Best Free Recipe Apps in 2026
Every recipe app has a “free tier” these days. But free tiers aren’t created equal. Some give you a genuinely usable app. Others give you just enough to trigger upgrade prompts every time you try to do something useful.
We compared the free tiers of the most popular recipe apps using each app’s published plan limits, store listings and help docs, checked in October 2026. Pluck is one of the apps on this list, and we’ve tried to rank it the way we’d rank anyone else.
Updated October 2026: ReciMe, Deglaze, Honeydew and others now import from social media, several free tiers changed, and prices were corrected. The ranking below was redone from scratch.
How we ranked them
For each app, we looked at the free tier on five criteria:
- How much can you save? Recipes stored, and imports per week or month.
- From where? Food blogs only, or also Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook?
- How much of a video does it read? Caption only, or also the spoken audio and what’s on screen?
- What else is free? Meal planning, grocery lists, search.
- What’s the first paid step? Is the free tier a real product or a demo, and what does upgrading cost?
The ranking
1. ReciMe - Best all-round free tier for social recipes
Free tier: 5 imports per week
ReciMe imports from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. For TikTok, Instagram and Facebook it reads the caption, then the video’s audio, then looks for the creator’s website. It also imports photos, screenshots and handwritten recipes. Five imports a week is enough for most people, and you get a weekly meal plan and a grocery list.
It runs on iOS, Android and the web, which most apps here can’t say. We found no evidence it reads on-screen text in videos.
First paid step: ReciMe Plus, about $39.99/year in the US.
Platforms: iOS, Android, web
Read our detailed Pluck vs ReciMe comparison or visit the ReciMe alternative page.
2. Deglaze - Strong free tier with frame-level video reading (vendor claim)
Free tier: 5 imports per week (per Deglaze)
Deglaze imports from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest, plus cookbook photos and screenshots. Its own blog says it combines the caption, an audio transcription and on-screen text read frame by frame, for videos up to 10 minutes. That’s the same approach Pluck takes; we haven’t tested Deglaze’s results ourselves. It also has a meal planner (Pro), an aisle-sorted grocery list and household sharing.
First paid step: Pro, $49.99/year.
Platforms: iOS, Android, web
Read our Deglaze comparison.
3. Flavorish - Best free tier for food-blog volume
Free tier: Unlimited recipes and web imports, plus 5 each of social, image, text and AI imports
If most of your recipes come from food blogs, Flavorish’s free tier is the most generous here: unlimited web imports, no ads. Social imports (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube) work caption-first, and if the caption has no recipe, the AI writes a suggested one. Photo import handles handwritten recipes and cookbooks. Meal plans and shared grocery lists are free too. English only.
First paid step: Premium, $4.99/mo or $49.99/year.
Platforms: iOS, Android, web
Read our detailed Pluck vs Flavorish comparison or visit the Flavorish alternative page.
4. Pluck - Smallest free volume, most free features around it
Free tier: 3 AI extractions per month, 10 saved recipes
What you get with those 3 extractions is the full pipeline: on a TikTok or Instagram video, Pluck reads the caption, listens to the audio and reads on-screen text from the frames. It also handles photo carousels, YouTube, Facebook videos, food blogs and photos of handwritten recipes.
The rest of the free plan is more generous than the extraction count suggests: a meal plan for the current week, grocery lists built from a recipe and shared with up to 5 other people, cook mode, 3 recipe groups, 3 shared recipes a month, unlimited “What can I cook?” search, which ranks your saved recipes by the ingredients you type (how it works), and 1 pantry scan a month, which reads them from a photo of your fridge. You can also import your recipes from Paprika, Mela, Crouton or CopyMeThat.
What’s paywalled: the AI cooking assistant, Fill my week, which plans the week for you (Plus and Pro), more extractions, saved recipes and pantry scans, meal plans beyond this week, a grocery list built from the whole week’s plan.
First paid step: Light at $2.99/mo (10 extractions, 50 recipes, assistant included). Plus is $6.99/mo, Pro $11.99/mo or $499.99 lifetime.
Platforms: iOS, Android (no web app)
See our full comparison hub for how Pluck stacks up feature-by-feature.
5. Copy Me That - Best cheap option for food blogs
Free tier: Up to 40 recipes
Copy Me That is an old-school clipper with no AI, but it’s simple and works on iOS, Android and in the browser. It saves from Instagram and Facebook posts as well as websites. Premium is one of the cheapest upgrades in the category.
First paid step: Premium, $0.99/mo, or $65 lifetime.
Platforms: iOS, Android, browser extension
6. Recipe Keeper - Best one-time upgrade for offline recipe storage
Free tier: A limited number of recipes (around 20, by most accounts)
Recipe Keeper imports from hundreds of recipe websites, scans recipes from photos and PDFs with OCR, and has imported from Instagram and TikTok since late 2024 (most likely from the caption). It has a meal planner, aisle-grouped shopping lists, nutrition and family sharing through one shared account, in 15 languages. No AI.
First paid step: a one-time Pro upgrade, $19.99 on iOS.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac
Read our detailed Pluck vs Recipe Keeper comparison or visit the Recipe Keeper alternative page.
