And these meal planning apps (all compatible with iOS and Android), make it 200 percent easier. This is an awesome tool as the recipes and shopping list can easily be adjusted within the meal plan or app. We do their 9 meals a week (4 lunches and 5 dinners) for two people (totally enough food for two people and a toddler), and it comes out to $107 per week. They send groceries directly through Instacart and create a meal plan based on your likes/dislikes/goals/allergies.
Healthy Recipes and Foods that Actually Taste Good
“This feature worked great–once you select your meal plan for the week, the ingredients automatically import into your grocery list. There’s also an easy way to add additional ingredients to your list,” he said. You can also create reusable menus, which is great for repeating healthful meals that work well for your goals. Paprika allows you to save recipes from any website, which you can then tag as low-calorie, high-protein, for quick reference later. It’s not strictly for meal planning, but I’ve been using Our Groceries for a few years. It’s free and accessible via web or mobile (my husband and I both have it on our phones).
How to choose the best meal-planning app:
Whisk is truly the best budget pick outta this bunch simply because you get all of its perks for zero cost. I mean, this bb is free with a capital F and comes with customizable recipes, how-to tutorials from food influencers like The Korean Vegan, and custom shopping lists! Every week, Whisk provides a calendar where you’ll add your recipes for each day. Then, you can request a shopping list, which it will automatically make for you, complete with any dietary preferences you put in. Oh, and you can send your grocery list straight to your preferred shopping service too.
Ask yourself, “What do I want this app for?” before you start downloading, and you’ll find the right pick. While there’s no calendar for meal planning, you can make collections of recipes. I tested it out, making a collection for one week, and saved all of my meals right there. It actually gave me a bit of freedom to mix it up if I needed to. Add to that technology that helps make personalization easy, with Real Plans you have a meal planning app and tool that makes getting healthy, delicious meals on the table easy and as stress free as possible. You can also add ingredients you need in general that aren’t on your meal plan to your shopping list, so it’s all inclusive to pick up everything you need.
RP Diet Coach & Planner
- And thanks to its extensive database of popular restaurant menu items and everyday dishes, you can easily search for and add your meal if you’re having take-out.
- Once you’ve done it for a 2-3 months you’ll get the idea of what’s working and how to eat and you can remove the add-on and save a little bit of money.
- It’s compatible with Paprika, which I use to have the recipes on my phone.
- For example, if your grocery list had two apples on it, you can’t easily change it to three.
- You can categorize items into groups like fruits, dairy, etc, and even adjust the order those categories appear in on your shopping list so that it matches your store layout.
- Pete tested Prepear, rating it a 5 out of 5 for the initial sign-up and getting started.
“However, there’s no way to customize the grocery list itself or quickly edit items already on the list. For example, if your grocery list had two apples on it, you can’t easily change it to three. You’d have to click on the plus (+) button, then type in apple, and then add it to the list.” Because of this, he rated the shopping list feature a 3 out of 5.
Best Meal Planning Apps Comparison Table
A simple piece of paper will also work just fine to plan out your meals for the week. Don’t make it more overwhelming than it needs to be for yourself — it’s just food. Not that I’m biased by the name, but this app is definitely used by yours truly. The “recipe of the day” feature is just too thrilling to pass up. My fellow planners will appreciate the app’s ability to sync your menus with a Google Calendar. This way, you can send out the dinner party menu to all your friends ahead of time so they can get pumped.
Pete would use this app regularly, and recommends it for someone who struggles to decide what to cook each night. “This app makes it extremely simple to find recipes, create a meal plan for the week, and make an easy-to-follow grocery list,” he said. While the unimeal review app doesn’t suggest meals, you can filter the recipes by meal type, cuisine, cook time, special diets, audience, and allergies. The app supports special diets like vegan, vegetarian, paleo, low-calorie, gluten-free, and dairy-free. Since you don’t input any personal information or answer a survey, the app doesn’t align to any particular goals. If you’ve never thrown out a plastic container of rotten mixed greens, I can’t trust you.
Healthi: Weight Loss, Diet App
Prepear is our pick for the best overall meal planning app because it runs like a true kitchen manager, which we think is perfect for busy professionals. You can save recipes and then quickly tap to add them to your weekly calendar. The smart grocery list can also sync with your grocery delivery or pickup. You can also import recipes from anywhere on the web—Prepear offers unlimited recipe storage. Prepear is our pick for the best overall meal planning app because it runs like a true kitchen manager, which we think is perfect for busy professionals. You can save recipes and then quickly tap to add them to your weekly calendar.
It’s a perfect combination of independence and suggestions. Your profile includes likes/dislikes, allergies, diet, cuisines, and even your skill level. You can search for recipes based on course, prep time or what’s trending, or you can use the sliders to narrow down the results by calorie, carb, fat, or cholesterol levels. Another cool aspect of their shopping lists is that you can check off items as you shop. If you’re looking to use meal planning to help with your weight loss goals, there’s several ways that Real Plans can help.
GROCERY STORE INTEGRATIONS
And one of the things I like best is that you can add all of the recipe ingredients to a single shopping list where items are grouped by general grocery store section (dairy, meat, etc) and consolidated. Whatever your reasons for meal-planning, these apps will be a good tool on that journey. They’ll save you both time and money, especially since they create a daily, weekly, or monthly meal plan.
The 5 Best Meal Planning Apps ( : For Families, Weight Loss, and More
“There was no survey, questions, or credit card information needed.” We think this simplicity really makes Prepear stand out. In meal prepping, roasting is your best friend, and so is foil. Preheat the oven to 400ºF, cover a pan in tin foil, drop some veggies, and your dinners are one step closer to being ready. Cut up fresh vegetables over the weekend and put them in a container in the fridge. This way, they’ll be ready for snacking or salad-topping whenever your tummy rumbles. If that’s not enough, there’s also a mode for those with diabetes who can connect their glucose monitoring device for seamless meal planning.
Your Goals
I have felt bad lately about all my food waste and one of my tricks to cutting back is this handy dandy tool, Cooklist, which lets you know when your food is nearing its expiration date. You can either manually add your groceries in the system or load your shopping list straight into the app. This app ranks top for meal prepping and provides easy-to-make recipes that can last a few days. Simply sign up and enter a bunch of intel, like your preferred prep level, how many meals you want to make a week, allergies, likes and dislikes, the works. Then, the app creates ideas for lunch and dinner, which include original recipes and nutritional info. MealPrepPro will also spit out all the groceries you’ll need too, so you’ll know exactly what to grab next time you hit those aisles.
Best Meal Planning App for Dietary Restrictions: Mealime
The grocery list and shopping aspects are the best part of the app. You can import recipes from any website or add your own and then place them on the calendar, then Plan to Eat builds a grocery shopping list for you. It also allows you to assign grocery items to different grocery stores, which is how many folks shop (meat at one store, pantry staples at another).