The best AI meal planner apps compared, and meals planned from your kitchen and your week

Why most meal planner apps fall short

Finding recipes is the easy part. The hard part is the week they have to fit: the meeting that runs late on Wednesday, leg day on Thursday, friends for lunch on Saturday with one of them allergic to nuts, the chicken that needs using by Wednesday, and the trip on Monday that would leave half the fridge to go off.

Most meal planner apps start from recipes and work back. They plan a typical week and give you a shopping list for all of it. You still do the joining up: which nights you’ll actually cook, what to make double, what’s already in, who’s eating, and what not to buy because you’ll be away.

A good AI meal planner works the other way round. It starts from your week, your kitchen and the people at your table, and works forward to the recipes and the shop.

What a good AI meal planner knows, and does

To plan well, it needs to know:

• What’s already in your kitchen, without you typing it all in, and what needs using first.
• The week you’re actually having: late nights, training days, nights out and trips.
• Who’s eating: who’s home which nights, what each person eats, and any guests and their allergies.
• What you really cook: the recipes you’ve saved and make again, the ones you swap out, and how long you’ll spend on a weeknight.
• Your budget, and where you shop.

Then it should turn all that into dinner on the table:

• Plan the week’s meals, with a recipe for each, to fit the time you have that night, from the recipes you love as well as new ones.
• Cook once, eat twice, or three times. A double batch on a quiet night covers the late one, and a batch-cooking session can fill the freezer for the week after.
• Use things up before they go off, and before you go away.
• Turn the recipes into the shop: only what’s missing, sized to the nights you’re in, from the shop you use.
• Feed everyone at the table, guests included, around what each person can’t or won’t eat.
• Tell you why. “Curry on Sunday, doubled, because Wednesday’s meeting runs late” is worth more than a recipe card.

The top AI meal planner apps at a glance

We looked at five of the best-known meal planners that plan for you or with you, chosen for their reach and how much of the planning they take on. It’s an editorial pick, not a ranking. We left out apps that mainly count calories, which our AI nutritionist guide compares, and Mealime, which closed on 21 October 2026 (more on that below).

App by app

Samsung Food

Cost

Free; Food+ $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year

Where

iPhone, iPad, Android, web

App Store

4.8 from 6.4K ratings

Samsung Food, from the Samsung group, had more than six million users by July 2024. Saving recipes, including any recipe from any website, planning your week and shopping lists are free. Food+ writes seven-day meal plans, adjusts recipes and macros, tracks nutrition and suggests recipes from what’s in your pantry, starting with what’s closest to its date, and the pantry updates as you cook and shop. Your profile holds your diet, foods you avoid or are allergic to, dislikes and household size, and it learns your preferences as you use it. Its App Store listing adds shared shopping lists, delivery from 23 integrated retailers across four regions, a step-by-step Smart Cooking Mode and links to Samsung SmartThings Cooking appliances.

Worth knowingIt’s the strongest planner here for using up what you have, but Food+’s advanced features are mobile only, and some links need a compatible appliance or retailer. Leftovers, batch cooking, your calendar and your training aren’t mentioned in what we read. Its terms caution about AI content, so treat its dietary filters as a help, not a promise of allergy safety. Its privacy policy lists some data categories as potentially “sold” under California law, with an opt-out.

MyFitnessPal Meal Planner

Cost

Part of Premium+, about $24.99 a month or $99.99 a year

Where

iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch, web

App Store

4.7 from 2.4M ratings

MyFitnessPal’s Meal Planner sits inside one of the best-known calorie trackers, with 2.4 million App Store ratings. It plans around allergies, preferences, cooking time, budget, how many you’re feeding and leftovers, gets better as you rate recipes, and links to grocery delivery. Its AI Coach can also suggest meals from your diary and saved recipes.

Worth knowingIt suits you best if you already log in MyFitnessPal. The planner needs Premium+, which the App Store listing doesn’t price; a third-party price check puts it at $24.99 a month or $99.99 a year. A pantry, your calendar and your training aren’t mentioned. Its privacy policy describes sharing with advertising partners, with opt-outs. We compare its tracking and Coach in our AI nutritionist guide.

