This article shows you 14 money saving meal plan apps to help you crush your goals
Coming into the new year I think we can all agree that saving money and eating healthier is at the top of our resolutions list. The cost of food has gone through the roof and I’m so tired of scrambling trying to figure out what to eat every night. It just ends up wasting food and causing so much unneeded stress. So, here are my favorite money saving meal plan apps to help you reach those goals in 2025.
1. Eat This Much – Automatic Meal Planner
Eat This Much creates personalized meal plans based on your food preferences, budget, and schedule. Reach your diet and nutritional goals with our calorie calculator, weekly meal plans, grocery lists and more.
Key Features:
- They have a database of over 6,000 recipes and 1,000,000 foods!
- Follow any eating style or create your own. You can customize popular eating styles like vegan and paleo to match your needs and preferences.
- Detailed nutrition information for each ingredient, recipe, and meal. Easily track vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients as you follow your plan, and add your own foods to track your intake as you follow along.
- Take the anxiety out of picking what to eat. With a meal plan, you make the important decisions ahead of time and on your own schedule. Then there’s nothing to worry about when it’s meal time.
Cost:
- Free – Allows users to create a single day meal plan, customize it, and set their own nutrition targets
- Premium ( $5/ month billed annually or $14.99/month) – Generating daily meal plans, Tracking what you eat, Creating custom foods and recipes, Personalizing the generator , Scheduling recurring foods, Planning a week of meals at a time, Automatic grocery lists, and more.
2. PlateJoy Health
Custom meal plans, personalized recipes and grocery lists to help you save time and eat better.
Key Features:
- Custom Meal Plans– They use over fifty data points to personalize a weekly menu that fits your preferences.
- Smart Grocery lists– Their digital pantry takes into account what you have in your kitchen to reduce food waste and save money.
- Optional Grocery Delivery – Order with one click through Instacart and Amazon Fresh. For shopping on your own, their mobile lists are designed to help you spend less time at the store.
Cost:
Subscriptions come in 1-month ($12.99 USD), 6-month ($69 USD) and 12-month ($99 USD) packages. The 6 and 12-month plans come out to around $8-12/ month and will be billed in one installment after your free trial. The price of PlateJoy does not include food.
3. Mealboard
MealBoard combines recipe management, meal planning, groceries and pantry management into a single app. You can manage your recipes, ingredients, food categories, meal types, stores, store aisles, grocery items and many more with its clean, uncluttered interface.
Key Features:
- Store Recipes – Add your own recipes, or import recipes from the web using MealBoard’s built-in web browser. You may also scan recipes (using OCR technology) from your cookbooks and recipe magazines.
- Plan Your Meals – Create your meal plan in minutes! Easily move meals to another day, add meal notes and adjust the number of servings. You can even set prep reminders!
- Create Your Grocery List- Create your grocery list from your meal plan. The grocery items get sorted by aisle, and if you’re using multiple stores, you can view the list by store. You can also set up the grocery prices so you’ll see the total cost and stay within your budget!
- Track Your Pantry Inventory – Ever wondered how much sugar left in your pantry? Or how many tomatoes left in the fridge?MealBoard lets you keep track of items in stock. Once you’re done shopping, move items from the shopping list to the pantry. And as you cook meals, you can easily adjust the items left in stock.
Cost:
Free! But includes some in app purchases ( available on Apple store only)
Mealboard App
4. Mealime
Mealime is a meal planning app containing delicious recipes, guides, and cookware information that will turn anyone into a chef.
Key Features:
Comprehensive Nutritional Information – View calories, macronutrients and micronutrients for all recipes. You can view this nutritional information with recipes in Favorites, in your Meal Plan, and when previewing recipes in the meal plan builder.
Calorie Filters- When you want your meal plans to fit into exact calorie targets, calorie filters allow you to get precise. Achieve your weight loss or weight gain goals with ease with calorie filters.
Add Notes to Recipes – Personalize your recipes for next time with notes! These notes are saved so you can review them next time to ensure the recipe is exactly how you like.
Cost-
Free – basic version only
Pro Plan ( $2.99/month) –
- Customizable eating preference
- Weekly meal plans of two to six meals
- Automatically generated grocery lists
- Lists of kitchen items needed for each meal
- Step-by-step instructions
- Nutrition information for each recipe
- Integration with the Health app
5. MealPrepPro
1,000s of easy recipes, customized to your calorie needs. Save time. Save money. Reach your goals.
Key Features:
New Recipes Every Month- Add variety to your week while sticking to your health goals. High-protein, vegan, flex, low-carb, mediterranean… recipes for every preference. Adjust any recipe to your portion needs.
Track Calories and Macros – Mark meals as eaten to track your daily nutrition.
