Pluck vs Preplo: Which AI Recipe Extraction App Is Better in 2026?

Preplo made a splash by winning the RevenueCat Shipyard 2026 Creator Contest. The idea, share a cooking video and get a structured recipe back, resonated with judges and users, and for good reason: it’s a problem a lot of home cooks have every day.

Updated October 2026: this post reflects Preplo’s current App Store listing and website. Preplo has a free tier of one extraction, and its last App Store update was version 1.0.3 on March 26, 2026.

If you’re evaluating Pluck vs Preplo, here’s what actually differs.

The core difference: what each app reads

Both apps let you share a video and get a recipe back. The difference is in what they read.

Preplo reads the transcript for YouTube videos and the description for TikTok and Instagram Reels. When a creator writes out the full recipe, or a YouTube video has a clear narrated transcript, Preplo works well. It’s simple and fast.

Pluck reads everything in the post and combines it:

1. Video frames, for ingredients and steps shown on screen
2. Audio, transcribed, for spoken instructions and amounts, on every platform
3. On-screen text, for ingredient lists and overlays shown in the video
4. Caption and description
5. Images, for photos, screenshots, cookbook pages and photo carousels

When a TikTok creator says “a quarter cup of soy sauce” but only writes “marinade recipe!!” in the caption, Pluck gets the amount from the audio. Preplo reads the TikTok description, which has no recipe in it.

Source coverage

Preplo supports three platforms: YouTube, TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Pluck supports those, plus:

• Facebook videos and Reels
• Instagram and TikTok photo carousels, read as one recipe
• Any food blog URL, with the recipe pulled out from the ads and life story
• Photos: cookbook pages, handwritten family recipes, screenshots from group chats

If your recipes come only from YouTube and TikTok creators who write things out, Preplo covers you. Most home cooks find recipes in more places than that.

What happens after you save

This is where the two apps differ most today.

Preplo offers diet toggles (vegan, spicy, low-carb and so on) that rewrite a recipe, a grocery list with price estimates, a cook mode, and weekly cooking streaks on its paid plans. It has no meal planner and no shared list: its site announces meal planning and family sharing, and neither has been released.

Pluck has:

• A meal plan: a week view with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack slots, recipes or free-text notes, and per-meal servings. On Plus and Pro, Fill my week fills the empty days from your own saved recipes.
• A grocery list built from one recipe or a whole week’s plan, with duplicate ingredients merged and added up, sorted by aisle, usable offline, and shared with up to 5 other people. See how to build a meal plan from TikTok recipes.
• Cook mode: one step at a time, the ingredients for that step, timers you start from the step, and resume where you left off. A recipe you finish there goes into your cooking log.
• “What can I cook?”: type what you have and Pluck ranks your saved recipes. Free on every plan.
• An AI cooking assistant (Light, Plus and Pro plans) that knows the recipe and the step you’re on.

The AI cooking assistant

Preplo’s diet toggles handle common changes in one tap. Pluck’s assistant handles the questions that come up while you cook:

• “I don’t have rice vinegar, what can I use?” gets a substitution for this recipe
• “How do I scale this to 8 servings?” recalculates the amounts
• “What does ‘fold in’ mean for this batter?” explains the technique in context

You can apply changes like scaling or unit conversion to the saved recipe. It isn’t a generic chatbot; it answers about the recipe in front of you.

Feature comparison

Feature	Pluck	Preplo
YouTube	Yes (frames, audio, on-screen text)	Yes (transcript)
TikTok, Instagram Reels	Yes (frames, audio, on-screen text, caption)	Yes (description)
Facebook	Yes	Not listed
Photo carousels	Yes, as one recipe	Not listed
Food blogs	Yes	Not listed
Photos / handwriting	Yes	Not listed
AI cooking assistant	Yes (paid plans)	No (diet toggles)
Cook mode	Yes, with step timers	Yes
Meal planning	Yes (weekly)	No (announced, not released)
Plans the week for you	Fill my week, from your own recipes (Plus and Pro)	No
Grocery list	Yes, merged, sorted by aisle, shared with up to 5 people	Yes, with price estimates
Shared grocery list	Yes, with up to 5 others (free)	No (family sharing announced, not released)
Ingredient search	”What can I cook?” (free), also from a fridge photo	Not listed
Import from other apps	Paprika, Mela, Crouton, CopyMeThat, JSON-LD	Not listed
App languages	6	English
Platforms	iOS, Android	iOS (Android listed as coming)
Free plan	3 extractions/mo, 10 recipes	1 extraction, no account needed
Paid price	From $2.99/mo or $23.99/yr; Pro $499.99 lifetime	$9.99/mo, $49.99/yr, $129.99 lifetime
Extractions on paid plans	10, 50 or 200 per month	Unlimited

When Preplo might be enough

Preplo isn’t trying to be everything. It can be the right pick if:

• You save mostly YouTube videos with clear narration, or TikToks whose descriptions contain the recipe
• You like weekly cooking streaks to build a habit (Pluck’s cooking log shows how many times you’ve cooked a recipe and when you last made it, but it has no streaks)
• You want grocery price estimates
• You extract so many videos that unlimited extractions are worth $9.99/month, $49.99/year or $129.99 lifetime
• You cook from an iPhone, in English

It’s worth knowing that Preplo is iPhone-only today, with Android listed as “coming soon”, and the app hasn’t been updated since March 2026.

When you need Pluck

• You find recipes in more places than YouTube and TikTok: Facebook, food blogs, photo carousels, cookbook pages
• You save TikToks and Reels where the creator speaks but doesn’t write. Preplo reads only the description there.
• You want help while cooking, plus a meal plan Pluck can fill for you and a grocery list you can share
• You want to start free with more than a single try, or pay less: Pluck’s paid plans start at $2.99/month
• You’re on Android, or want the app in German, Spanish, French, Italian or Swedish as well as English
• Privacy matters to you: analytics and error tracking are off by default in Pluck, you can export your data or delete your account, and the AI providers it uses don’t train on your data

The bottom line

We built Pluck, so of course we think it’s the better choice for most people. We built it because we were the people screenshotting recipes from Instagram at 11pm, losing them in our camera roll, and then searching for “that chicken thing with the crispy skin” three weeks later.

Preplo proves something we already believed: people want to turn cooking videos into real recipes. We think the solution needs to go further: more sources, reading the whole video rather than just the transcript or description, and a meal plan, grocery list and assistant that take you from “that looks good” to dinner on the table.

The best way to compare? Don’t trust either of us. Find a TikTok where the creator talks through the recipe without writing it down, and try it in both apps. Preplo’s free tier gives you one extraction and Pluck’s gives you three a month.

See how Pluck’s AI extraction works, or compare more apps in our recipe app comparison hub and on the Preplo alternative page.