Ollie

Cost

Ollie for Meals: a month free, then a subscription. The assistant: free to $100 a month

Where

Ollie for Meals: iPhone and iPad. The assistant: by text

App Store

4.8 from 938 ratings

Ollie started as an AI meal planner for families, and says more than 90,000 families trust it. Ollie for Meals learns your family’s tastes from a few questions and from what you cook, writes a recipe for each meal, and turns each week’s menu into a grocery list to take to the store or send to Instacart, Walmart or Amazon Fresh. You can swap or replace anything in a chat, snap a photo of your fridge or pantry for ideas, and let it plan the weeks ahead on its own. The same company now runs the Ollie assistant, which you text: with your permission it reads your Google or Outlook calendar and email, sends a daily briefing, keeps lists, and handles orders, bookings and forms for you.

Worth knowingThe App Store listing shows Ollie Plus prices from $9.99 to $169.99 without saying which period each covers, and Ollie’s meals page says prices appear in the app. The assistant is priced by messages: free for 50 a month plus 6 a day, $25 a month for 150, or $100 a month for 1,000. Allergies aren’t mentioned beyond “dietary needs”, and although the assistant can read your calendar, neither says it plans dinners from it. Its privacy policy says it doesn’t sell your data, promote sponsored products or let AI providers train their models on what you share, though de-identified data may improve Ollie’s own systems, and that AI-written plans can be inaccurate.

Eat This Much

Cost

Free a day at a time; Premium from $5 a month, paid yearly

Where

Web, iPhone, iPad, Android

App Store

4.7 from 22K ratings

Eat This Much calls itself “the automatic meal planner” and says more than 6 million people have planned with it. You give it a calorie target and macros, your diet, the foods you like, your budget and your schedule, and it generates the meals. Free accounts plan a day at a time, with food tracking and a barcode scanner. Premium plans a week at a time, with automatic leftovers, an automatic grocery list and delivery through Instacart, Amazon Fresh, Walmart and more. Its virtual pantry uses up what you already have first, you can set different targets for each day of the week, and favourite meals can repeat on a schedule.

Worth knowingIt’s built around numbers more than tastes. It doesn’t describe itself as AI, and learning from what you cook isn’t mentioned beyond the favourites you set. Ingredient filters let you block foods for allergies, but check labels yourself. The App Store listing shows Premium prices from $8.99 to $84.99 without saying which period each covers. It says it isn’t a substitute for medical advice, and its privacy policy, last updated in 2020, says your personal data won’t be sold.

Plan to Eat

Cost

$5.95 a month or $49 a year; 14-day free trial

Where

iPhone, Android, web

App Store

4.8 from 6.1K ratings

Plan to Eat is for people who already have recipes they love, and says more than 50,000 meal planners use it. Its Recipe Clipper saves recipes from websites, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more, you can snap a recipe card or cookbook page to add it, and this year it added AI to transcribe recipe reels, read recipes shown on screen and match ingredients to nutrition data. You put recipes on a planning calendar, for a week, a month or longer, and it builds a grocery list sorted by aisle, with grocery delivery. It can plan leftovers, track frozen meals, scale servings, suggest AI ingredient swaps for allergens or your diet, and share everything with your household.

Worth knowingPlan to Eat won’t plan the week for you: you choose every meal, which some people prefer. A pantry isn’t mentioned beyond a staples list. There’s no free plan, the App Store charges $54.99 a year, and on its website yearly plans don’t renew unless you choose. It’s customer-funded, and its pricing page says it never sells your data or shows ads.

Mealime, now closed

Closed

21 October 2026

Now

Meals Hub, in Albertsons Companies’ grocery apps

Cost

Meals Hub is free

Mealime, a simple meal planner with quick recipes and an automatic grocery list, said more than 4.5 million people had joined it. It closed on 21 October 2026. Albertsons Companies, which bought it in 2021, has moved its recipes and team to Meals Hub, inside its grocery store apps and websites. Meals Hub is free, and you can still browse recipes, plan meals and make shopping lists there without an Albertsons Companies store nearby.

