CopyMeThat is best known for its one-click web clipper. The free tier stops at 40 saved recipes. Past that, the paid tier is $1 per month, $12 per year, or $65 lifetime to remove the cap.
My wife and I made RecipeSage as a free, open source alternative with no recipe limit. It has its own Firefox and Chrome clipper, plus auto-import from photos, PDFs, and Word docs, drag-and-drop meal planning, smart shopping lists, and nutrition tracking.
How they price
RecipeSage
Free forever. Unlimited recipes, no ads, no subscription. Open source under the AGPL.
CopyMeThat
Free up to 40 recipes. Premium is $1/month, $12/year, or $65 lifetime to lift the cap.
Feature by feature
We've tried to be fair here. Where CopyMeThat is genuinely stronger, we say so. Numbers and feature claims are sourced from each product's own documentation as of May 2026.
| Feature | RecipeSage | CopyMeThat |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, open source | Free up to 40 recipes, then paid |
| Web app | Yes | Yes |
| iOS app | Yes | Yes |
| Android app | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited recipes on the free tier CopyMeThat caps free accounts at 40 recipes. | Yes | No |
| Firefox and Chrome extension | Yes | Yes |
| Auto import from any URL | Yes | Yes |
| Import from a photo (OCR) | Yes | No |
| Import from PDF | Yes | No |
| Import from Word documents | Yes | No |
| Drag-and-drop meal planner | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring meal plan items | Yes | No |
| Smart shopping list | Yes | Yes |
| Editable aisle categorization | Yes | No |
| Recipe scaling and unit conversion | Yes | Yes |
| Nutrition tracking (macros, vitamins, minerals) | Yes | No |
| Typo-tolerant search | Yes | Partial |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Data portability CopyMeThat exports an HTML zip. RecipeSage supports well-recognized standardized formats. | Yes | HTML zip |
| Real multi-user collaboration with separate accounts CopyMeThat family sharing means logging into one shared account. | Yes | No |
| Public sharing by link or embed, no account needed CopyMeThat can share a recipe link, but people without an account see only the image, source link, and ingredients, and there's no website embed. | Yes | Partial |
| Printable PDF cookbook generator RecipeSage'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 CopyMeThat to RecipeSage
- No 40-recipe cap Save 400 recipes, save 40,000. RecipeSage is free and does not cap. CopyMeThat's free tier stops at 40.
- More ways to import RecipeSage imports from URLs, photos, PDFs, Word docs, JSON-LD, and CSV. CopyMeThat's clipper is good for web pages but doesn't read photos, PDFs, or handwritten cards.
- Works offline RecipeSage works offline on web and mobile and syncs when you reconnect. CopyMeThat doesn't advertise an offline mode.
- Editable shopping list categories Rename, reorder, and delete aisle categories to match your store. CopyMeThat's defaults can't be edited.
- Built-in nutrition RecipeSage tracks macros, vitamins, and minerals per serving, and you can paste a nutrition label to auto-fill. CopyMeThat doesn't track nutrition.
- Open source RecipeSage's source is on GitHub under the AGPL. CopyMeThat is closed-source proprietary software.
- Share your recipes with anyone RecipeSage 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. CopyMeThat's public share shows people without an account only the image, link, and ingredients, not the full recipe.
- Turn your collection into a printable cookbook RecipeSage'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. CopyMeThat has no built-in cookbook generator.
Bringing your CopyMeThat recipes over
RecipeSage has a dedicated CopyMeThat importer that preserves your content.
- 1 In CopyMeThat, open the More menu, choose Download Recipes, pick HTML, and click Download. You'll get a .zip file with an .html file and an images folder.
- 2 Create a free RecipeSage account at recipesage.com.
- 3 In RecipeSage, open Settings then Import then CopyMeThat, and upload the .zip just as you downloaded it.
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 donations 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 CopyMeThat
How is RecipeSage free when CopyMeThat caps the free tier at 40?
RecipeSage is a side project from the two of us, not a business with employees and a marketing budget. Hosting is funded by donations and has been since 2018.
Is RecipeSage's web clipper as good as CopyMeThat's?
We believe it's as good or better. We use a number of strategies to pull the content from the target page. If you hit a page our parser struggles with, please tell us so we can fix it.
Will my CopyMeThat images come through?
Yes. The HTML zip from CopyMeThat includes an images folder, and our importer wires the photos to the right recipes.
Will my recipes stay private?
Yes. Saved recipes are private to your account by default. You can choose to share specific recipes publicly or with friends, but nothing is public unless you make it so.
Is there a free alternative to CopyMeThat?
Yes. RecipeSage is a free, open source alternative to CopyMeThat, with no subscription and no ads. You can import your recipes, plan meals, build shopping lists, track nutrition, and use it on the web, iOS, and Android. If you ever decide to leave, you can export everything or self-host.
If you've hit the CopyMeThat cap or you'd rather not pay to keep clipping, bring your CopyMeThat zip over and try RecipeSage. It's free so there's really no downside :)