OwnplateMealime shut down. Here’s how to keep cooking.
A plain guide for people who planned their weeknight dinners with Mealime: what happened, what to look for in a replacement, and the honest trade-offs between the options.
Updated October 26, 2026. Written by the people who make Ownplate, so we’re one of the options below. We’ve kept the comparison to plain facts.
What happened
- Mealime shut down on October 21, 2026.
- Albertsons moved Mealime’s recipes into Meals Hub, which lives inside its grocery store apps.
- Personal data was deleted at shutdown: saved recipes, plans and lists. There was no export tool.
If you had years of favorites in Mealime, that is a real loss. The good news is that most of what made it useful is easy to get back, and this time you can pick a tool that lets you keep a copy of your own data.
What Mealime users relied on
When you compare replacements, these are the things most people used Mealime for every week:
- Quick recipes that fit a weeknight, mostly 30 minutes or so.
- A grocery list sorted by aisle, built from the whole week’s recipes.
- Dietary filters, such as vegetarian, gluten-free or dairy-free.
- Cook mode: one step at a time, readable from across the kitchen.
One more thing worth asking for this time: can you export your data? If the app closes, a backup file is what saves your recipes.
The options, side by side
Here are five options people are weighing, including ours. Prices change, so check each one’s own site before you buy.
| Option | Cost | Where it runs | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meals Hub | Free | Inside Albertsons-family grocery store apps | Where Mealime’s recipes went. Built around shopping at that store. |
| Paprika | One-time purchase per platform (check current pricing) | Separate apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Mac and Windows | A recipe manager with a meal planner and grocery list. |
| Plan to Eat | Subscription (check current pricing) | Web, iPhone and Android | A meal planner built around importing your own recipes from websites. |
| AnyList | Shared lists free; meal planning needs a subscription (check current pricing) | iPhone, Android, Mac and web | Shared grocery lists first, with recipes and meal planning on top. |
| Ownplate (ours) | Free to start; $19.99 once for everything | Any device with a modern browser; installs to your home screen | Weeknight meal planner. Data stays on your device, works offline, imports from recipe links (Pro). |
All of these do the basic job. Pick by what matters to you: staying with your grocery store (Meals Hub), a big personal recipe collection (Paprika), lists shared with a household (AnyList), or paying once and keeping your data on your own device (Ownplate).
Moving to Ownplate in 5 minutes
- Open the appGo to ownplate.party/
app . No account, no download from a store. - Pick your dietVegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free and more. Ownplate only suggests recipes that fit.
- Tap “Plan my week”You get a week of quick dinners that share fresh ingredients, and one grocery list sorted by aisle. Move or change any night you like.
- Bring your favorites backPaste a recipe’s text and Ownplate sorts out the ingredients and steps. With Pro, paste a link from most recipe websites and it imports the recipe for you.
- Install it to your home screeniPhone: Safari, Share, Add to Home Screen. Android and Chrome: Install app. Then it opens like any app and works offline.
Keep a backup this time. In Ownplate, Settings has a one-tap backup. It saves a plain file you can keep anywhere and open on any other device. Backup and restore are free and always will be.
Ownplate is not affiliated with Mealime, Albertsons, Paprika, Plan to Eat or AnyList. Names belong to their owners and are used here only to describe them.