AnyList Alternative - Free & Open Source

AnyList is a shopping list and recipe app. Their free tier covers shared shopping lists and basic recipe collection, but web access, the meal planner, the Apple Watch app, location reminders, item photos, and recipe imports (more than 5) all require AnyList Complete which costs $9.99 per year for an individual or $14.99 per year for a household.

My wife and I made RecipeSage as a free, open source alternative. The web app, meal planner, recipe imports, nutrition tracking, and photo, PDF, and Word document import are all free, with no paywall.

How they price

RecipeSage

Free forever. No paywall, no ads. Unlimited recipes, meal planning, web access, and shopping lists for every account.

AnyList

Very basic free tier for shared shopping lists and up to 5 imported recipes. AnyList Complete is $9.99/year for an individual or $14.99/year for a household. Web app, meal planning, Apple Watch, location reminders, item photos, and unlimited recipe imports all require payment.

Feature by feature

We've tried to be fair here. Where AnyList is genuinely stronger, we say so. Numbers and feature claims are sourced from each product's own documentation as of August 2026.

Feature	RecipeSage	AnyList
Price	Free, open source	$9.99 to $14.99/year for most features
Web appAnyList requires a paid Complete subscription to use their web app, with no free-tier access.	Yes	Partial
iOS app	Yes	Yes
Android appAnyList's Android app is less polished than its iOS app.	Yes	Partial
Native desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux)RecipeSage has native desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux, plus the web app. AnyList's Mac app requires a paid Complete subscription, and there's no Windows or Linux app.	Yes	Partial
Apple Watch app	No	Yes
Browser extension (Firefox, Chrome)	Yes	Yes
Auto import from a URLAnyList limits this to 5 total imports for free. Unlimited imports require Complete.	Yes	Partial
Import from a photo (OCR)	Yes	No
Import from PDF and Word documents	Yes	No
Free drag-and-drop meal plannerMeal planning requires a paid AnyList Complete subscription.	Yes	Partial
Reusable meal-plan templatesAnyList's Templates let you save and reapply a meal-plan layout. RecipeSage has no reusable meal-plan template feature.	No	Yes
Smart shopping list with aisle categorization	Yes	Yes
Per-store category setsAnyList's implementation is more complete	Partial	Yes
Multi-store price tracker with running totalAnyList is designed around shopping lists first, while RecipeSage prioritizes recipes first.	No	Yes
Location-based store reminders	No	Yes
Barcode scanning for shopping items	No	Yes
Nutrition tracking (macros, vitamins, minerals)	Yes	No
Typo-tolerant search	Yes	No
Real multi-user collaboration	Yes	Yes
Works offline	Yes	Yes
Open source	Yes	No
Self-hostable	Yes	No
Data portabilityAnyList has no bulk export. Recipes and lists can be emailed or printed one at a time. RecipeSage exports to JSON-LD, PDF, and text.	Yes	No
Recipe scaling with metric/imperial conversionAnyList scales the ingredient quantity field but doesn't convert between imperial and metric.	Yes	Partial
Public sharing by link or embed, no account neededRecipeSage gives you a public profile to share a recipe, a label, or your whole collection by link, plus website embed codes. AnyList sharing is account-to-account only, with no public link for non-users.	Yes	No
Cook Mode (full-screen, distraction-free cooking view)AnyList has a cooking view that highlights the current step. RecipeSage's Cook Mode shows the ingredients and steps together, lets you check off each as you cook, scale servings on the fly, and keeps the screen awake with a large adjustable font.	Yes	Partial
Built-in kitchen toolkitRecipeSage's toolkit includes a measurement converter, a pan and bakeware converter that rescales ingredients and suggests bake time and temperature adjustments, and a cooking-temperature reference for safe internal temperatures. AnyList has none of these.	Yes	No
Printable PDF cookbook generatorRecipeSage's Cookbook Generator compiles your recipes into one printable PDF with a cover page, optional table of contents, and each recipe on its own page.	Yes	No