Worth knowingMealime says your personal data is deleted when the app shuts down, and your preferences don’t carry over: you set them up again in Meals Hub.

Where Retenna goes further

Some of these apps are very good at their part: Samsung Food at planning from your pantry, Eat This Much at hitting your numbers, Ollie at taking dinner off a busy family’s plate, Plan to Eat at keeping your own recipes. Retenna is built to cover those basics too. Like Plan to Eat, it saves your own recipes: from recipe sites and apps such as BBC Good Food, Allrecipes, NYT Cooking, Tasty and food blogs, videos on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook and more, and photos of cookbook pages. It learns what’s in your kitchen from a photo of the fridge or cupboards and from your receipts, plans your meals with the depth of a dedicated meal planner, from recipes to the shop, and logs and counts what you eat (counting is a health feature, for adults aged 18 and over).

Then it goes further, because it doesn’t plan meals on their own. It plans them inside the week you’re actually having, with every other expert.

Yes

The maker documents it.

Partly

A lighter version: saving recipes from websites, or typing them in, rather than from videos and photos as well; ideas from a fridge photo rather than a pantry; tracking frozen meals rather than planning a batch cook and its freezer portions; “dietary needs” or diet-based swaps rather than allergies; family tastes, a household size or a serving count rather than each person and guest; a schedule you enter, or a calendar read for other jobs, rather than meals planned from it; targets you set for each day rather than your training; nutrition shown for recipes rather than a log of what you ate; favourites you set rather than learned tastes; plans made automatically, without rules you set; and, for Ollie, an assistant for family logistics rather than a full space for each part of life.

–Dash

Not mentioned in the maker’s own materials. That doesn’t prove it can’t.

The top rows are where the best apps meet, and Retenna is built to match them, including Plan to Eat on saving your own recipes. The lower rows are the difference. None of the five says it plans dinners from your calendar or your training, plans a batch-cooking session with freezer portions, or does things for you inside rules you set. What you should cook on Wednesday depends on Wednesday, and a planner that can only see recipes has to guess the rest.

A week of meals, planned from your kitchen and your week

Here’s how it looks in a real week. You and Alex are home most nights. Wednesday’s meeting runs until 19:30, your trainer has moved leg day to Thursday, four of you are having lunch at yours on Saturday, and you’re away for work on Monday and Tuesday next week, back on Tuesday evening. Each note is what Retenna would show you, with its reason.

What it joined upYour calendar: the late meeting, Saturday’s lunch and next week’s trip. Your trainer: leg day on Thursday. Your kitchen, from a photo of the fridge and cupboards and your last receipt: chicken thighs to use by Wednesday, half a bag of spinach, rice and a tin of chickpeas. Your recipes: the chickpea curry you saved from a cooking video, and the vegetable lasagne you saved from a photo of your cookbook. Alex: doesn’t eat meat. Your guests: Sam has a nut allergy, and you haven’t cooked for Jo before. Your habits: on late nights you order in unless dinner is ready, 5 of your last 6. Your budget: £55 a week for food.

What it ruled outYour usual full shop, because so much of the week is already in your kitchen. Cooking from scratch on Wednesday, because late nights end in takeaway. A satay dressing for Saturday, because of Sam’s allergy. Anything fresh for Monday or Tuesday, because you won’t be there to eat it.

Seven dinners and Saturday’s lunch, built round what was already in and recipes you already love: Wednesday covered before the meeting ran late, protein after leg day, a lunch all four of you can eat, dinner in the freezer for when you’re back, and nothing left to go off while you’re away. Allergies are planned around, not guessed: Retenna works from what you and your guests tell it, and you should always check labels. It isn’t medical advice.

From your recipes to the shop: batch cooking, leftovers and the weekly shop

On the home page we put it in one line: your nutritionist plans your meals, from recipes to the shop. Here’s what that covers.

