The Best Meal Planning Apps Because You’re Tired of Doing It Yourself
Feeding yourself, not to mention the hungry household, is a lot of work. There is planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning, all of which have to be done over and over again. Considering how tiring this can be, it’s no surprise that we often order takeout or put frozen pizza in the oven.
However, when it comes to planning and shopping, meal planning apps are a good way to save time and energy: they can suggest recipes based on your dietary preferences and make a shopping list of everything you need. Here are four of the best meal planning apps.
BigOven
BigOven is a meal planning app with over a million recipes. This is an especially good option if reducing food waste is your priority – it has a search tool that will let you enter up to three ingredients to find the best recipe to use with everything you have in the fridge. It also has a “Recipe Scan” feature that allows you to upload handwritten recipes that will be translated into the app’s format without having to manually enter them.
The free version offers a limited number of features, including the ability to make a shopping list and one free recipe scan. However, to use it as a weekly meal planner, you need to upgrade to the paid version for $1.99/month or $19.99/year. With nearly 8,000 users giving it 4.7 stars, it definitely deserves attention.
Cozy
When it comes to managing your family’s hectic lives, Cozi takes things a step further by acting as a family organizer. In addition to providing recipes and a grocery list that any family member can add in real time, it also includes a daily calendar that keeps track of appointments and to-do lists.
The basic version is free, while the premium version ($29.99/year) offers additional features, including no ads, birthday tracking, calendar search capability, additional reminders, and a monthly mobile view. Cozi is a huge hit with users, with over a quarter of a million reviews giving it a 4.8 star rating.
Eat it a lot
Eat This Much will create a meal plan based on your budget, food preferences, and daily calorie needs. It can also be used as a calorie counter that includes a database of nutrition information from restaurants and packaged foods. So far, nearly 17,000 users have given Eat This Much a 4.7 star rating.
However, if you want to create meal plans for the week instead of the day, or if you want the app to make a shopping list, you will have to upgrade to its paid version, which can be paid monthly or yearly.
Food
Mealime caters to people who are short on time, which is all of us, with a wide variety of recipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. This includes formulating recipes based on dietary restrictions, whether it’s following diets such as paleo, keto, vegetarian or vegan, or keeping food allergies and aversions in mind. Once you’ve made a meal plan for the week, the app will create a shopping list for you.
To date, over 46,000 users have given Mealime a 4.8 star rating. If you want some extra features like more recipes and the ability to add notes, you need to upgrade to the paid version which costs $2.99 per month. Unfortunately, there is no Android version of the application.