good ones, and each is built around a different habit. Some are full kitchen organisers with meal plans, shopping lists and a pantry. Some start from the shopping list and add recipes on top. Some are mostly about saving recipes from the web. This guide compares several recipe keeper apps and says who each one suits, including our own free app, Recipe Keeper.

This comparison is based on what each product is designed for. Plans, features and prices change, so check each app's own site for current terms.

The short version

App	Built for	Platforms	Works offline	Free to use
Paprika	A full kitchen organiser: recipes, meal plans, groceries, pantry	iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows	Yes	Paid; check their site
Samsung Food	Finding new recipes, saving them and planning meals	iPhone, Android, web	Check their site	Has a free version
AnyList	Shared shopping lists with recipes attached	iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, web	Check their site	Has a free version
Plan to Eat	Planning the week's meals on a calendar	iPhone, Android, web	Check their site	Paid; check their site
Copy Me That	Saving recipes from websites in one click	iPhone, Android, web	Check their site	Has a free version
Recipe Keeper (EveryApp)	Keeping, scaling and cooking your own recipes on any device	Web browser; installs on iPhone, Android and computers	Yes	Yes, up to 50 recipes; Pro for more

Paprika

Paprika is a long-standing recipe manager. It can pull a recipe from a web page through its built-in browser, and it keeps recipes, meal plans, grocery lists and a pantry together. It has native apps for phones, tablets and computers, and it syncs between them through its own cloud service.

Choose Paprika if you want one app to run your whole kitchen and you're happy to pay for it. If you import a lot of recipes from websites, its importer saves you the copy-and-paste step that our app needs.

Samsung Food

Samsung Food grew out of Whisk. It mixes a recipe box with a community of shared recipes, so it is as much about discovering food as storing it. You can save recipes from the web, plan meals and build a shopping list from them. It works on phones and in a browser, and you don't need a Samsung phone to use it.

Choose Samsung Food if you want ideas as well as storage. Browsing other people's recipes and collections is a big part of the product.

AnyList

AnyList started as a shopping list app and the shared list is still its centre. You can share a list with a partner or the whole household, and items are grouped by category. Recipes sit alongside the lists, so you can add a recipe's ingredients to the shopping list in a tap. Meal planning is also available.

Choose AnyList if the weekly shop is the hard part and you want everyone in the house to add to the same list. Recipe storage is good, but the shared list is why people pick it.

Plan to Eat

Plan to Eat is built around a meal planning calendar. You collect recipes from websites into your account, drag them onto days of the week, and it builds the shopping list from the plan. It runs in a browser and in mobile apps.

Choose Plan to Eat if you plan every week's meals in advance and want the shopping list to follow from that plan. If you only want to store recipes, it is more than you need.

Copy Me That

Copy Me That focuses on saving recipes from the web. A browser button or the share sheet on your phone copies a recipe into your account, and you can edit it, group it and make shopping lists. There is a free version and a paid one with extras.

Choose Copy Me That if most of your recipes come from food blogs and you want a quick way to grab them. It is a simple, focused tool for that job.

Where Recipe Keeper fits

Recipe Keeper is our free recipe app at EveryApp. It is a recipe box for your own recipes: the ones you've copied from websites, the family cards in a drawer, the dishes you cook every week. It doesn't try to be a recipe community or a shopping list app.

What Recipe Keeper does well

• Paste, and it's sorted. Copy a recipe's text from a website, an email or a note and paste it in. It finds the title, servings, times, ingredients and steps, and you can fix anything before you save. The link to the original page is kept.
• Scaling in kitchen fractions. Change the servings and every amount is worked out again, shown as 1½ cups or ½ tsp. Lines with no amount, like "salt to taste", stay as they are.
• Unit conversion. Show amounts in metric or US units. It converts volumes to volumes, weights to weights and oven temperatures between °F and °C. It doesn't turn cups into grams, because that depends on the ingredient.
• A cook mode made for the kitchen. One step at a time in large text, timers you start in one tap, and a screen that stays on where the browser allows it. Timers chime when they're done.
• Keep track of what you cook. Mark favourites, give recipes a star rating, add tags and group recipes into collections like "Weeknights". Tap "I cooked this" and it shows which recipes you make most.
• Share a recipe by link. Sign in, tap Share a link and send it. Anyone with the link can read the recipe and save a copy to their own Recipe Keeper. Your private notes, rating and cooking history aren't shared.
• Works in a web browser. It opens in a modern web browser. You can install it from the browser on iPhone, Android and computers, with no app store. On iPhone, open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, open it in Chrome and tap Install.
• Works offline. Your recipes are kept on your device, so cook mode works in a kitchen with no signal.
• Private. You can start without an account, and your recipes stay on your device. Sign in with a free EveryApp account only if you want them synced across your devices. You can download your recipes or delete them at any time.

What Recipe Keeper doesn't do

Be clear about the limits. Recipe Keeper doesn't import a recipe from a web address. You copy the text and paste it, which takes a few seconds more than a one-click importer. It doesn't store photos of your dishes; each recipe gets an emoji and a colour instead. It doesn't show nutrition information. There is no community of other people's recipes to browse.

It also has no shopping list or meal planner inside it. You can tick off ingredients as you go and copy the ingredient list in one tap. To plan the recipe for a day, tap "Plan it in Meal Planner" and it opens in our separate Meal Planner. For the shop itself, use a grocery list. If you want all of that in one app, Paprika, AnyList or Plan to Eat suit you better.

The free plan keeps up to 50 recipes, with scaling, unit conversion, cook mode, timers, collections, printing, sharing links and one cooking reminder. Pro adds room for many more recipes and more cooking reminders.

How to choose

Start with what you do most with recipes, then check your devices.

• You want one app for recipes, meal plans, groceries and the pantry. Paprika. It works offline in its apps.
• You want ideas for what to cook. Samsung Food. Its community recipes are the point of the product.
• The shopping list is what matters most. AnyList, especially if several people in the house add to it.
• You plan every meal for the week ahead. Plan to Eat. The calendar drives everything else.
• You save lots of recipes from blogs. Copy Me That or Paprika. A one-click importer saves time if you add recipes every day.
• You mostly cook your own and family recipes. Recipe Keeper. Scaling, conversion and cook mode are what you'll use most, and they're free.
• Your devices are mixed, or you'd rather not install anything from a store. Recipe Keeper runs in any browser and installs from it on iPhone, Android and computers. Samsung Food and Plan to Eat also work in a browser.
• You'd rather not sign in. Recipe Keeper works without an account, and your recipes stay on your device.

You can use more than one. Some people save new finds in a web-clipping app and keep the recipes they actually cook in a simpler recipe box.