# Alternatives to Mealie Self-hosted recipes with meal planning. Mealie ranks #6 of 8 in Recipe managers, with an Alt Score of 73. It is licensed under AGPL-3.0, free from Free and available on the web. 8 of 10 checklist rows are verified against a public source. Source: https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/mealie/ Category: Recipe managers ## Where Mealie stands out - **Self-hostable** — 3 of 8 apps with a verified answer have this ## Overview - **Who it's for**: Households and families who want to self-host their own recipe collection and meal planning tool rather than relying on ad-heavy recipe sites or third-party cloud services. - **What you get**: A recipe manager that imports recipes directly from any URL using a built-in web scraper, parsing ingredients and instructions automatically. It supports meal planning, auto-generated shopping lists (with ingredient consolidation via ML-based parsing), recipe scaling, nutrition data, and multi-user groups for sharing recipes across a household. Since it's self-hosted, you keep full control of your data, with support for backups and an open API for integrations. - **How it works**: You paste in a recipe URL (or add one manually), and Mealie scrapes and structures it into your library; from there you build meal plans from your saved recipes and generate a shopping list, with household members accessing the shared collection through group permissions. ## Profile - **License**: AGPL-3.0 (verified 2026-07-10) - **Pricing model**: Free (verified 2026-07-10) - **Starts at**: Free (verified 2026-07-10) - **Platforms**: Web - **Status**: active (verified 2026-07-10) ## Ranked alternatives | # | App | Alt Score | Licence | Platforms | |---|-----|-----------|---------|-----------| | 1 | [Paprika](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/paprika.md) | 82 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android | | 2 | [Tandoor](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/tandoor.md) | 82 | AGPL-3.0 with Commons Clause | Linux, Web | | 3 | [Crouton](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/crouton.md) | 78 | ? | iOS, macOS | | 4 | [Mela](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/mela.md) | 73 | Proprietary | iOS, macOS | | 5 | [Samsung Food](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/samsung-food.md) | 73 | Proprietary | iOS, Android, Web, macOS | | 6 | [KitchenOwl](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/kitchenowl.md) | 68 | AGPL-3.0 | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS | | 7 | [Mealime](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/mealime.md) | 60 | Proprietary | iOS, Android, Web | Alt Score = Verified coverage (90%) + Visibility (10%). See https://altcatalog.com/how-alt-score-works/ ## Feature comparison Legend: Yes / No / Partial / ? (not verified). | Recipe managers checklist | Mealie | Paprika | Tandoor | Crouton | Mela | Samsung Food | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Pricing model | Free | One-time | OSS + paid hosting | Freemium | One-time | Freemium | | Starts at | Free | $4.99 | €1.99/mo | $1.99 | $6.99 | $6.99/month | | License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary | AGPL-3.0 with Commons Clause | ? | Proprietary | Proprietary | | Platforms | Web | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android | Linux, Web | iOS, macOS | iOS, macOS | iOS, Android, Web, macOS, Browser extension | | Web clipper / URL import | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Meal planning | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Grocery lists | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Scaling & unit conversion | Yes | Yes | Partial | Yes | No | Yes | | Self-hostable | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | | Cross-device sync | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Offline access | ? | Yes | Partial | ? | ? | ? | | One-time purchase option | No | Yes | No | Partial | Yes | No | | OCR from photos | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Sharing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ## Sources Sources for Mealie. Each alternative is sourced on its own page. - **License**: AGPL-3.0 — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 19 November 2007” - **Starts at**: Free — (verified 2026-07-10) - Note: Free OSS; no paid tier. - Quote: “Distributed under the AGPL License. See `LICENSE` for more information.” - **Platforms**: Web — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Progressive Web App” - **Pricing model**: Free — (verified 2026-07-10) - Note: Fully AGPL OSS, self-hosted; no paid tier. - Quote: “Mealie is a self hosted recipe manager, meal planner and shopping list with a RestAPI backend and a reactive frontend built in Vue” - **Status**: active — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “the Mealie team advises specifying a specific version tag and consciously updating to newer versions when you have time to read the release notes” - **Web clipper / URL import**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Recipe Scraper: Create recipes from hundreds of websites by simply providing a URL.” - **Meal planning**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Mealie uses a calendar like view to help you plan your meals.” - **Grocery lists**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “The shopping lists feature is a great way to keep track of what you need to buy for your next meal.” - **Scaling & unit conversion**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Scaling up this recipe or adding it to a Shopping List will now smartly take care of ingredient amounts and duplicate combinations.” - **Self-hostable**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Mealie is a self hosted recipe manager and meal planner with a RestAPI backend and a reactive frontend application built in Vue” - **One-time purchase option**: No — (verified 2026-07-10) - Note: Free OSS; no purchase. - Quote: “Distributed under the AGPL License. See `LICENSE` for more information.” - **OCR from photos**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Image Import: Upload an image of a written or typed recipe and Mealie will use OCR and AI to import it.” - **Sharing**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-10) - Quote: “Private links that are generated from the recipe page using the Share button bypass all group and recipe permissions” --- Ranked by verified data, never by who paid. https://altcatalog.com/trust/