Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21, 2026: What to Use Instead

You opened the app, or the site, and found a black bar across the top. This page is the rest of that sentence: what Mealime actually said, whether you can take your recipes and your grocery lists with you, what it means for the subscription you have now, and what to put on the phone before the plan for next Tuesday has nowhere to live.

The short answer if you came here for a Mealime alternative

If you already know the app is closing and you only want the replacement, here it is before anything else. Searches for apps like Mealime return lists of twenty; this is the short version, sorted by the job Mealime did for you rather than by feature count.

• You shop at an Albertsons Companies chain. Meals Hub. It is free, and it is where Mealime's own recipe library moved.
• You liked that the week was decided for you. Eat This Much, which builds the plan from your targets instead of waiting for you to choose.
• You bring your own recipes. Plan to Eat, which is a calendar and a shopping list wrapped around a recipe book you fill yourself.
• The shared grocery list was the real product. AnyList.
• You are done renting software. Paprika, bought once per platform rather than by the month.

One thing to settle before you install any of them. A switch from Mealime is not a migration: the company publishes no export tool, so nothing travels across on its own. Whichever Mealime alternative you choose, the recipes you care about move by hand, and they only move while the app still opens. If you have copied nothing yet, the section on taking your data out is the one to read first.

The rest of this page is the evidence behind that short list: what Mealime actually said, what each replacement can import, what it lets you export later, and what its own maker publishes as the price.

What Mealime said, in its own words

The banner on mealime.com reads: "Mealime will shut down on October 21, 2026." It links to a page the company titles Closing, which opens without softening anything: "we regret to inform you that Mealime will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026."

Apple carries a shorter version of the same message. The release notes for version 4.21.35, dated 2 September 2026 on the US App Store listing, say: "Mealime is shutting down on October 21st, 2026. As a farewell thank-you, Pro is now free for everyone. If you're a current Pro subscriber, your subscription will not renew."

One detail on the home page has not caught up with the banner. Two lines under the closing date, Mealime's home page still says "Join over 4,500,000 others for free today". Both sentences are on the same screen. If you signed up in the past week and felt misled, that is why.

Why Mealime is shutting down

The company answers this in the FAQ on its closing page, and the answer is corporate rather than dramatic: "Mealime was acquired by Albertsons Companies in 2021, and its recipes and meal-planning tools have also been available through Albertsons Companies grocery apps since that time." The stated goal is a single platform, so customers are being moved to Meals Hub inside those store apps.

Two things follow from that, and they matter more than the reason itself. The recipes are not being deleted from the world: Mealime says all of them continue in Meals Hub, and that Meals Hub "is supported by the same core team". But the app you have on your phone is a standalone product that a grocery chain no longer wants to run separately, so no amount of user loyalty changes the date.

The three dates worth writing down

What happens to your recipes, your settings and your money

Your money. Mealime's FAQ is unusually clean here: "Effective immediately, Pro subscribers will not be charged any additional subscription fees before Mealime is discontinued on October 21, 2026." The App Store note says the same thing from Apple's side, that a current Pro subscription will not renew. Nothing to cancel, in other words, although checking the subscriptions screen on your phone costs ten seconds and settles it.

Your recipes. The Mealime recipe library moves to Meals Hub, where the company says it sits alongside thousands more. That covers recipes Mealime wrote. It does not obviously cover the parts you built: your plan history, your dislikes, your servings, the small edits you made over the years.

Your account. Asked directly whether account information transfers, the FAQ says you can create or sign in to an Albertsons Companies store app, and that "certain preferences and settings will need to be established directly within Meals Hub". That is a polite way of saying you start again. And the data question has a blunt answer on the same page: all personal data will be deleted when the Mealime application is shut down.

Can you take your recipes and grocery lists with you?

Short answer: there is no export button, and it is better to know that now than to spend the third week of October hunting for one. We read mealime.com and the closing page again on 7 September 2026. Neither one describes exporting or downloading your recipes, your meal plans or your grocery lists, in any format, by any route. The closing FAQ answers the transfer question only for the recipe library Mealime itself wrote, which continues inside Meals Hub, and about your own side of the account it is blunt: "All personal data will be deleted when the Mealime application is shut down." The normal move, export a file out of the old app and import it into the new one, is not available here.

