Mealime Cost and Pricing: What Mealime Charged and Your Options After October 21, 2026

Mealime's pricing was straightforward: the app was free with a premium subscription at $7.99 USD per month or $59.99 per year. The free version had limited features, and most users paid for the subscription to unlock the full meal-planning experience. But on October 21, 2026, Mealime will shut down permanently—accounts will be deleted and no export option is being offered.

This shutdown matters if you've been using Mealime and have recipes saved there. You need to act now. We'll walk you through Mealime's actual pricing, why the closure is important, what similar apps cost, and how to move your recipes before they're gone.

What Mealime Cost

Mealime's pricing was consistent for years. The free plan let you save recipes and create meal plans, but with limits on features. The paid plan ($7.99/month or $59.99/year) unlocked:

• Unlimited recipes
• Custom household settings (serving size adjustments)
• Grocery list generation and organisation
• Integration with grocery delivery services
• Ad-free experience

If you subscribed annually at $59.99, that broke down to about $5 per month. Month-to-month, you paid $7.99. Most subscription apps use this structure, so Mealime was fairly typical.

Over a year, if you paid month-to-month, you'd spend $95.88 USD. Paid annually, it was $59.99. Over five years of subscription, a monthly payer would spend $479.40; an annual subscriber would spend $299.95.

Why Mealime Is Shutting Down and What That Means

On October 21, 2026, Mealime will permanently close. The company is not offering any export of your recipes, grocery lists, or data. This is unusual—most apps that shut down at least provide a data download.

If you have favorites saved in Mealime, those recipes will be inaccessible after the shutdown date. You won't be able to log in, retrieve them, or export a list of recipe links. This is why urgency matters if you have recipes you want to keep.

The Cost of Losing Your Mealime Recipes (and How to Prevent It)

The cost of inaction is losing the recipes you've collected. If you've been using Mealime for two or three years and have 50, 100, or 200 recipes saved, that's research time and organisation work you can't recover.

However, there's a workaround: if you remember the names of your favorite recipes, Mealfolder's rescue tool can help. You paste your favorite recipe names, and Mealfolder matches them against an index of all 3,291 public Mealime recipes. If it finds them, your recipes—including photos—are saved to Mealfolder. This works because Mealfolder has indexed the recipes Mealime publicly offered, even though Mealime itself isn't exporting.

If your favorite recipes aren't in that index (because they were imported from other sources or created within Mealime), you'll need to save them manually using other import methods: pasting the recipe text, taking a photo of a cookbook page, or using a recipe link.

How Mealime's Cost Compares to Alternatives

Here's what you'd spend annually with similar apps:

Mealime was one of the pricier options. If cost is your concern, there are cheaper or free alternatives.

How to Move Your Recipes Before October 21

If you're leaving Mealime, here's the most practical path:

1. Write down your favorite recipes. Open Mealime on your phone or web browser and scroll through your saved recipes. Write down the names of the 10, 20, or 50 recipes you actually use. You don't need to memorise them all—just the ones you cook regularly.
2. Use the Mealfolder rescue. Go to mealfolder.com/mealime/ and paste your recipe names. Mealfolder will match them against its index of 3,291 Mealime recipes and save them with photos if available. This is the fastest way to save bulk recipes at once.
3. For recipes not found, use manual import. If Mealfolder doesn't find a recipe, you have three options: paste the recipe text directly, take a photo of the recipe (from a cookbook or printed sheet) and upload it, or if you have a link to the recipe online, paste the URL and Mealfolder will extract it.
4. Plan your week in your new app. Once your recipes are saved, create your weekly meal plan and generate a grocery list. Most apps let you do this with one or two taps.

Choosing Your Next Meal-Planning App

Your choice depends on your needs and budget:

• Lowest cost, one-time payment: Paprika ($4.99 one-time) or Recipe Keeper ($2.99) are strong options.
• Comprehensive meal planning with grocery lists: Plan to Eat ($25/year) or Mealfolder Plus ($12.99/year) work well.
• Community features or recipe discovery: Yummly (free tier) or BigOven (free tier) offer these.
• Zero cost, basic features: Free tiers of AnyList, Copy Me That, Samsung Food, BigOven, or Yummly are available.

Many of these apps also let you import recipes from other sources. For example, if you're leaving Paprika for another app, Paprika exports a file that Mealfolder and others can import directly. Check the import options of any app you're considering.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get a refund from Mealime if I paid for a subscription?

Mealime is not offering refunds for remaining subscription time. Your best recourse is to contact Mealime directly through their support email or app to ask if they have a one-time exception. However, no refund policy has been announced. If you paid by credit card and your subscription auto-renews after October 21, you may be able to dispute the charge with your card issuer if the service is no longer available.

Will my Mealime recipes be available after October 21?

No. Mealime is deleting all user accounts and data on October 21, 2026. There is no export option. If you have not saved your recipes elsewhere by that date, they will be permanently inaccessible. The only way to recover them is if Mealfolder's index includes them, which covers 3,291 public Mealime recipes. Any private or imported recipes not in that index will be lost.

What if I don't remember all my recipe names?

Write down what you can and use Mealfolder's rescue tool with those names. For recipes you can't remember, you have two choices: recreate them from memory by pasting the recipe text, or let them go and rebuild your collection over time by saving recipes from new sources. Most home cooks don't actively use all their saved recipes—focus on the ones you cook regularly.

Is Mealfolder the only way to recover Mealime recipes?

No, but it's the fastest for bulk recovery. If Mealfolder doesn't find a recipe, you can try searching for it online by name and saving it through Mealfolder's link import, photo import, or paste features. You can also manually enter recipes you remember. It's slower than the rescue tool, but it works.