Mealime vs Plan to Eat.

Who should consider Plan to Eat?

Start with the moment that makes meal planning difficult. If you spend Sunday choosing between bookmarked recipes, a calendar can help you commit to a manageable week. If you open an app because you want someone else to suggest dinner, building a personal recipe library may leave you with the same decision.

Plan to Eat explicitly says it provides tools for collecting your recipes, rather than supplying its own recipes or meal plans. It offers a browser experience and iOS and Android apps. Those are useful distinctions for a household that plans on a laptop and shops with a phone. Source: Plan to Eat’s product FAQ.

For a former Mealime user, the main adjustment is taking responsibility for the menu. Begin with five meals you already cook, rather than spending your first evening cataloguing every recipe you have ever saved.

Compare the jobs you need done

Mealime’s planning and list baseline comes from its official app listing; its web-import instructions were last updated on 6 August 2020. Plan to Eat documents its current import routes, calendar features and shopping tools.

Pantry tracking has a clear limit

Plan to Eat’s Staples List can hold frequently bought items or a manual kitchen inventory with quantities and notes. It does not automatically update inventory or subtract food you own from your shopping list. Check the kitchen yourself and remove what you have. This matters if pantry tracking is the feature you are shopping for: keeping a record and calculating what remains are different jobs. Plan to Eat’s Staples explanation, 8 January 2026.

Build a calendar that survives a busy evening

Here is a worked planning example for two people. The quantities are illustrative, not a tested recipe: suppose your saved two-serving chilli uses one tin of beans. Cooking four servings on Tuesday requires two tins; Wednesday is an evening for the other two portions.

Schedule the amount you cook. Plan to Eat’s planned-serving control changes the ingredient quantities for that calendar entry without changing the original recipe. In this example, set Tuesday to four servings. Official serving-size instructions, updated 24 November 2025.

Record the evening you reheat. Add a planner note for Wednesday; notes do not add anything to the shopping list. Plan to Eat also has a dedicated Plan as Leftover action, so you can keep the leftover linked to the recipe instead. Official leftover methods, updated 22 October 2025.

Shop for the dates you are cooking. Set the shopping list to Monday–Thursday for this example. That includes Tuesday’s ingredients. A range starting Wednesday would miss the Tuesday cook. The default is the next seven days, and a custom range is available. How the calendar and shopping range connect.

Finish the list at home. If both tins are already in the cupboard, remove beans; if only one is there, adjust the quantity to one. Add milk as an extra. Manually added groceries remain regardless of the selected dates until removed or cleared, so changing the calendar range will not automatically clear that milk. Adding and removing groceries and editing items in the mobile shopping list.

After a week works, save it as a Menu for reuse. The calendar can preserve a realistic routine, including the evenings when you do less cooking. Plan to Eat’s reusable Menus.

What does Plan to Eat cost?

Plan to Eat lists US$5.95 monthly or US$49 annually, with a 14-day trial requiring no payment card. The trial is not a permanent free plan. Confirm the amount and applicable taxes before subscribing. Source: official pricing and trial information.

At those advertised rates, twelve monthly payments total US$71.40. The annual option costs US$22.40 less if you keep using it for a full year. A lower annual equivalent is only useful when you expect to maintain the routine; a short test tells you more than the discount.

The same account works across the website and mobile apps; you do not need a separate platform purchase. Compare that fee with free Meals Hub if your main need is access to Mealime recipes. The reason to subscribe to Plan to Eat is its personal collection and calendar workflow. Account and subscription details.

Bring a favourite into Plan to Eat

Use the original recipe webpage as the starting point. On a computer, install Plan to Eat’s Recipe Clipper for Chrome, Firefox or Safari, visit the recipe and select Import Recipe in the extension. Review any changes and save. On mobile, share the recipe page to Plan to Eat, review the draft and save it to the Recipe Book. Its old bookmarklet is retired. Official Recipe Clipper instructions.

If a page does not produce a usable recipe, the website’s Add Recipe → Paste Recipe Text route accepts copied recipe text and separates it into fields. You can also fill the fields by hand. Check the yield, ingredient amounts and cooking steps before planning it: the grocery list depends on the ingredients you saved. Manual entry and pasted text instructions, updated 6 November 2025.

Our free Mealime backup tool gives you readable TXT and JSON copies of an individual public recipe. Keep that copy for reference; it is not a verified Plan to Eat upload format or a transfer of your private Mealime account. Once a favourite is saved correctly, use the calendar example above to put it to work.

Frequently asked questions

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Return to the Mealime guide for account changes, recipe backups and next steps.