AT A GLANCE
The recipes are not gone, the bookmarks are. Yummly mostly indexed recipes from other sites. The original pages still exist; you need the dish name and a search. Yummly’s own recipes and your personal notes are lost.
Choose the replacement by job. Discovery and a big free library: Samsung Food. Owning a recipe box: Paprika. Weekly planning with a grocery list: MealPot or Plan to Eat.
Finding what you had saved
- Search the dish name plus the site you remember. Most Yummly saves pointed at food blogs and publishers that are still online.
- Check your browser and email. Yummly sent recipe emails and many people shared links to themselves; search your inbox for “yummly.com/recipe”.
- Use the Wayback Machine for the recipe page, not your collection. Personal collections were behind a login and were not archived; individual recipe pages often were.
- Accept the losses early. Yummly Pro recipes, your notes and your “Yums” are not recoverable. Two years of waiting has not changed that.
The lesson Mealime users are learning now
Mealime closes on 21 October 2026, also without an export button, and its users are doing the same scramble. The Mealime shutdown guide lists what to copy out while the app still works. If you are switching now, prefer a planner whose recipes you can get back out.
Yummly alternatives by what you used it for
Recipe discovery with a large free library: Samsung Food (formerly Whisk) has the closest feel, with saving from any site, a planner and lists, free on every platform; its paid Food+ tier is $6.99 a month. MealPot comes with 1,676 tested dinners and a planner that turns a week of them into one aisle-sorted list.
Your own recipe box: Paprika 3 is $4.99 per platform once, clips recipes cleanly and keeps them on your device. AnyList imports recipes and pairs them with the best shared shopping list around.
Weekly planning and a grocery list: MealPot (iPhone and iPad, free to download) plans around your preferences and household size. Plan to Eat ($5.95 a month or $49 a year) adds a calendar and works on any device. Eat This Much plans to calorie targets.
A first week in the new app
- Pick five dinners you remember cooking from Yummly and find their original pages.
- Save or import them, set your household size, and build one grocery list.
- Shop it once. If the list was right, keep the app; if not, the trial cost you nothing.
Frequently asked questions
When did Yummly shut down?
On 20 December 2024. The apps and website were retired and saved collections were not exported.
Can I recover my Yummly saved recipes?
Not from Yummly. The original recipe pages on other sites are usually still online and can be found by name. Notes, collections and Yummly Pro recipes are gone.
What is the closest free replacement for Yummly?
Samsung Food for discovery and saving from any site. MealPot for a free-to-download planner with its own tested recipe library.
Is there a Yummly alternative that exports my recipes?
Paprika and AnyList both export. Choosing one of them is the surest way to avoid a repeat.
Start with a week, not a library.
MealPot plans five dinners around your preferences and writes the grocery list.