The short version
- Eight meal planners compared on the grocery list they hand you.
- A good list merges repeats, groups by aisle, says which dinner needs what and opens on a second phone.
- Plan to Eat and Paprika suit your own recipes. eMeals and Meals Hub hand you a week.
- Eat This Much starts from calorie and macro targets, ReciMe from saved posts, AnyList from one shared list.
Most meal planners get judged on their recipes. What decides whether a household keeps using one is duller: the list you take to the shop. This compares eight apps on that one job. Prices and behavior come from each vendor’s own pages, read on September 20, 2026.
What a Good Grocery List Has to Do
- Merge what repeats. Two dinners that each want half a bag of spinach should produce one line, with the amounts added up.
- Group by aisle. A list in recipe order sends you back across the shop three times.
- Say which dinner needs what. When Wednesday falls through, you want to know what to leave on the shelf.
- Survive a change of plan. Swap one dinner after you have ticked half the list, and the rest of the ticks should stay where they are.
- Open on someone else’s phone. The person who plans and the person who shops are often not the same person.
How Eight Apps Handle It
- Recipes you already cookPlan to Eat
- A week handed to you, freeMeals Hub
- Calorie and macro targetsEat This Much
- One list on two phonesAnyList
| App | What its list does well | Advertised price |
|---|---|---|
| Meals Hub | Keeps the whole Mealime catalog and the plan to list flow that team built. It lives inside the Albertsons grocery apps, and it still works with no Albertsons store nearby. | Free |
| Plan to Eat | Builds the list by aisle from recipes you collected yourself. The planning calendar is the center of the product. | USD 5.95 a month or USD 49 a year |
| Paprika | Adds up ingredients across the menus you build, and keeps everything on the device, so the list opens with no signal. Each platform is bought separately. | USD 4.99 on iOS, USD 29.99 on Windows, once |
| AnyList | The shared list itself is the product. It updates on both phones, and store filters cut it down to the aisle you are standing in. | USD 9.99 a year, or USD 14.99 for a household |
| eMeals | You pick a meal style and get a week with its shopping list. The list goes to several retailers, and it works when you shop on your own. | From USD 4.99 a month on a 12 month plan |
| Eat This Much | Builds the week from calorie and macro targets, then the list follows. Budgets and pantry priority feed into it. | USD 5 a month, billed annually |
| Samsung Food | Imports recipes from the web, shares plans and lists, and carries detailed nutrition. It covers the most ground of the eight. | Food+ at USD 6.99 a month or USD 59.99 a year |
| ReciMe | Pulls recipes out of Instagram, TikTok and screenshots, then sorts the list by aisle or by recipe. | Five imports a week on the free tier |
Facts checked September 20, 2026
Which One Fits Your Household
If you already know what you cook, the library first tools fit best. Plan to Eat and Paprika both assume you bring the recipes, and both turn them into a clean aisle list. Paprika asks for one payment per platform and keeps working offline; Plan to Eat charges every year and puts the calendar first.
If you would rather be told what to cook, eMeals and Meals Hub do that. eMeals picks a style and sends a week. Meals Hub is free and keeps the Mealime recipes, which matters if you are leaving Mealime on October 21. Our switching guide covers what carries over and what does not.
If the numbers come first, Eat This Much starts from calories and macros and works backward to the week.
If your recipes live on social platforms, ReciMe is built for exactly that, and it sorts the resulting list by aisle.
If what you mostly want is a list that stays right on two phones, AnyList is cheap and very good at that, with less help deciding what to cook.
Samsung Food covers the widest ground here. That breadth is the trade: more setup before the first list.
Where Simmerset Fits
Simmerset starts from the week. You answer a few questions, it proposes three to seven dinners, and the list follows from the ones you keep.
- One list, merged and grouped. Quantities are added up across dinners where the units allow it, and every line sits under an aisle.
- Every line says which dinner it came from. Drop a dinner and you can see what to leave on the shelf.
- No exceptions for allergies and diets. They are asked separately from dislikes and take a recipe out even when few recipes are left. A dislike only moves a recipe down the ranking.
- No store to pick. There is no retailer account, so you shop the list wherever you want.
- Your data leaves with you. Export everything as JSON and delete the account yourself.
What it does not do: there is no pantry, it does not plan to calorie or macro targets, and there is no iOS or Android app yet. If one of those is the reason you are opening a planner at all, one of the apps above fits you better today.
