Mealime alternative: how to choose one now that it is closing

Everything in this section comes from Mealime's own pages, read on October 14, 2026, a week before the announced shutdown. Details can change, so check the source before you act.

Mealime's closing notice says the app will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026, and the banner on the Mealime home page says the same. It says Mealime was acquired by Albertsons Companies in 2021, and that its recipes and meal-planning tools are moving to a product called Meals Hub, found inside Albertsons Companies grocery apps.

On subscriptions, the notice says Pro subscribers will not be charged any further fees before the shutdown, and that Pro recipes and features become available to all Mealime users. On data, it says personal data is deleted when the app shuts down, and that dietary preferences and some settings have to be set up again inside Meals Hub.

It also says Meals Hub is free, keeps the Mealime recipes, and can be used without an Albertsons store nearby. That is Mealime's description of its own successor, and it is a fair option for many people. More on that below.

Four small jobs, in this order. They only work while the app still opens, so if you are reading this after October 21, 2026, skip to the next section and rebuild from memory.

1. Open your saved and favourite recipes and write down the five or six you actually cook.
2. Note your diet settings and allergies somewhere you control, because they will not carry over automatically.
3. Screenshot the shopping list for the week you are on, so the plan survives the switch.
4. Check your subscription is not set to renew, and read the closing notice for what it says about charges.

People used Mealime for different things, and the right replacement depends on which one was yours. Mealime's own listing describes a weekly personalised plan, a grocery list built from the recipes, step-by-step cooking instructions, nutrition information and a long list of diet options.

So ask yourself which of those you leaned on. If it was the plan arriving without any effort, you want another catalogue-style planner. If it was the grocery list, you want a list that is built for you and sorted by aisle. If it was a diet setting, check that your next app supports yours before you move.

Most people, asked honestly, used it for the plan and the list. The recipes were the part they happened to find themselves cooking.

Stay with Mealime's team on Meals Hub. If you liked Mealime's recipes, this is the closest thing to staying put. By its own description it is free, keeps the Mealime recipes and comes from the same team. The catch is the front door: you reach it through an Albertsons Companies store app, which some people will not want on their phone.

Move to another catalogue-style planner. The category is crowded, and the approach is the same as Mealime's: pick a plan from a library, get a list, go shopping. The things to compare are the diets supported, whether the list sorts by aisle, and what the free version includes. Read the free limits before you build a habit around one.

Move to a planner that starts from your kitchen. This is the other half of the problem. A catalogue plan assumes you are about to shop. If you already own half of what the week needs, a plan built from your shelf does less buying and less binning. This is what PrepWise does, and it is a different way of working rather than a better version of the first one.

PrepWise keeps a pantry, shows which recipes you can cook from it right now, and writes the shopping list as the gap between your plan and your shelf. The pantry can be loaded from a photo of a shelf or a grocery receipt. The assistant can generate a recipe or plan a week, and each recipe carries calories, protein, carbs and fat.

It is on iPhone and free to download. The free tier holds 15 saved recipes and 20 assistant messages a day. PrepWise Pro is $6.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial.

What it is not is a library written and tested by a food team. Recipes in PrepWise come from the assistant or from you, so if the thing you loved about Mealime was a large set of recipes someone else had cooked and checked, Meals Hub is the closer match.

If the shopping list is the part you want, the shopping list page shows how it is built, and the pantry meal planner page covers the plan side.

Skip it if you are on Android, because there is no Android app. Skip it if you want a finished plan to arrive with no tracking at all, because PrepWise works best when it knows what is in your kitchen. And skip it if the recipes were the whole point, for the reason above.

If you are not sure, run the free tier for one week on the same plan you were going to cook anyway, and see whether the list comes out shorter. The meal planning guide walks through that week if you want a method rather than an app.