Your recipes, wherever you found themSave a recipe from a website, a cooking video or a photo of a cookbook page, and it becomes part of your plans, alongside new ideas that fit the week. It notices which ones you make again, so the favourites come back when a week needs something reliable.

What’s in your kitchen, without the typingSnap the fridge or the cupboards, and it learns what’s in. Your receipts and orders keep it up to date as you shop, so the plan starts from the chicken to use by Wednesday, not a blank page.

Recipes that fit the nightEvery meal comes with its recipe, chosen for what’s already in, who’s eating and how long you have that evening: a slow curry on Sunday, soup for two in 15 minutes on a busy Thursday.

Batch cooking and leftovers, planned on purposeWhen a busy stretch is coming, it plans a batch-cooking session: an hour on Sunday, with portions for the late night midweek and more for the freezer, each one planned for the night that needs it. On an ordinary week, one tray can do two dinners, chicken for you and halloumi for Alex, with enough saved for tomorrow. Leftovers and freezer portions become part of the plan, not whatever’s left over.

A shop sized to your weekYour personal shopper turns the recipes into the shop: only what’s missing, sized to the nights you’re in, from the supermarket you use, arriving when you’re home. It compares prices across shops, watches for price drops and finds deals and codes. It never takes commission, uses affiliate links or shows paid placements: it recommends for you, not for the shops.

Logged and countedWhat you eat is logged, with calories and nutrients counted, so next week’s plan learns from what really happened. The meals it planned log with one tap, including portions and leftovers. Anything else logs from a 3D scan of your plate, a barcode, a label, a few words, or the menu or order email when you eat out, and your usual breakfast becomes one tap. Targets adjust over time, and gentle mode tracks without the numbers. Counting is a health feature, so it’s for adults aged 18 and over. If nutrition is your main goal, our AI nutritionist guide goes deeper on tracking and coaching, and our AI calorie counter guide compares the logging apps.

The everyday jobs it takes off your hands

Add it up, and this is the work that stops living in your head.

Why it’s better with your other experts

Your nutritionist shares one living model of you, and one picture of your week, with every other expert. So the meals fit everything else that’s going on:

• Your personal trainer. When leg day moves, a high-protein dinner is ready that night, and race-week meals are planned with the race.
• Your planner. A weekend away means the fridge used up before you go, and dinner out booked for the Saturday, not the night you arrive, because you’re flat after travelling.
• Your wellbeing coach. Dinner is lighter or earlier when your sleep needs protecting, a hard week on your watch eases tomorrow’s workout, meals and evening, and before a big interview a light breakfast is planned, because you skip breakfast when you’re nervous.
• Your personal shopper. The shop comes from your usual supermarket, at a better price where it can find one, and never for a commission.
• The people you love. What Alex eats, Sam’s allergy, and Dad’s 70th at the Italian place by the river, booked the morning group tables open. Anything that involves them asks you first.

When something changes, only what it affects moves. If the rehearsal moves to 08:00, Wednesday’s breakfast is ready the night before, and the rest of the week’s meals stay put.

How it learns your tastes

Everything Retenna knows about how you eat sits in one living model of you. It learns from what you do, what you choose and what you tell it, including what you log, cook again, swap out and undo, and every fact it learns says where it came from:

• The chickpea curry is a regular. Saved from a cooking video, and made 6 times in 2 months, so it comes back on busy weeks.
• Rice and tins are always in. From photos of your cupboards and your receipts, so they stay off the list.
• Weeknight dinners take 30 minutes at most. You’ve swapped out anything longer 4 times this month.
• On late nights, you order in unless dinner is ready. 5 of your last 6 late nights.
• Alex doesn’t eat meat. From Alex’s shared plans.
• Sam has a nut allergy. From what you’ve told Retenna.
• £55 a week for food, from your usual supermarket. From your budget and your orders.