Everything In One Place- Your goals, your plan, your recipes and your grocery list all connected and consolidated in one place.
Cost:
$3.99/ month
6. Paprika
Paprika is an app that helps you organize your recipes, make meal plans, and create grocery lists. Using Paprika’s built-in browser, you can save recipes from anywhere on the web
Key Features:
Seamless Cloud Sync – Paprika Cloud Sync allows you to seamlessly sync your recipes, grocery lists, and meal plans across all of your devices, so you can take your recipes everywhere.
Smart Grocery Lists – Ingredients in your grocery list are automatically sorted by aisle: Dairy, Produce, etc. Similar ingredients will also be combined: 1 egg + 2 eggs = 3 eggs. Make multiple grocery lists and organize and customize your grocery aisles
Interactive Recipes – Track your progress by crossing off ingredients when you’re done with them, and tap to highlight the current directions step. Paprika keeps your screen on when you open a recipe, so you don’t have to worry about the screen turning off while you’re cooking. Add bold, italic, links and photos to recipe text Add multiple, high-resolution images to recipes and they’ll be stored in your free cloud sync account.
Cost – Paprikas subscription is a little bit different than others. You must pay per device as opposed to a set monthly fee. The IOS and Android cost is $4.99 and the desktop is $29.99
Paprika App
7. Plan To Eat
Plan to Eat was created to encompass everything great about pen and paper planning without the time commitment and clutter. Plan to Eat is the all-in-one meal planning tool that allows you to have the same intentionality and control as your current system but in a flexible and functional app.
Key Features:
Online Recipe Organizer – Your Recipe Book in Plan to Eat is your own; curated by you with only the recipes you want to prepare and eat. Our import tools allow you to add bookmarked recipes, your family’s favorite recipes, and all the recipes from your Pinterest boards. Edit, comment, and update the servings on recipes for a fully customized digital recipe library.
Meal Planning Calendar – The Planner allows you to add recipes to specific mealtimes and days of the week to work around your schedule. Add events and reminders to your Planner with notes and plan ahead for any length of time. There’s no limit to the number of recipes you can add to the Planner, so you can create a plan that’s as detailed or simple as you need.
Automated Shopping Lists- Whether you handwrite your grocery list or keep track of items in a notes app, the process of making an organized and consolidates list is tedious. But not with Plan to Eat! The Shopping List connects to your Planner to compile a list of consolidated ingredients that includes what quantities to buy and is sorted into categories that match the aisles of your grocery store.
Macro and Nutrition Tracking – Automatically calculate detailed nutrition facts for all your saved recipes, and monitor your daily totals on our intuitive Planner. No more guesswork or manual calculations—stay on top of your dietary needs with ease and precision, helping you stay committed to your health journey.
Cost- Free 14 day trial and after that it is $4.95/ month or $49/ year ($4.08/month)
8. Cozi Family App
Cozi is an all in one family app that includes family schedules, recipe and meal planner, shopping lists, and to-do lists everyone can access in one place
Key Features:
Family Calendar – See what everyone is doing and where everyone needs to be with a shared, color-coded calendar. Set reminders and send agenda emails so no one misses an appointment. Organize activities, meetings, school schedules, lessons, practices, and games all in one place
To-Do Lists- Easily track and manage the things that need to get done. Create a shared to do list, a honey-do list, or a chore list for the kids. Make as many lists as you want—packing lists, camping supplies, books to read—whatever you need
Shopping Lists- Jot down all the things you need in one place – no more sticky notes or scrap pieces of paper. Email the list with one click to someone who is kindly picking up the groceries. Keep track of gift lists, holiday menu ideas, school supplies, and more
Recipes – Store recipes, plan dinners for the week, and easily add ingredients to your shopping list. Access your recipes from anywhere—even when you’re at the store to pick up ingredients. Get ideas for easy dinners when you need to jump-start your meal plan
Cost-
Cozi Family App
9. BigOven
With BigOven, you can take your recipes anywhere, make grocery lists, reduce food waste and easily share your favorite creations with your friends, family or even your future self when you need them. An innovative leader in its category, BigOven was the first recipe app for iOS and Android devices, and has been downloaded over 13 million times, with over 5 million registered members.
Key Features:
Save Unlimited Recipes – Put recipes from BigOven and around the web in a searchable, portable recipe box
Meal Planner – Plan your meals on a calendar, then add entire meal plans to your Grocery List
Nutrition – Search recipes based on dietary restrictions. Get the nutritional breakdown for recipes
Cost:
Free – Discover 1,000,000+ recipes, Basic search, Create a grocery list, Save up to 200 recipes, Use up Leftovers tool, Access on web, mobile, tablet1 Recipe Scan upload
Pro ($24.99/ Year or $2.99/Month) – Ad free, advanced organization, content, and nutrition tools
10. AnyList
AnyList makes it simple to create and share shopping lists, collect and organize your recipes, and schedule and prepare meals so you can spend less time planning life and more time enjoying it.
