Mealime alternatives: what to use now that Mealime has closed

Mealime closed on October 21, 2026, and no single app copies it. If you shop at an Albertsons Companies store and mostly miss the recipes, Meals Hub is the straight swap: it's free, Mealime's own team runs it, and the Mealime recipes moved there. If you want a weekly plan and one grocery list for any store, Samsung Food (free) and Plan to Eat (paid, your own recipes) are the closest fits, and Well Stockd is the one to try if you want the week to start from what's already in your fridge.

Every price and feature below comes from the vendor's own site or app store listing, checked in October 2026.

What happened to Mealime?

Mealime closed on October 21, 2026. Its closing notice says Albertsons Companies bought Mealime in 2021 and is moving everyone to Meals Hub, which lives inside Albertsons Companies grocery apps and store websites. Pro subscribers weren't charged again before the shutdown, and Pro recipes were opened to everyone for the final weeks.

The same notice says "all personal data will be deleted when the Mealime application is shut down," and it describes no export. Some preferences have to be set up again in Meals Hub. On October 24, 2026, Mealime's web app showed an "Offline for Maintenance" page, and the app no longer appeared in Apple's US App Store.

What Mealime users miss most

In the r/mealime threads since the shutdown news, the same things come up again and again:

• One grocery list that merges every meal's ingredients, so you never add up onions in your head.
• Plans that reuse ingredients. The thread I miss the ingredient maximizing describes it as finding "two recipes that each use half a bag of spinach."
• Recipes written by a food team, not generated by AI.
• A list that works at any store, with an export to Walmart pickup or Instacart.
• Diet and allergy filters, and a free tier that did most of the job.

Meals Hub gets mixed reviews on the store point. One r/mealime user wrote, "I don't need the app to tell me what brand of cheddar to buy. That was the detail that made me delete the Meals Hub app." Keep that in mind if you shop somewhere else.

Mealime alternatives compared

Sources: Mealime's closing notice, Samsung Food+ and its App Store listing, Plan to Eat pricing, eMeals, Eat This Much pricing, AnyList features.

Which app replaces which Mealime habit

If the merged grocery list is what you miss, almost every app here has one. Samsung Food, Plan to Eat and eMeals build the list from the meals you pick, and AnyList combines similar ingredients from recipes on its free plan. On Well Stockd Pro, the week's plan adds up the same ingredient across meals and takes off what your kitchen already holds.

Ingredient reuse is harder: no app here is a copy of Mealime's planner. Eat This Much and Samsung Food+ lean on a pantry list to suggest meals. On Well Stockd Pro, Pick for me favors meals that use up what's left of a package another planned meal opens, when it knows the package size, so the other half of the spinach can get a second dinner. Once food is in your kitchen, "can make now" shows the recipes that use it, and a reminder email flags it before it turns. If dates are the main worry, our comparison of apps to track food expiration dates looks at the trackers one by one.

For recipes written by people rather than AI, Meals Hub has the same Mealime chef team, and eMeals plans come from its professional food team and registered dietitians.

For a list you can take to any store, Samsung Food, Plan to Eat, eMeals, AnyList and Well Stockd all work. Meals Hub is built into Albertsons Companies store apps.

And if free was the point, Meals Hub, Samsung Food, AnyList's list app and Well Stockd's free plan cost nothing. Plan to Eat has no free plan, and eMeals is paid after its trial.

Meals Hub: the official successor

Meals Hub is "100% free," according to Mealime's notice, and holds every Mealime recipe plus thousands more, from the same team. You find it under More in an Albertsons Companies store app, or on their store websites. The notice says it still works if no Albertsons store is near you: you can browse recipes, make meal plans and build shopping lists. If you shop at an Albertsons Companies store, it's the easiest way back to your old recipes.

Samsung Food: the biggest free catalog

Samsung Food is free with ads and lists over 240,000 public recipes on its App Store page. You can save recipes from any site, plan the week by dragging recipes onto days, and turn the plan into a shared shopping list. Food+ ($6.99 a month or $59.99 a year) adds AI-tailored weekly plans, nutrition tracking and pantry features. It suits you if a big free catalog and a shared list cover what you used Mealime for. Our Samsung Food cost guide covers Food+ in detail.

Plan to Eat: a calendar for recipes you collect

Plan to Eat costs $5.95 a month or $49 a year on its website, after a 14-day trial with no card, and has no free plan. Its help center is plain about one thing Mealime users will notice: it "doesn't come with a built-in recipe collection or predefined meal plans." It fits best if you already clip recipes from blogs and want them on a calendar with an aisle-sorted list. More in our Plan to Eat alternatives guide.

eMeals: plans written for you, sent to a store

eMeals publishes weekly meal plans by food style and sends the list to Walmart, Amazon, Kroger or Instacart for pickup or delivery. It's as low as $4.99 a month on a 12-month subscription, with a 14-day trial; breakfast and lunch plans cost extra. Pick it if you want dinner decided for you, close to how Mealime felt. Our eMeals alternatives guide compares it further.

