Best Meal Planning Apps in the UK for 2026
Last updated 29 May 2026. Prices and features checked against the App Store, Google Play and product pages on 29 May 2026. Prices change and some apps test regional pricing, so treat these figures as current UK examples.
Short answer: Good Food (formerly BBC Good Food) wins on library size and trust. Paprika wins on no-subscription ownership. Samsung Food is the best free cross-platform planner with shopping lists. Mealime delivers 30-minute dinners with a clean shopping list. If your problem is eating with more variety without dropping the food you like, or cooking from what's in your fridge, Chop It was built for that. It's the newest app here.
The apps solve different problems, so there is no single best. This guide ranks them by the job you're trying to do.
Quick answers
- Best big recipe library: Good Food. 17,000+ triple-tested recipes, a brand most UK kitchens know.
- Best no-subscription app: Paprika. Pay once and the recipes stay yours.
- Best free planner with shopping lists: Samsung Food (formerly Whisk). Free core on web, iOS and Android.
- Best for quick weeknight dinners: Mealime. 30-minute recipes, aisle-sorted grocery list, usable free tier.
- Best for shared household lists: AnyList. List-sharing is the heart of the product.
- Best modern British cooking: Mob. Strong originals and a clear point of view.
- Best for calorie and macro targets: Eat This Much. Builds plans to hit a calorie goal.
- Best for eating more variety and using what you have: Chop It. Scores the variety of your week and plans dinner around what's in your fridge. UK-built, new.
- Free to start, no card needed: Tasty, Samsung Food, Mealime, AnyList and Chop It.
Pick by what you want
| If you mainly want… | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A big, reliable recipe bank from a trusted brand | Good Food | The most established UK recipe library |
| To own your recipes without a monthly fee | Paprika | One-time purchase, offline, no subscription |
| A free planner that builds the shopping list for you | Samsung Food | Strong free tier across web, iOS and Android |
| Fast, healthy dinners on the table in 30 minutes | Mealime | Built around quick recipes and a clean grocery list |
| One shared shopping list the household edits | AnyList | Shared lists are the core feature |
| Modern British recipes and video-led cooking | Mob | Original, well-shot recipes with a clear point of view |
| To hit a calorie or macro target | Eat This Much | Generates plans against a numeric goal |
| To eat with more variety without dropping favourite meals | Chop It | Scores plants, fibre and protein across the week; keeps comfort food |
| To cook dinner from what's in the fridge | Chop It | "What's In?" turns your ingredients into a meal and cuts waste |
How we compared them
We ranked these around the jobs that matter once you've used an app for more than a week.
| What we looked at | Weight | What we checked |
|---|---|---|
| Planning the week | 25% | Calendar, weekly view, leftovers, how little effort it takes |
| Shopping list | 20% | Auto-built, aisle-sorted, editable, shareable, pantry-aware |
| Getting recipes in | 20% | Built-in library, plus imports from websites, photos and social |
| Cooking experience | 15% | Readable steps, scaling, timers, usable in a real kitchen |
| Platforms and sharing | 10% | iPhone, Android, web, household sharing |
| Price and value | 10% | Free limits, subscription vs buy-once, hidden costs |
The big trade-off across the category: most "meal planning apps" are recipe databases with filters. You pick from a list someone else made. Few do anything with your kitchen, your week, or how varied your eating is. That distinction is where the newer apps are pulling ahead.
The apps, side by side
Good Food (formerly BBC Good Food)
The default for UK home cooking. A big library of triple-tested recipes from a brand UK kitchens have trusted for decades. Browsing is free, and the hands-free Cook Mode pulls its weight at the hob.
The catch: the meal planner and exclusive recipes sit behind a Premium subscription. It's a recipe bank to browse and search; the weekly planning is still on you. Price: free to browse; Premium subscription (checked May 2026, a few pounds a month). Platforms: iOS, Android, web.
Mob
The most modern UK recipe brand on this list. Strong originals and sensible plans, with an "impressive food without faff" identity. If you cook for the pleasure of it, Mob is a treat. The catch: the full library and meal plans sit behind a subscription, and it's a curated brand rather than a tool for managing your own recipes. Price: free taster; Mob membership for the full library and plans. Platforms: iOS, Android, web.
Tasty
Free and video-first. Good for short, approachable recipe ideas and a quick "what could I make tonight" scroll. The catch: an idea generator rather than a planner. No weekly planning, no pantry awareness, and the volume can overwhelm. Price: free. Platforms: iOS, Android.
Paprika Recipe Manager
The connoisseur's choice for organising recipes. Clip from any website, scale servings, build a grocery list, sync across devices, and pay once instead of subscribing. The catch: it's a manager, so you bring your own recipes. "Pay once" means once per platform: desktop apps are a separate purchase from mobile. Price: around £4.99 on iOS/Android (one-time); desktop sold separately. Platforms: iOS, Android, macOS, Windows.
Samsung Food (formerly Whisk)
The best free all-rounder. Save recipes from anywhere, plan a week, and get a shopping list built for you, across web, iOS and Android, for nothing. You don't need a Samsung device. The catch: the experience can feel broad and busy, and the best extras sit behind a Food+ subscription. Diversity nutrition isn't its focus. Price: free core; optional Food+ premium. Platforms: iOS, Android, web.