The one formal route out, and what it will not give you

Mealime's privacy policy does grant a right to the data itself. It says users have the right to "obtain a copy of the Data undergoing processing", and, separately, the right to "receive their Data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and, if technically feasible, to have it transmitted to another controller without any hindrance". That is a data portability request, and the same policy says where it goes: privacy@mealime.com, with Prighter named as the representative for people in the EU. Three caveats, all honest. Nothing on that page promises a turnaround, and the shutdown date is one the company set rather than one it owes you, so a request sent in mid-October may be answered after the app is gone. And what a portability request returns is a data file about your account, not an export in a format any meal planner offers to import. Third, the California privacy centre the policy points at, mealime.ethyca.com, did not resolve at all when we tried it on 7 September 2026, so the email address is the one that counts. Send the request today if you want it, and treat whatever comes back as a bonus rather than as your plan.

What actually works is copying out the ten recipes you really cook

Not the two hundred you saved. Once the list is that short the job is one evening, and every replacement below publishes a documented way in.

• Recipes that came from a website. You do not need Mealime for these at all. Find the page again and let the new app import it. Eat This Much imports a recipe from a pasted URL or from its Chrome clipper, on "any recipe site that uses the standard Schema.org format", and its blog calls this "a totally free feature". AnyList imports while you browse in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge through its desktop extensions. Paprika saves recipes from any site through its own built-in browser.
• Recipes that are Mealime's own. Some of them are on the open web. Mealime publishes recipes on public pages at mealime.com/recipes, and each recipe page there carries the standard schema.org Recipe markup that web recipe importers read. Plan to Eat says it outright: "Mealime doesn't offer a bulk recipe export, but you can easily import Mealime recipes to Plan to Eat with our Recipe Clipper" (Plan to Eat blog, 14 September 2026). Its Recipe Clipper is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari and a share option in the Plan to Eat app on iOS and Android: open the recipe on mealime.com/recipes and import it, one recipe at a time. A recipe you cannot find there lives only inside the app, and that one comes out through the screen. Plan to Eat reads a recipe from a picture: in the app, Add Recipe, then Take a Photo, one recipe per import, several images if it runs over one screen. Screenshot each of those inside Mealime while the app still runs, import the picture, fix the fields once.
• Recipes you would rather retype. AnyList documents the paste path: copy the ingredient text, tap Paste Ingredients and paste the whole block at once, then handle the preparation steps as a second paste. Two pastes per recipe, not twenty lines.

The grocery list is the one part nobody can move, and the part you barely need to. Mealime has no export for its shopping list, so the list will not travel as data. It also does not have to. The list is a by-product of the plan, and Eat This Much, Plan to Eat, AnyList and Paprika each build one from the recipes you add. What does not come back on its own is anything you typed straight into the list and never attached to a recipe: the household staples, the brand of coffee, the thing you always forget. That is one screenshot, and it is the only screenshot that really matters.

What to do before October 21, 2026

1. Copy out the ten recipes you actually cook. Not the two hundred you saved. The closing page describes no export tool, and the same page says the data goes when the app goes, so treat anything that lives only inside Mealime as temporary.
2. Screenshot your dietary setup. Allergies, dislikes, servings, plan type. You will be typing them into whatever comes next, and they are easier to read off an image than to remember.
3. Check the subscriptions screen anyway. Mealime says you will not be billed again. A ten-second look is still cheaper than a surprise line on a card statement.
4. Pick the replacement now, not on 21 October. Installing a planner is easy. Rebuilding a week of habits while you are already hungry is not.

Six options to use instead of Mealime

Prices below come from each company's own page, read on 6 September 2026. What Apple charges inside an app can be a different number, and our guide to meal planner apps for students lists the App Store side of the same products.