The more it learns, the less it needs to ask:

1. Day one It asks. Who you cook for, any allergies and foods anyone avoids, how long you like to spend on a weeknight, your weekly budget and your usual supermarket. You share the recipes you love, from websites, cooking videos or a photo of a cookbook page, snap the fridge and cupboards, and connect what you choose, such as your calendar, your orders and receipts, and Apple Health, Health Connect, Samsung Health and more.
2. Within weeks It suggests. It has noticed you order in on late nights, so before Wednesday’s meeting it suggests doubling Sunday’s curry, and waits for your yes.
3. In time It decides the way you would, further ahead: the week planned from what’s in and the recipes you love, a batch cook before a busy week with portions in the freezer, and the shop sized to the nights you’re home, all done and explained, with an Undo.

And your tastes keep moving, so it does too. Every recipe you make again, swap or undo tells it a little more.

How you shape it, and stay in charge

Your rules, in your own wordsYou choose what it simply does and tells you about after, and what waits for your yes. To start with, your own plans and places you’ve used before are done for you, and anywhere new and new spending ask first. Anything that involves another person always asks first. Change a rule, and your week changes with it. Here’s the same Sunday under each setting for your usual food shop:

A reason and an Undo, every timeEvery meal comes with why it was chosen, and an Undo. Undo Thursday’s dinner and cook something else, and it learns from that too.

It notices what you undoKeep swapping out the same kind of meal, such as fish on weeknights, and it says so and suggests a rule, like keeping fish for the weekend.

See, change or forget what it knowsYour living model is yours to read: “On late nights, you order in unless dinner is ready”, from 5 of your last 6. Change it or forget it, and it stops planning around it. When something changes, such as Alex starting to eat fish, you change it once and every plan follows.

How to choose

If you want help with meals on their own, one of these will do it, and some do it well. If you want your meals planned as part of your whole week, that’s Retenna.

For meal planning on its own

• Samsung FoodWeekly plans that start from your pantry, with a free plannerPlans and pantry suggestions need Food+.
• Eat This MuchPlans built to your calories and macros, with leftoversFree a day at a time; a week needs Premium.
• OllieFamily dinners planned for you, and the order sent to Instacart, Walmart or Amazon FreshOllie for Meals is on iPhone and iPad.
• Plan to EatYour own recipes, saved from anywhere and planned onto a calendarYou choose every meal.
• MyFitnessPalA meal planner inside your calorie trackerNeeds Premium+.
• Meals HubMealime’s recipes and plans, free, now in Albertsons Companies’ grocery appsMealime closed on 21 October 2026.

For meals planned around your whole life

What to check before you trust one

• What it can see. A plan that doesn’t know you’re away on Monday will still shop for Monday. Check what it connects to, and that it asks only for what it needs.
• Allergies. Several of these apps, and Retenna, plan around allergies and foods you avoid, but no app, ours included, can promise a recipe or product is safe, and AI-written recipes can contain mistakes. Always check labels. It isn’t medical advice, so don’t rely on an app alone for a serious allergy.
• Health limits. Retenna’s experts, and the apps compared here, are not doctors, registered dietitians, physiotherapists or therapists. If you’re managing a medical condition, or medication that affects how you eat, get advice from a professional.
• Who pays it. Check whether recipe picks or grocery links are sponsored. Ollie’s privacy policy says it doesn’t promote sponsored or paid products, and Retenna’s personal shopper never takes commission, uses affiliate links or shows paid placements.
• Privacy. What you eat and who you feed are personal. Check whether your data is sold, shared for advertising or used to train AI, and whether you can delete it.
• Control. It should ask before it spends new money or involves anyone else, and every change should come with an Undo.

How Retenna plans your meals

Questions

Sources

• Samsung Food: Food+, Samsung newsroom, help, terms, privacy policy, App Store
• MyFitnessPal: Meal Planner, Coach help, privacy policy, App Store; third party: TrueCal price check
• Ollie: Ollie for Meals, the Ollie assistant, pricing, FAQ, Ollie for Meals privacy policy, App Store
• Eat This Much: website, pricing, privacy policy, App Store
• Plan to Eat: website, pricing, release notes, privacy policy, App Store
• Mealime: closing notice, website

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