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Our vegan editor said HelloFresh had the best plant-based recipes among the services she tested, including Purple Carrot. EveryPlate keeps overhead costs low — at times, cheaper than buying groceries yourself — by offering just a dozen or so meal kit recipes each week. Some meals require more work than others, but express meal options are available if you’re looking for an easy weeknight dinner. The weekly menus offer more than 100 recipes to choose from, and you can also filter by dietary preference.

Use apps on your phone.

This simple umami beef bowl with cucumbers and carrots was one of my favorites. CNET staff — not advertisers, partners or business interests — determine how we review products and services. A lot of them are, and they’ll definitely save you some money! Also, as tempting as it is to stock up, don’t buy more than you really need—especially when it comes to things that go bad. Throwing half of your giant bag of oranges away because they rotted in your fruit basket doesn’t save you a dime.

Best Meal Planning Apps for 2025: A Detailed Guide

• You can also choose your preferred diet and list any food allergies.
• The app also features the option to use the ingredients you have on hand by filtering recipes based on ingredients you enter into the app.
• The less you spend, the more your plan needs to rely on repetition, shelf-stable staples and ingredients that can do double duty across multiple meals.
• We like that you can use the toaster oven for other foods as well.
• When you’re searching for ways to save money on groceries, don’t forget about all the coupon apps out there!
• This manual approach is perfect for meticulous planners who want to build their weekly menus from scratch using their curated collection of favorite dishes.

Whether you need to discover new recipes or just input them into a calendar for reference, there are tools that will come to your rescue, but often at a price. AnyList started as a grocery list app and it shows, in a good way. If your biggest meal-planning headache is coordinating grocery runs with a partner, roommate, or family, this is the app that fixes it. It’s designed to be the central hub for a household’s shopping and cooking plans. You can create and share grocery lists and meal plans with family members in real-time, so everyone is always on the same page. The Forks Meal Planner is a specialized tool designed exclusively for those committed to a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) lifestyle.

Who is prepared meal delivery good for?

A $150 grocery budget for two weeks works well for one adult or two careful shoppers cooking most meals at home. “I also suggest cooking in bulk so you have a couple of leftover meals that are easy to reheat on those nights you’re too busy to cook from scratch,” Woroch said. The more time you spend at a grocery store, the more opportunities you have for impulse buying.

Nutrition Guides

In addition, you can quickly and easily search for additives and ingredients you are unaware of on labels to determine whether they are compliant. Both Apple and Google/Android customers can now enjoy 30 Whole Days… the app that brings the Internet sensation’s 30-day challenge straight to their smartphone or tablet. GO makes capturing the most essential details easy in seconds… and is built on the science unimeal reviews of practical, everyday life. The ProScore System is the app’s equivalent to having your nutritionist. It highlights each item’s good and bad nutritional values and assigns it a score of 1-100. Pepper Plate allows you to log in using your Facebook account and share recipes that way, as well as on Twitter and email.

PSA: ‘Have You Lost Weight?’ Is Not a Compliment

Millions of people already use MyFitnessPal to track their calories and exercise. The app has leveraged this massive user base by adding an integrated meal planning feature. It allows you to plan your meals directly within the ecosystem you already use to track your fitness, creating an easy connection between your diet and your activity. It’s a powerful all-in-one solution for the data-driven user.

Skip Takeout: The Best Prepared Meal Delivery Services, Tested

If you’re committed to eating healthier and still want to save time, Platejoy can help. You can sign up for a 2 week free trial and then it’s only $8 a month to keep getting meal plans delivered to your inbox each week. These powerful tools are designed to be your personal kitchen assistant, automating everything from recipe selection to grocery list creation. For its simplicity of use and fairly low cost, this is a favorite of mine. Mealime supports classic, flexitarian, low carb, pescatarian, vegetarian, paleo, keto, and vegan diets.

Features

Fortunately, a multitude of apps can make meal planning — and maybe weight loss — a lot more attainable. Designed with recipes built from scratch for simplicity and taste – 15 minutes, 5 ingredients every time. Now, access your subscription anywhere your android device takes you. We do our best to make sure you will be able to enjoy the food on the meal plans and have included a bonus guide on common substitutions to make it easy to tailor the plan to your needs. Select the right portion size and your recipes and shopping list to scale your meal plan perfectly. There is also an option to replace any of your meals with one from a restaurant.

It’s your typical weeknight. What’s on the dinner table?

In addition to the standard weekly meal plans, they offer six-week specialty meal plans at a significant discount to the regular price. Six-week specialty plans follow a theme and are sent to you all at once rather than over the course of six weeks. USDA waste data combined with home-cooking research suggests the average family saves $800–1,500 per year through consistent meal planning — far more than any subscription costs. Mealime generates guided weekly plans with clean, short-ingredient recipes and an auto-populated grocery list. It’s the easiest “install and start cooking” experience in this roundup. You can add your grocery list right into the app and sync it with your Google Calendar so that your schedule is always up-to-date with your grocery shopping lists.

Restaurant owner explains the importance of learning every job in a kitchen

But for households who want one app to handle the full workflow from decision to dinner, it’s the strongest choice in 2026. AI-assisted apps (FoodiePrep, PlateJoy, Eat This Much) generate plans from goals; traditional apps (Paprika, Plan to Eat) let you build plans manually. The right choice depends on where your decision fatigue lives. Finally, with this app, you can save time by watching video tutorials on how to prepare certain dishes or even see how-to videos by professional chefs.