The order is not a quality ranking. The first four are apps you can install today, arranged by which part of Mealime they replace. Fifth is ours, and it sits there for one reason: it is free to start, but it is not an app you can put on a phone on 21 October, so it cannot stand above anything you can install. Paprika is sixth because it is the only entry here with no free tier at all - you pay before you use it.

1. Meals Hub: if you shop at an Albertsons chain

This is Mealime's own answer, and for a large group of users it is the right one. Meals Hub lives inside the Albertsons Companies store apps: you find it by tapping the More icon in the bottom right corner of the store app, then tapping Meals Hub. Mealime's closing page says Meals Hub is 100% free, including the recipes that used to sit behind Mealime Pro, and that dietary preferences and food restrictions are still supported. The FAQ also answers the obvious objection: if there is no Albertsons Companies store near you, you can still browse recipes, build meal plans and generate shopping lists. The catch is what it is built around. This is a grocery retailer's app with meal planning inside it, not a meal planner with a store attached, so the whole experience is arranged around shopping at one chain. Details are on the Mealime closing page.

2. Eat This Much: if you want the plan generated for you

Mealime picked recipes and you approved them. Eat This Much goes further and builds the plan from calorie and macro targets, food preferences, budget and schedule. Eat This Much's pricing page lists a free tier at $0.00 a month, which generates daily meal plans, tracks what you eat, reads barcodes and stores custom foods and recipes. The same page lists Premium at $5.00 a month on an annual subscription, adding a full week of meals at a time, the automatic grocery list, grocery delivery integration and leftovers handling. If you liked Mealime because you did not want to decide, start here.

3. Plan to Eat: if you cook recipes you found yourself

Plan to Eat is built the other way round: you bring the recipes, it handles the calendar and turns the week into an aisle-by-aisle shopping list. According to Plan to Eat, the free trial takes no card details, and the subscription after it is $49 a year or $5.95 a month. This is the closest fit for anyone whose recipe collection lives in browser tabs, screenshots and a family cookbook rather than in an app's own library.

4. AnyList: if the grocery list was the real product

Plenty of people used Mealime mainly to arrive at a sorted shopping list that a partner could see too. AnyList does exactly that job: shared lists that sync instantly, items grouped by category, recipes and a meal planning calendar on top. The free version covers lists and recipes. AnyList's own page lists AnyList Complete at $9.99 annually for an individual. The same page lists the household subscription at $14.99 annually, and it is what unlocks the web and Mac apps, recipe import from websites and the meal planning calendar.

5. BeCute: no app to install yet, and one free page that works today

This one is ours, and it is here with its limits printed on it. There is nothing to install, so nothing of ours goes on your phone on 21 October. What does work today is a single page on this site, the 5 meals a day schedule. In its own words: "This page is the whole tool - it works right now, in this browser", and it is "Free, no email, no account, nothing to install". It takes the time you get up and splits the waking day into five meal times three hours apart. That is the whole of it: it picks no recipes and writes no shopping list, so it replaces none of the four entries above and none of the jobs Mealime did for you. The app is being built to start from your goals and what you actually ate rather than from a recipe catalogue. If that is worth an email, the early access page is one field and no card, and we write once, on the day it opens.

6. Paprika: if you are done paying monthly

Paprika Recipe Manager organises recipes, builds meal plans and creates grocery lists, saves recipes from any site through its built-in browser, and syncs across devices. It is bought outright rather than rented. Paprika's own page notes that each platform version is sold separately, and Apple's listing showed the iOS version at $4.99 on 6 September 2026, a price paid once rather than a subscription. For a household that has just watched a subscription evaporate, paying once has an obvious appeal.

Match the replacement to what you actually used

What each replacement imports, and what it lets you export later

You are moving house because an app you trusted stopped. Spend one more minute on the way out of the next one before you spend an evening filling it. Every line below comes from the maker's own pages, read on 7 September 2026.