Why people switch from AnyList to RecipeSage

Built-in kitchen toolkitRecipeSage has built-in converters for units, pan sizes, and cooking temperatures. AnyList has none of these.
No paywall on web, meal planner, or recipe importsRecipeSage's web app, drag-and-drop meal planner, and recipe imports are all free. AnyList paywalls all three behind Complete and caps the free tier at 5 imported recipes total.
Data is not held hostageRecipeSage exports your full library to JSON-LD, PDF, or text any time. AnyList has no bulk export. The only official options are emailing or printing recipes and lists one at a time.
Nutrition and richer importRecipeSage tracks macros, vitamins, and minerals per serving, and imports from photos, PDFs, and Word documents. AnyList offers none of those.
Open source and self-hostableRecipeSage is AGPL-licensed and you can run it on your own server. AnyList is closed source with no public API and the cloud is the only sync target.
Cross-platform without Apple biasRecipeSage runs equally well in any browser, on iOS, on Android, and as native desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux. AnyList's deepest features assume the Apple ecosystem, and Chromebook, Windows, and Linux users can only reach AnyList through the Complete-gated web app.
Share your recipes with anyoneRecipeSage gives you a public profile to share a single recipe, a whole label, or your entire collection by a link anyone can open without an account, plus embed codes to drop a recipe onto a website or blog. AnyList only shares account-to-account, with no public link for people without an account.
Turn your collection into a printable cookbookRecipeSage's Cookbook Generator assembles your recipes into a single PDF, with a cover page, an optional table of contents, and each recipe on its own page with its image and nutrition. It's an easy way to print a personal cookbook or give one as a gift. AnyList has no built-in cookbook generator.

Where AnyList is honestly stronger

We're not pretending RecipeSage wins on everything. Here's whatAnyList does better than us today.

Best-in-class shopping listPer-store category sets, multi-store price comparison with a running total at checkout, location-based reminders when you arrive at a store, and barcode scanning. RecipeSage's shopping list is solid but doesn't match this depth.
First-class Apple Watch appAnyList's Apple Watch app includes complications and voice, Scribble, and emoji input for adding items from the wrist. RecipeSage doesn't have a watch app.

Bringing your AnyList recipes over

There's no dedicated AnyList importer, and AnyList itself doesn't offer a bulk recipe export. The practical path today is to re-import each recipe from its original source, about one click per recipe with the RecipeSage Clip Tool browser extension.

1Create a free RecipeSage account at recipesage.com.
2Install the free RecipeSage Clip Tool extension for Firefox or Chrome.
3Open each recipe's original source web page and click the RecipeSage extension icon to import it, about one click per recipe. If you kept your source URLs, you can paste them into RecipeSage's URL importer to bring them in as a batch.

AnyList doesn't offer a bulk recipe export, so per-recipe re-clipping is the practical option today. If you've kept the original source URLs of your AnyList recipes, RecipeSage's URL importer accepts a list of URLs in one go, which can speed things up considerably.

About the people behind RecipeSage

My wife and I built and run RecipeSage. We're not a venture-backed startup. We cook every night, we got tired of paying subscriptions and losing access to recipes when an app changed hands, so we built the app we wanted to use. Hosting is funded by optional contributions and has been since 2018, and the source code is on GitHub under the AGPL.

If you ever want to leave RecipeSage, you can export everything in standard formats or run the whole thing on your own server. Your recipes are yours.

Common questions about switching from AnyList

Can I keep AnyList for groceries and use RecipeSage for recipes?

Sure. A lot of people split tools this way. Use RecipeSage for recipe organization, meal planning, and nutrition, and keep AnyList for the shopping run itself. RecipeSage's meal planner can generate a shopping list you copy across.

What about my AnyList shared list with my household?

RecipeSage has shared shopping lists too, with real multi-account collaboration (each person has their own login). You'll need to rebuild the membership in RecipeSage by inviting the same people to a new shared list, but the day-to-day shared-shopping experience is there.

Is there a free alternative to AnyList?

Yes. RecipeSage is a free, open source alternative to AnyList, with no paywall and no ads. You can import your recipes, plan meals, build shopping lists, track nutrition, and use it on the web, desktop, iOS, and Android. If you ever decide to leave, you can export everything or self-host.

If AnyList's shopping list is the main reason you use it, keep AnyList. If you mostly want a recipe organizer and meal planner with nutrition without a subscription, RecipeSage might be a better fit. RecipeSage is free, so there's no harm in giving it a try alongside AnyList for a few weeks :)

Create a free account

The free, open source AnyList alternative