Key Features:
Create and Share Lists – AnyList suggests common grocery items as you type, and your items are automatically grouped into categories like Dairy, Produce, and Meat to make your trip through the store a breeze. Simply tap on an item to cross it off with a satisfying red strikethrough. Create as many lists as you’d like to organize by store or occasion. In addition to shopping lists, you can create task lists, packing lists, or any custom list you’d like.
Collect and Organize Recipes – AnyList helps you collect and organize all of your personal recipes, and allows you to easily add recipes from other sources, like email messages and popular websites and blogs. Group your recipes into collections like Side Dishes or Thanksgiving Dinner. Each recipe can appear in multiple collections. Quickly search through your recipes by name or ingredient.
Create a Meal Plan – Quickly plan your meals for the week by adding recipes to the meal planning calendar.
Cost:
There is a free version ( which I personally use) and a Pro version which is $ $9.99/month for an individual and $14.99 for a household. You can find the comparison chart here!
11. Pepperplate
Pepperplate is an IOS only app that allows you to manage your recipes, create menus, meal plan, and make shopping lists.
Key Features:
Manage Recipes – Create and edit your own recipes or import from popular recipe sites by pasting a URL. Create unlimited categories to organize your recipe library.
Create Menus & Cook – Take your device into the kitchen and cook your menu with multiple cooking timers. Cook Mode prevents screen from dimming on your device.
Plan Meals & Share – Share your favorite recipes with friends and family via Email, Facebook and Twitter. Scale recipes to make the right amount.
Make Shopping Lists – Automatically arrange your shopping list the way you shop in the store. Carry your shopping list with you and add to it in store.
Cost: $2.99/month
12. Whisk
Use AI to Make Custom Recipes – Leverage AI to create personalized recipes based on your preferences, dietary needs, or available ingredients.
Dynamic Grocery Lists – Automatically generate grocery lists based on your meal plans, adjusting quantities as needed.
Amazing Daily Recommendations – Receive fresh daily recipe suggestions tailored to your tastes, dietary goals, and ingredients on hand.
Cost: Free!
13. Cooklist
Cooklist introduces an entirely new way to think about your relationship with cooking and grocery shopping. It connects to your grocery store loyalty cards and automatically downloads all of your food purchases into a digital pantry. Over 1 million cooking recipes are then matched to the groceries you have in your fridge and pantry and filtered to show you a feed of recipes you can cook with the food you already have.
Key Features:
Connect Your Loyalty Cards – Works with Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Wegmans and 75 more of your favorite grocery stores, Automatically import past and future purchases, Keep all your grocery receipts stored in one place, Just like Mint.com, except for groceries!
Automatic Pantry Inventory & Ingredient Scanner – Always know what ingredients you have on hand with our pantry check, Add pantry and fridge food items with a barcode scanner, Use the ingredient scanner to find nutrition facts and details for over 1 million pantry and fridge food products
Reduce Food Waste – Keep track of how old each item in your pantry or fridge is, Food and pantry inventory expiration notifications, Automatic cooking recipes with ingredients that is expiring soon
Cost:
Free – Basic version
Pro – $49.99/year
14. Pantry Check
The one ‘shopping & kitchen’ app to rule them all! Pantry Tracking, Barcode Scanning, Share app Grocery Lists, Product & Nutritional Comparison, Meal Planning, Family organizer, and Recipe Ideas
Key Features:
Log Food – Easy-to-use tools make food tracking quick and simple
Record Activity – Add workouts and steps with the fitness tracker
Customize Your Goals – Weight loss, weight gain, weight maintenance, nutrition & fitness
See Your Progress – Track at a glance, or analyze nutrition & calories in detail
Learn From a Registered Dietitian – Meal Plans customized for your target calories, whether you want to lose or gain weight—with access to our Meal Planner tool
Stay Inspired – 500+ healthy goal-focused recipes and 50 workouts keep routines fresh and fun
Cost:
Free – Includes basic tracking for food, calories, activity, and weight. However, it doesn’t include information about how eating affects energy levels or weight goals, and it doesn’t include the barcode scanner
Pro ( $19.99/ month or $79.99/year) – Includes all the features of the free version, plus barcode scanner to capture nutritional information from packaged foods, custom macro tracking, ad free, in depth content including daily meal planning, recipes, and workouts.
Conclusion: Money Saving Meal Plan Apps