Read the last column as the lock-in column, because one of these will send its own black bar one day. Two of the five publish a real way out. Plan to Eat exports the entire recipe book to a spreadsheet. Paprika exports to HTML or to its own .paprikarecipes file, and those are precisely the files the others accept on the way in: Plan to Eat's bulk import list includes Paprika HTML, and AnyList has a step-by-step page for importing the .paprikarecipes file. So the one product here you buy outright is also the easiest one to walk away from. Mealime is being switched off with no export at all, which is the entire reason this page needs a section like this one.

How to choose between the Mealime alternatives on this page

Five installable apps is a short list, and it is still four too many to set up at once. Four questions decide it, in the order they cost you something.

1. How do your recipes get in? If most of what you cook came off a website, Eat This Much, AnyList and Paprika each pull a page in for you and the job is one short evening. If most of what you cook is Mealime's own, look for it on mealime.com/recipes first: what Mealime published there comes in through a web clipper, and Plan to Eat documents that route for Mealime recipes. The rest goes as screenshots into Plan to Eat or two pastes into AnyList. That one fact rules out more options than price ever will.
2. How do they get out again? The lock-in column above is not a detail. Plan to Eat exports the whole recipe book as a spreadsheet, Paprika exports to HTML or to its own file, and those two are the ones you can walk away from later. You are reading this because an app you trusted stopped. Ask the exit question now, while there is still nothing of yours inside the new one.
3. Can you try it before you pay? Eat This Much and AnyList both publish a free tier you can live in. Plan to Eat's trial takes no card details. Paprika is the one you pay for before you use it at all. If you are unsure, start where a wrong guess costs nothing.
4. Is it tied to a shop? Meals Hub is free and it is the official destination, but it is meal planning inside a grocery retailer's app. Mealime's own FAQ says it still works without a store nearby. That is a fair trade if you shop there and an odd fit if you do not.

Then give the winner one real week before you pay for a year: plan a Tuesday, shop from the list it produces, cook from it. Apps like Mealime all look the same on a pricing page. The difference shows up in the shop, holding a list one of them wrote.

Should you wait for BeCute?

No. Pick one of the five apps above that you can actually install, and set it up this week. A shutdown date is not the moment to depend on something with no install button, and ours does not have one: BeCute is not yet on the App Store or Google Play. The early access list is worth one field if you want to hear the day it opens, and it is not a plan for 21 October.

If a free tool is the priority right now, our list of free meal planning apps goes through what each one gives away.

Mealime alternatives after October 21, when the app no longer opens

If you are reading this after the date, the choice is the same and one of your options is gone. The five apps, their imports and their exits all still stand. What changed is that you cannot go back into Mealime for the ten recipes, so the screenshot route closed with the app, and Mealime's closing page says all personal data will be deleted when the application is shut down. The switch from Mealime is a rebuild now rather than a move.

Which makes the order of work different, and shorter.

• Mealime's own recipes are not lost. The company says the whole recipe library continues inside Meals Hub, in the Albertsons Companies store apps, free. If those recipes were the reason you stayed, that is where they are, and no other app on this page has them.
• Anything you built yourself is gone. Plan history, dislikes, servings, the small edits you made over the years. Do not spend November hunting a recovery route: the closing page describes none, and it states that the data is deleted.
• Rebuild from the ten you cook, not the two hundred you saved. Most of those came off a website in the first place, and the web still has them. Eat This Much takes a pasted URL, Paprika saves from any site through its built-in browser, AnyList clips from the browser you already use.
• The grocery list rebuilds itself. Every app here builds a list out of the recipes you put in, so there is no list to carry across. You retype only the staples that were never attached to a recipe.

One honest note about us, since you are standing on our site. BeCute is not something you can install: it is not on the App Store or on Google Play, so it is not a Mealime alternative you can use in November either. It is being built to start from your goals and from what you actually ate rather than from a recipe catalogue. If you want to hear the day it opens, the early access page is one field and no card. Pick one of the installable five first.

Mealime Alternatives Compared: BeCute Against Three You Can Install Today

Every section above eventually points at a name. Here is the same answer as one table, with the number that actually decides it: what each option costs, what the free plan will and will not let you do, and the one thing that makes it different from the other three. Prices are each company's own published figures, checked 6 September 2026.