7. Honeydew - Free to try, but social import needs Plus
Free tier: Basic recipe saving (limits not published)
Honeydew is one of the most capable apps in the category: social import that uses the video’s audio transcript, an AI assistant chat, an AI meal planner, nutrition, and household sharing for up to six people. But photo, screenshot and social imports need Honeydew Plus, so the free tier is mostly a preview.
First paid step: Honeydew Plus, $6.99/mo or $39.99/year.
Platforms: iOS, Android
Read our detailed Pluck vs Honeydew comparison or visit the Honeydew alternative page.
Paprika - No free tier, but cheap on mobile
Free tier: None. Paprika 3 is a one-time purchase per platform: $4.99 on iOS or Android, $29.99 each on Mac and Windows.
Paprika 3 is a reliable web clipper with meal planning, grocery lists and a pantry, and no AI or social import. Paprika 4 is in open beta (since September 28, 2026) and adds photo scanning and TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube import; its premium features will need a subscription, at a price not yet announced.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows
Read our detailed Pluck vs Paprika comparison or visit the Paprika alternative page.
Honorable mentions
Mela (free download, Mela+ $6.99 one-time on iOS, $14.99 separately on Mac; Apple only). Beautiful reading experience. It reads YouTube, TikTok and Instagram descriptions with on-device machine learning and can OCR printed recipes, but it hasn’t been updated since June 2025. Read our Mela comparison.
Pestle (free tier, Pro $2.99/mo, $24.99/year or a lifetime option; Apple only). Parses Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube captions on device, has a recipe scanner, a 14-day meal planner and a lovely cook mode. Read our Pestle comparison.
Inspo (free tier, premium in-app purchases from $14.99). Saves from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and websites; photo import is premium. It also has a weekly meal planner and grocery list. It doesn’t say how it reads videos. Read our Inspo comparison.
MyRecipes (launched September 2026 by People Inc., the owner of Allrecipes). The free tier saves from thousands of websites and includes the company’s own recipe library; Instagram and TikTok saving is part of MyRecipes+ ($6.99/mo or $39.99/year).
AnyList (free; Complete $9.99/year). Grocery lists shared with any number of people are free; the free plan stops at 5 recipe imports from websites, and the meal planning calendar is paid. Read our AnyList comparison.
Samsung Food (free; Food+ $6.99/mo or $59.99/year). Mostly free, weekly planner included, but a recipe saved from another website keeps the ingredients and a link, not the instructions. Read our Samsung Food comparison.
Bring! (free with ads; Premium $1.99/mo or $8.99/year). A shared shopping list first: a recipe is kept as an ingredient list and a link, and no meal planner is listed. Read our Bring! comparison.
Yummly used to appear on lists like this one. It was discontinued in December 2024. Mealime is discontinued as of October 21, 2026, and Plan to Eat has no free plan, only a 14-day trial.
Free tier comparison table
| App | Free allowance | Social import (free) | Reads video audio | First paid step | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ReciMe | 5 imports/week | Yes | Yes (fallback) | ~$39.99/yr | iOS, Android, web |
| Deglaze | 5 imports/week (vendor claim) | Yes | Yes (vendor claim) | $49.99/yr | iOS, Android, web |
| Flavorish | Unlimited web imports, 5 each social/image/AI | Yes (5) | Not confirmed | $4.99/mo | iOS, Android, web |
| Pluck | 3 extractions/mo, 10 recipes | Yes | Yes, plus frames | $2.99/mo | iOS, Android |
| Copy Me That | 40 recipes | Instagram, Facebook | No | $0.99/mo | iOS, Android, browser |
| Recipe Keeper | Limited (around 20 recipes) | Instagram, TikTok | No | $19.99 once (iOS) | iOS, Android, Win, Mac |
| Honeydew | Basic (limits not published) | No (Plus only) | Yes (Plus) | $6.99/mo | iOS, Android |
| Paprika 3 | No free tier | No (Paprika 4 beta adds it) | No | $4.99 once per mobile platform | iOS, Android, Mac, Win |
The bottom line
If you’re choosing a recipe app based on the free tier alone:
- Best all-round free tier for social recipes: ReciMe or Deglaze, both at 5 imports a week with audio-aware video import and a web app.
- Most food-blog recipes for free: Flavorish, with unlimited web imports.
- Most free features around a small allowance, and the cheapest upgrade: Pluck. Unlimited “What can I cook?”, cook mode, this week’s meal plan and shared grocery lists for free, and paid plans from $2.99/mo that include the AI cooking assistant.
- Cheapest premium overall: Copy Me That at $0.99/mo, if you don’t need AI.
For most people in 2026, the question is less “which app has the most free recipes?” and more “which app can save recipes from the places I find them, without losing the amounts the creator only said out loud?” Several apps now answer that well. Try two of them on the same five posts from your own feed and keep the one whose results you trust.
For the full feature-by-feature comparison, see our recipe app comparison hub. We also wrote dedicated guides for the best recipe app for Android, iPhone, TikTok recipes, meal planning, families, and AI-powered recipe apps.
Pluck is available on iOS and Android. Get it on Google Play. Also on iOS. Visit our roadmap to see what features are next.
Pluck Team
We're a small team of home cooks and engineers building the recipe app we always wanted. We write about recipe saving, AI extraction, and cooking smarter.
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