Eat This Much: plans built to a calorie target

Eat This Much generates meals to your calorie and macro targets. The free plan makes daily plans; Premium, at $5 a month billed yearly, plans a week at a time, writes the grocery list and connects to Instacart, Amazon Fresh and Walmart. Its pantry suggests meals that use what you have. It's the better match if numbers matter more to you than a recipe collection.

AnyList: a shared list first

AnyList is a shared grocery list with a recipe box. The list, sharing and store links are free; the meal calendar and building a list from it need AnyList Complete, $9.99 a year or $14.99 for a household. It comes with no recipes, and the free plan imports 5 from websites. Choose it if a list your whole household can edit matters most. See our AnyList cost guide.

Well Stockd: a plan that starts from your fridge

Well Stockd keeps track of what's in your fridge, freezer and pantry, with amounts and estimated dates, and shows which of more than 3,800 recipes (plus your own) you can make right now. That's all free for up to 30 foods, along with reminder emails before food reaches its date, a shopping list that works offline in the store, Walmart and Kroger carts you check before anything is sent, and a cook mode that takes what you used back out of the kitchen.

Pro is where the Mealime-style planning lives. It plans up to eight weeks ahead, turns the plan into one shopping list minus what you already have, and Pick for me fills a week from the catalog and your own recipes, using what's in the kitchen first. Free plans the current week by hand and adds a recipe's missing ingredients to the list one recipe at a time. The features page lists what's in each plan.

Where it falls short for Mealime users: there's no Mealime account import, planning for leftover packages is a Pro feature, and the first week takes longer because you stock the kitchen first. It's a web app you add to your home screen, not an App Store or Google Play app. The guide to weekly meal planning from what you have shows the routine, and the Mealime switch page shows what carries over.

Can you still get your Mealime recipes back?

Not from Mealime. The app has closed, its notice described no export, and it said personal data would be deleted at shutdown. Two things survive: Mealime's own recipes, which Mealime said would continue in Meals Hub, and anything you copied yourself before October 21. Your own notes, swaps and plans are gone unless you saved them.

If you kept copies, here is how they come into Well Stockd. Each one opens a draft you review before anything is saved.

1. Paste a public recipe link. It only works while the page still opens, and Mealime's share links stopped working with the app.
2. Paste the recipe text, with Ingredients and Method sections, from a PDF, a note or a text backup, up to 6,000 characters.
3. Upload a file. If a backup tool gave you a Paprika or Recipe Keeper file, the file import reads those formats. We haven't tested files made by every third-party tool, so check the drafts.
4. Choose a photo or screenshot, and the app reads the recipe text into a draft. It uses your AI allowance and can miss words, so read it before saving.

Search the built-in catalog before you import anything. Many weeknight dinners are already there under a similar name, so you only add what's missing.

FAQ

Has Mealime shut down?

Yes. Mealime closed on October 21, 2026. Its closing notice said personal data would be deleted when the app shut down and that its recipes would continue in Meals Hub, inside Albertsons Companies store apps and websites.

Can I still export my Mealime recipes?

No. Mealime's closing notice described no account export, and the app has closed. If you saved links, text, PDFs, screenshots or a backup file before the shutdown, you can bring those recipes into another app by hand or by file import.

What replaced Mealime?

Meals Hub, inside Albertsons Companies grocery apps and store websites. Mealime says it's free, has every Mealime recipe plus thousands more, and is run by the same team.

Is Meals Hub free, and do I have to shop at Albertsons?

It's free. Mealime's FAQ says you can still browse recipes, make meal plans and build shopping lists in Meals Hub even if you can't shop at an Albertsons Companies store.

What is the best free Mealime alternative?

For Albertsons shoppers, Meals Hub. For any store, Samsung Food has the largest free catalog and a free planner and list, and Well Stockd's free plan matches recipes to what's already in your kitchen. Plan to Eat and eMeals are paid after their trials.

Is there an app that plans meals to share ingredients like Mealime did?

Partly. On Well Stockd Pro, Pick for me favors meals that use up what's left of a package another planned meal opens, when it knows the package size. Eat This Much and Samsung Food+ suggest meals from a pantry list. None of them is a copy of Mealime's planner, so try it on a real week before you rely on it.