Read the four rows as three separate trade-offs, not four competitors. Eat This Much is the only one with a real free tier, but it caps you at one day of planning ahead until you pay. Plan to Eat and Paprika both assume you will pay something; the only question is a subscription you can cancel or a purchase you keep once. BeCute is not a fifth option to test this week: the $0 is a promise about the price when it launches, not a free plan you can open today.

Questions people are asking this week

Why is Mealime shutting down?

Because its owner is consolidating. Mealime's own FAQ says the app was acquired by Albertsons Companies in 2021 and that its recipes and meal-planning tools have been available through the Albertsons grocery apps since then, and that customers are being moved to Meals Hub as the primary recipe and meal-planning platform. It is a product decision inside a grocery company, not a failure of the app.

Questions like the one above on Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026 are exactly what BeCute, an AI meal planning and nutrition app, is being built around.

When exactly does Mealime stop working?

October 21, 2026. The home page banner and the closing page both give that date, and the App Store release notes from 2 September 2026 repeat it as October 21st, 2026. Until that day the app keeps running and every Pro feature is unlocked for everyone.

Time is the constraint on Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026, and planning around the time you actually have rather than around the time a recipe assumes is what BeCute is being built to do.

Will I be charged for Mealime Pro again?

Mealime says no. The FAQ states that Pro subscribers will not be charged any additional subscription fees before the app is discontinued, and the App Store note says a current Pro subscription will not renew. Open the subscriptions screen on your phone anyway and confirm it with your own eyes.

Eating more on purpose takes the same arithmetic as eating less, and on Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026 that arithmetic is what BeCute is being built to keep.

What happens to my Mealime recipes and my data?

The Mealime recipe library continues in Meals Hub. Your personal side does not travel: the company says certain preferences and settings will need to be established directly within Meals Hub, and that all personal data will be deleted when the application is shut down. Copy anything you want to keep before 21 October.

Cooking is the point on Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026, and recipe ideas built from your goals and the ingredients already in your kitchen are on the BeCute build list.

Is Meals Hub free, and do I need a store nearby?

Mealime says Meals Hub is 100% free, including recipes that used to require Pro. On the store question its FAQ says Meals Hub can still work for you without an Albertsons Companies store nearby, because browsing recipes, building meal plans and generating shopping lists do not depend on shopping there.

Anyone working through Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026 ends up with a list, and BeCute is being built to generate that list out of the plan itself instead of having it typed out by hand a second time.

Is there a free alternative to Mealime that is not tied to a supermarket?

Yes. Eat This Much publishes a free tier that generates daily plans and tracks food, and AnyList is free for lists and for recipes you paste in yourself, but its free plan imports only 5 recipes from websites: AnyList's help page says "Everyone can save 5 recipes from the web for free". Both are independent of any grocery chain. The paid steps are small. Eat This Much's pricing page lists its paid tier at $5.00 a month on an annual subscription. AnyList's own page lists Complete at $9.99 annually. Whichever one you pick, move your recipes across before the date Mealime prints on its own home page: "Mealime will shut down on October 21, 2026."

For the money side of Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026, the answer from us is that BeCute is free during early access, and free is a promise about launch rather than a product you can obtain today.

Can I export my recipes from Mealime before it shuts down?

There is no export tool. Checked on 7 September 2026: neither Mealime's home page nor its closing page mentions exporting or downloading recipes, meal plans or grocery lists, and the closing page says all personal data will be deleted when the application is shut down. The only formal route is a data portability request under Mealime's own privacy policy, which gives users the right to "receive their Data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format"; the policy sends such requests to privacy@mealime.com. Expect a data file about your account rather than something the next app can import, and send it well before 21 October. Everything else you keep, you copy out by hand.

A reader who lands on Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026 lands on a site for an app that does not exist yet: BeCute is being built by our team, and nothing here is software you can install. What you can use here today is the free 5 meals a day schedule at becute.app/tools/5-meals-a-day-schedule - no email, no account, nothing to install - and the early access waitlist at becute.app covers the app.

Can I take my grocery list from Mealime to another app?

