Meal planning is a little bit difficult. The premise is easy, though. Meal planners help you create menus for a set period of time so you don’t have to think about what to make. You have a lot of options in this space and, believe it or not, they’re not all recipe apps. In the interest of variety, we omitted apps that only had grocery list and recipe features since we have an entire list for those types of apps here. Here are the best meal planner apps for Android.
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AnyList
Price: Free / $9.99-$14.99 per year
AnyList is a unique blend of a to-do list app and a recipe organizer. You can use both for maximum effect when meal planning. Basically, you add in all of your recipes to the app and then use the app to generate a grocery list. From there, you use the to-do part to plan your meals and then use the app to recall the recipes. Some other features include the ability to create per-store grocery lists, share lists with others, and you can save recipes directly from websites. The yearly price is surprisingly reasonable as well. The only issue is that it does take a bit to set up all of your stuff and you build it over time on your own. Those who don’t mind the manual part of it should definitely try it.
ChefTap
Price: Free
ChefTap is a recipe app with some extra features. It doubles as a grocery list app as well as a meal planner. The recipe and grocery list portions are fairly typical of other apps in the category. Its meal planner is actually quite good. On top of planning various meals for various days, it also lets you factor in things like leftovers. You simply create the plan, choose the recipes, and the app saves everything to a grocery list. You can also create multiple grocery lists and the app includes a pantry organizer. The UI can be a little clunky at times, but everything else is good.
Eat This Much
Price: Free / $8.99 per month / $84.99 per year
Eat This Much is a personalized meal planner and recipe guide. You enter the app, tell it what you do and do not want to eat, and the app generates a bunch of recipes for you. It works with many popular diets, including keto, paleo, vegan, and others. Unfortunately, the meal planner portion of this is only for premium subscribers. The feature lets you plan meals for a week at a time while also providing you with recipes and a grocery list like most meal planners do. You can still plan a day’s meals in the free version, though, so you can plan on the short term or at least try it out before you commit to a subscription. It’s one of the better meal planner apps for those on special diets.
Mealime
Price: Free / $5.99 per month / $49.99 per year
Mealime is one of the most popular meal planner apps on mobile. The app does the same thing as most of the other apps on the list. This one just adds an excellent presentation to the mix along with a friendly, colorful UI. The app generates personal meal plans with an eye for your dietary restrictions if you have any. It adds all of the necessary ingredients to a shopping list and all you have to do is buy the food and cook it. The app also contains recipes and its meal plans help to eliminate food waste from over-buying. They also have the stones to put their subscription prices in the app’s Play Store description, a decision we appreciate.
My CookBook
Price: Free / $5.99
My CookBook is one of the best meal planner apps for people who like to do it manually. The app lets you store your recipes either by entering it in manually or by scraping a website for it. It also comes with a grocery list feature, cross-device syncing of all of your recipes, ingredient scaling, and more. You plan your meals by selecting the recipes you want to use and the app pops the ingredients into your grocery list for easy reference. It’s not so involved as Mealime or some of the more powerful competitors, but it’s an excellent, simple choice for people who don’t want all of the extra frills.
More posts about the best Android apps!
More posts about the best Android apps!
Paprika
Price: Free / Up to $4.99
Paprika is a lot like My CookBook. It focuses mostly on storing recipes for offline use by letting you enter your own manually or scraping from websites. However, this one is actually the better meal planner app between the two. The app has daily, weekly, and monthly calendars for meal planning along with the usual integrated grocery list to get everything organized quickly. You can also create menus, scale ingredients, and share recipes via email. It doesn’t have the online syncing features of My CookBook, but you can still import and export if you switch devices.
Plan to Eat
Price: Free trial / $4.95 per month / $39 per year
Plan to Eat is a fairly typical, but competent meal planner app. It works like most of the others. You pick from a massive list of recipes, plan out your meals, and then the app adds those ingredients to a shopping list for you. The meal planner portion also lets you alter portion sizes, reschedule meals, and it even counts things like leftovers and extra portions. The app works offline and can sync between multiple devices at once. This one doesn’t have a free mode, but you do get a 30-day trial to see if you like it and its subscription prices aren’t any more or less expensive than competitors.
SideChef
Price: Free with in-app purchases
SideChef is one of the bigger meal planner apps on mobile. It has a metric ton of recipes for many different types of diets. You simply tell the app what kinds of foods you can or can’t have and it gives you recipes for those specific needs. Additionally, the app’s meal planner is quite good. You go through the calendar and add meals. The app adds them to a grocery list and off you go. Additionally, the app includes step-by-step instructions, support for LG, GE, and Bosch Home Connect kitchen appliances and some other goodies as well. Most of the features are free.
TickTick
Price: Free / $27.99 per year
TickTick is a to-do list app with very little to do with food. However, apps like this are the ultimate solution for manual meal planning. You can add meal plans to TickTick and then use your favorite recipe app to prepare the food and create grocery lists. The benefit here is flexibility. Most meal planner apps are all-in-one solutions. By putting the planning portion in another app, you’re free to use any recipe app you want even if it doesn’t have a native meal planner. Of course, it means a little more work also so there are drawbacks. TickTick is among the best to-do list apps, but we have a whole list here if you want other options.
Yummly
Price: Free / $4.99 per month
Yummly is one the more popular meal planner apps. It’s another all-in-one solution with over two million recipes, various recipe recommendations, support for various types of diets, and step-by-step instructions for each recipe. The app also includes a decent meal planner. You schedule recipes on certain dates and the app creates a grocery list for you as each one of these does. There is even a notification reminder to let you know when to start cooking so your food gets done on time. You can use most of the app for free with an optional $4.99 per month subscription price.
If we missed any great meal planner apps, tell us about it in the comments! You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists!