Mealime Alternative: 7 Meal Planning Apps Compared

Quick answer: Mealime announced it would shut down on October 21, 2026, and pointed its users to Meals Hub, a free meal planner inside the Albertsons Companies store apps. If you want something outside those apps, Plan to Eat and Paprika are built for managing your own recipes, Samsung Food covers saving and planning for free, eMeals and $5 Meal Plan send you finished plans, and Flyva builds your week from the weekly ad at your store. The best pick depends on what you used Mealime for.

What happened to Mealime

Mealime posted a closing notice on mealime.com saying the app would be discontinued as of October 21, 2026. According to that notice, Albertsons Companies acquired Mealime in 2021 and is moving its users to Meals Hub. A few details from the notice are worth knowing:

• Paid subscriptions were wound down, and the Pro recipes and features were opened to all users before the end. Pro subscribers were not charged again.
• Account information does not move to Meals Hub on its own. You set up your preferences again there.
• Mealime says personal data is deleted when the app shuts down.

How to keep your Mealime recipes

Mealime never documented a way to export recipes in bulk. Its help center described sharing a single recipe from inside the app, which stops working once the app is gone.

The easiest way to get your favorites back is Meals Hub. The closing notice says it includes all the Mealime recipes, so you can search for the dishes you cooked most and save them again. If you changed recipes or kept notes, copy those by hand into whatever app you move to. Old grocery lists and meal plans do not carry over anywhere.

What to look for in a replacement

Mealime suggested recipes and turned your picks into a grocery list. Most people miss one of those two things more than the other, so start there. Then ask yourself:

• Do you want recipes chosen for you, or do you mostly cook recipes you saved yourself?
• Do you care what your groceries cost this week, or only about having a plan?
• Do you shop at one store, or do you split your shopping between two or three?

Mealime alternatives at a glance

Prices are as listed on each official site as of October 2026.

App	Best for	Price	Free trial
Meals Hub	Former Mealime users who shop at Safeway, Albertsons, Vons or Jewel-Osco	Free	Not needed
Plan to Eat	Your own recipe collection	$5.95 a month or $49 a year	14 days, no card
Paprika	A recipe library that syncs across devices	$29.99 for Windows, other versions sold separately	Not listed
Samsung Food	Free recipe saving and planning	Free, with a paid Food+ tier	Not listed
eMeals	Ready-made weekly dinner plans	From $4.99 a month on a 12-month plan	14 days
$5 Meal Plan	Cheap family dinner plans	$5 a month	14 days
Flyva	Dinners built around weekly ads	Free, with optional Pro	7 days of Pro for new customers

Meals Hub

Meals Hub is the replacement Mealime itself recommends. It is free, includes the Mealime recipes plus thousands more, and builds meal plans and shopping lists. You find it in the store apps and websites of Albertsons Companies, such as Safeway, Albertsons, Vons and Jewel-Osco. The closing notice says you can still browse recipes, plan meals and make lists if none of those stores is near you, but it fits best if you already shop there. You can check this week's deals at Safeway, Albertsons and Jewel-Osco.

Plan to Eat

Plan to Eat is built around recipes you collect. Its recipe clipper saves recipes from any website and from Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. You plan on a calendar for a week, a month or longer, save menus to reuse, and get a grocery list organized by store and aisle. It costs $5.95 a month or $49 a year, with a 14-day free trial that does not ask for a credit card.

Paprika

Paprika runs on iPhone and iPad, Android, Mac and Windows. A built-in browser saves recipes from the web, the planner works by week or by month, and grocery lists are sorted by aisle with similar items combined. It also has a pantry for tracking what you have. You buy each version separately, so a phone and a laptop mean two purchases. The Windows version is $29.99 on the official site, and cloud sync is included with no extra fee.

Samsung Food

Samsung Food lets you save recipes from almost any website through a share extension, plan meals and turn the plan into a shopping list, all on the free tier. The paid Food+ tier adds more AI features on top. It works on iPhone and Android, and you do not need a Samsung phone.

eMeals

eMeals sends you a weekly dinner plan in the style you choose, such as Budget Friendly, Kid Friendly, Keto, Plant Based, Clean Eating or 30 Minute. The app builds a grocery list from the meals you pick and can send it to Walmart, Kroger, Amazon or Instacart for pickup or delivery. Breakfast and lunch plans are add-ons. Pricing starts at $4.99 a month on a 12-month subscription, after a 14-day free trial.

$5 Meal Plan

$5 Meal Plan costs $5 a month after a 14-day free trial. You get a weekly meal plan with a shopping list, and the service says its meals cost about $2 per person or less. There is also a gluten-free plan. It suits families who want someone else to choose cheap dinners each week.

Flyva

Flyva starts from a different place: the weekly ad. You pick up to three stores, such as Walmart, Kroger, ALDI, Publix, Safeway or H-E-B, and enter your ZIP code because ads are regional. Flyva finds the food items on sale, picks recipes whose main ingredients are among them, and builds a plan of seven dinners you can swap or mark as cooked. All ingredients land on one shopping list without duplicates. You can also import your own recipes from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and recipe sites.

The free tier covers three stores, the shopping list, the first ten recipes of the feed, ten saved recipes, your own recipes and the weekly plan as a preview. Pro adds the saved weekly plan, the full recipe feed, unlimited saved recipes, pantry mode and a household for up to four people. Flyva plans dinners only, so it will not fill in your breakfasts.

Which one should you pick

• You shop at Safeway, Albertsons, Vons or Jewel-Osco and liked Mealime's recipes: Meals Hub.
• You have years of saved recipes: Plan to Eat or Paprika.
• You want a free planner and do not mind the prices: Samsung Food.
• You want someone to hand you a plan every week: eMeals or $5 Meal Plan.
• You want dinners based on what is on sale this week: Flyva.

If you would rather try the sales-first approach by hand before installing anything, the guide to building a meal plan from your store's weekly ad walks through it step by step, and 7 cheap dinners for a week gives you a ready plan to start with.

Where Flyva fits

If what you liked about Mealime was not having to think about dinner, and you also want a smaller grocery bill, Flyva is worth a look. The weekly ad overview shows which US chains are covered and what is on sale this week, and the recipe collection shows the kind of dinners the plan is built from.