Not as data. Mealime has no export for its shopping list, so that list will not travel. It mostly does not need to: Eat This Much, Plan to Eat, AnyList and Paprika all generate a grocery list from the recipes you put in, so the list rebuilds itself once the recipes are there. The part that does not rebuild is whatever you typed straight into the list and never attached to a recipe, the household staples and the brands. Screenshot that one screen before 21 October.

On Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026, logging a meal by barcode or by photo is one of the features BeCute is being built around. The early access waitlist at becute.app is what exists in the meantime.

Which Mealime alternative can I import my recipes into?

Plan to Eat takes the biggest files: Plan to Eat's help centre documents bulk import from Paprika, Recipe Keeper, Copy Me That, RecipeSage, WP Recipe Maker, Living Cookbook, Meal-Master and MasterCook, plus HTML, and puts the ceiling at 3,000 recipes in one file; its app can also read a recipe from a photo. AnyList imports from browser extensions and from a .paprikarecipes file. Paprika imports files from several recipe apps and clips from any website. Eat This Much imports from a pasted URL for free on any account. None of them imports a Mealime file, because Mealime has no bulk recipe export. Plan to Eat says Mealime recipes come in through its Recipe Clipper, which works on the recipes Mealime publishes at mealime.com/recipes; the ones that are only inside the app move as screenshots or as typing.

If Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026 has you comparing tools, compare them on what they do today, and what BeCute has today is not an app. The early access waitlist at becute.app is all there is to join today.

What is the best Mealime alternative for me?

There is no single best one, and anyone who names one has not asked what you used Mealime for. Meals Hub if you shop at an Albertsons Companies chain, because it holds Mealime's own recipes and it is free. Eat This Much if you wanted the week decided for you. Plan to Eat if you bring your own recipes. AnyList if the shared grocery list was the point. Paprika if you would rather buy once than subscribe. All five are compared above on what they import, what they let you export later, and what their makers publish as the price.

None of them imports a Mealime file, so whichever you pick, the recipes move one at a time: clipped from mealime.com/recipes where Mealime published them, as screenshots or typing where it did not, and those only while the app still opens.

Readers of Mealime Is Shutting Down on October 21 2026 ask when it opens, and we publish no launch date for BeCute because we do not have one; the app behind it is not yet on the App Store or Google Play.

Sources

1. Mealime. Home page shutdown banner, "Mealime will shut down on October 21, 2026." mealime.com
2. Mealime. "Thank You for Being Part of the Mealime Community" and the Mealime Shutdown FAQ. mealime.com/closing
3. Apple. Mealime Meal Plans & Recipes, release notes for version 4.21.35, 2 September 2026. App Store
4. Eat This Much. Pricing page, free and Premium tiers. eatthismuch.com
5. Plan to Eat. Home page, free trial and subscription prices. plantoeat.com
6. AnyList. "About AnyList Complete", individual and household prices. anylist.com
7. Paprika Recipe Manager. Product page, and the Apple listing price for the iOS version. paprikaapp.com
8. Mealime. Privacy Policy, "The rights of Users", including the right to obtain a copy of the data and the right to data portability. mealime.com/privacy-policy
9. Plan to Eat. Help centre, "How to Bulk Import Recipes from Another Program", supported file formats and the 3,000 recipe limit. learn.plantoeat.com
10. Plan to Eat. Help centre, "Export your Entire Recipe Book", .csv and .txt downloads under My Account. learn.plantoeat.com
11. Plan to Eat. Help centre, "How to Import Recipes from Photos (App)". learn.plantoeat.com
12. AnyList. Help centre, "Importing Recipes from Paprika" and "Copying and Pasting Recipes into AnyList", and the Recipes topic index. help.anylist.com
13. Eat This Much. Help centre, "How do I email, print, or download my meal plan and grocery list?", including the note that CSV export is not supported. help.eatthismuch.com
14. Eat This Much. "The new Recipe Clipper and Importer for Eat This Much". blog.eatthismuch.com
15. Paprika Recipe Manager. Help, Mac edition, File then Import and File then Export. paprikaapp.com/help/mac