Pluck vs Mela: The Best Recipe App for iPhone (and Android)

Mela is one of the best-looking recipe apps ever made. The typography is thoughtful, the cooking view is excellent, and it feels at home on iPhone, iPad and Mac. If you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem, Mela is genuinely good, and it’s better than it was when many “Mela vs” posts were written: since January 2025 it can import recipes from YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

So the real comparison between Pluck and Mela is about two things: which devices you use, and where the recipe lives in the posts you save.

What Mela does well

Credit where it’s due:

Design: Mela’s interface is clean and calm. It’s one of the few recipe apps that feels designed by someone who cares about type.
Social import, on-device: Mela imports from YouTube, TikTok and Instagram by reading the video’s description with on-device machine learning. Nothing is sent to a server.
Scanning printed recipes: Mela can scan a printed recipe or cookbook page with OCR.
Apple integration: iCloud sync and shared libraries, meal planning through Apple Calendar, groceries through Apple Reminders, a Safari extension, and a cook mode with timers. Mela can also translate recipes.
Pay once: The download is free and Mela+ is a one-time unlock: $6.99 on iOS, and $14.99 separately for the Mac app.

If your recipes come from food blogs and creators who write the full recipe in the description, and everyone you cook with uses Apple devices, Mela is a strong choice.

The three real gaps

1. No Android

Mela runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac only:

Your partner uses Android? They can’t open your shared library.
You move from iPhone to Android? Your collection has to be exported first.
You want to check a recipe on a work PC? There’s no web version.

Pluck runs on iOS and Android with the same account, so the phone you own doesn’t decide which recipe app you can use. To be clear about Pluck’s limits: it’s a phone app only, with no web or desktop version, and recipe boxes are personal. There’s no shared household library.

2. Mela reads the description, not the video

Mela’s social import extracts the recipe from the text a creator wrote under the video. When the description contains the full recipe, that works. When the caption says “recipe in the video!” and the quantities are only spoken or shown on screen, there’s nothing for it to read.

Pluck reads the video itself. Its AI watches the frames, transcribes the narration, reads on-screen text and reads the caption, then combines them. It also handles Facebook videos and Reels, which Mela doesn’t import, and Instagram and TikTok photo carousels, which it treats as one recipe.

3. Maintenance

Mela’s last App Store update was version 2.6.2 on June 8, 2025, about 16 months ago as of October 2026. It still works, but if you’re choosing an app to hold years of recipes, that’s worth knowing.

Feature-by-feature comparison

Feature	Pluck	Mela
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube	Yes (frames, audio, on-screen text, caption)	Yes (video description, on-device)
Facebook	Yes (videos and Reels)	No
Photo carousels	Yes, as one recipe	Not verified
Photo / cookbook page	Yes (AI, handwriting too)	Yes (OCR of printed recipes)
AI cooking assistant	Yes (paid plans)	No
Cook mode	Yes, with step timers	Yes, with timers
Meal planning	Yes (in-app weekly plan)	Yes (via Apple Calendar)
Grocery list	Yes, merged and sorted by aisle	Yes (via Apple Reminders)
Ingredient search	”What can I cook?” (free)	No
Import from other apps	Paprika, Mela, Crouton, CopyMeThat, JSON-LD	Not verified
Shared library	No	Yes (iCloud)
App languages	6	Not verified
Platforms	iOS, Android (phone)	iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price	Free; paid from $2.99/mo	Free download; Mela+ $6.99 iOS, $14.99 Mac

The AI difference while you cook

Mela gives you a lovely recipe screen. Pluck’s cook mode shows one step at a time with the ingredients that step uses, starts timers from the step and keeps the screen awake. On the paid plans, the AI cooking assistant knows the recipe and the step you’re on: ask “Can I use butter instead of oil here?” or “How do I halve this?” and it answers for that dish. You can apply changes like scaling or unit conversion to the saved recipe.

Pluck also builds a grocery list inside the app from a single recipe, or from a whole week’s meal plan on the paid plans, merging duplicates and sorting by aisle. And “What can I cook?” ranks your saved recipes by the ingredients you have, free on every plan. See what can I cook with what I have for how that works.

Switching from Mela to Pluck

Pluck imports Mela backups directly. In Mela, export your recipes as a .melarecipes file. In Pluck, go to Settings → Data → Import Recipes, pick Mela and choose the file. Imports don’t use your monthly extractions; they do count toward your plan’s saved-recipe limit. Our Mela import guide covers the export side, and how to switch recipe apps lists what to check before you remove the old app.

The verdict

Mela is a beautiful recipe manager for Apple households, and its description-based social import is enough for creators who write their recipes out. If that’s you, and you value a one-time price and on-device processing, Mela is a fine choice.

Pluck is the better fit if:

You or someone you cook with uses Android
You save videos where the recipe is spoken or shown on screen, not written
You save from Facebook, or from photo carousels
You want AI help in cook mode, and an in-app meal plan and grocery list

For more comparisons, see Paprika vs Mela and Pluck vs Pestle, or browse the full recipe app comparison hub. There’s also a quick summary on the Mela alternative page.

Pluck is available on iOS and Android, get it on Google Play. Also on iOS. Visit our roadmap to see what’s next and suggest what you’d like us to build.