AnyList
If the real problem is everyone in the house needing the same shopping list, AnyList solves it. Recipe storage and meal planning are decent; the shared, real-time grocery list is excellent. The catch: it's list-first. As a recipe discovery or planning tool, it's thinner. Price: free core; AnyList Complete subscription (a few pounds a year, individual or household). Platforms: iOS, Android, web.
Mealime
Does one thing well: pick quick dinners, get a clean aisle-sorted shopping list, cook in about 30 minutes. The free tier is usable, the allergen and diet filtering is strong, and it doesn't waste your time. The catch: a recipe-database-with-filters that doesn't learn your habits, with no real calendar and a near-read-only web version. Pricing has crept up (Pro is around £3–£5 a month depending on plan). Price: generous free tier; Pro around £3/month. Platforms: iOS, Android, limited web.
Eat This Much
The pick for anyone planning to a number. Set your calorie and macro targets and it builds a plan to hit them, then generates the shopping list. The catch: optimised for calorie and macro goals, so it can feel clinical if you just want nice dinners. The best automation is paid. Price: free basics; Premium subscription. Platforms: iOS, Android, web.
Chop It
The newest app here, and the only one built around a different question. Other apps help you find and store recipes. Chop It scores how varied your week is (plants, fibre and protein) through a Weekly Diversity Score, and its "What's In?" feature turns whatever's in your fridge into tonight's dinner so less of it ends up in the bin. By design, it keeps your comfort food rather than swapping it for "healthier" versions: eating better without losing what you love.
The catch: new (launched May 2026), UK-focused, on iOS and web for now. No Android app yet, and the recipe library is smaller than a decades-old brand like Good Food. If you want the biggest recipe bank or you're on Android, start elsewhere for now. Price: free to start (15 credits, no card); pay-as-you-go credit bundles, or Pro at £3.99/month (£35.99/year). Platforms: iOS, web app.
A note on meal kits
If you searched "meal planning" and you're thinking of Gousto, HelloFresh or Mindful Chef, those are a different category. They deliver pre-portioned ingredients to your door for a per-box fee, which is convenient but costs more per meal than planning your own shop. The apps above help you plan and shop from any supermarket; the kits do the buying for you. Pick a kit if you value zero decisions and don't mind the premium; pick an app if you want control and lower cost.
The gap none of the recipe apps fill
Two things stand out after comparing all of these.
First, most apps treat your week as a list of recipes and stop there. None of the established ones tell you whether you ate with any variety, whether you hit a sensible spread of plants and fibre instead of the same three dinners on rotation. Most apps count calories. Variety goes unmeasured. There's good evidence that the range of plants you eat matters as much as the quantity, and no mainstream app reflects that.
Second, they all start from "here's a recipe, now go buy the ingredients." Almost none start from the more common situation: I have these things in the fridge and I need to use them before they go off. The average UK household with children throws away roughly £60 of food a month, about £1,000 a year (WRAP/Defra). An app that plans around what you already own solves a problem the others ignore.
That's the space Chop It is in. It won't replace Paprika for serious recipe collectors or beat Good Food's library on size. But on those two specific jobs, eating with more variety without dropping favourite meals, and cooking from what you've already got, nothing else here competes, because nothing else is even trying.
Frequently asked questions
Does Good Food (BBC Good Food) require a subscription? No. You can browse a large number of recipes for free. The meal planner, ad-free browsing, Cook Mode extras and some exclusive recipes are part of the Premium subscription.
Which meal planning apps are free in the UK? Tasty is free. Samsung Food, Mealime and AnyList have usable free tiers. Chop It is free to start with no card. Paprika is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription.
Best app for cooking on a budget? Two angles. For low-cost recipes, Good Food, Mob and Tasty all have budget recipe collections. For the bigger cost, the food you buy and bin, an app that plans around what's in your fridge (Chop It's "What's In?") tackles the £1,000 a year the average family wastes. Meal kits like Gousto and HelloFresh cut waste too, but cost more per meal.
Can I import recipes from websites or social media? Paprika and Samsung Food are strong at clipping from websites. For recipes saved from social video and screenshots, the newer apps are better. Chop It imports from a recipe URL or social post and rewrites it into a shoppable format.
Which apps sync across devices? Paprika, Samsung Food, AnyList and Good Food all sync (Paprika needs the matching purchase on each platform). Chop It syncs between its iOS app and web app; there's no Android app yet.
Is there an app that helps me eat more plants or more fibre? Most apps let you filter for vegetarian or high-protein recipes, but none of the established ones measure the variety of your week. Chop It's Weekly Diversity Score tracks plants, fibre and protein across the days you've planned, which is closer to how nutritionists talk about a varied diet than a single calorie number.
Cooking for one or two people? Most of these scale servings up and down, so any work. Paprika and Mealime handle serving sizes cleanly. The friction is shopping for two without waste, which is where pantry-aware planning helps.
How to choose, in one line each
- Trusted recipe bank: Good Food.
- No subscription: Paprika.
- Free planning plus a shopping list: Samsung Food.
- Quick dinners, minimum fuss: Mealime.
- One shared family list: AnyList.
- Modern British recipes: Mob.
- Cooking to a calorie target: Eat This Much.
- More variety, less waste: Chop It.
The best meal planning app is the one you'll still be using in week three. Match it to the job you actually have, and be honest with yourself: is your problem finding recipes, or eating with a bit more variety and using up what's already in the fridge?