Google Keep Alternative - Free & Open Source

Google Keep is Google's free note and checklist app, and lots of home cooks keep their recipes there: typed into a note, pasted from a website, or snapped from a cookbook page. But Keep stores a recipe as plain text that the app doesn't understand.

My wife and I made RecipeSage for the moment a recipe collection outgrows a notes app. A shopping list that combines garlic from three recipes and 2x scaling only work when ingredients live in structured fields. RecipeSage can read your Google Takeout export directly, so your Keep recipes come over without retyping.

How they price

RecipeSage

Free forever. No paywall, no ads, no recipe caps, and no selling your data.

Google Keep

Free with a Google account, and Keep notes don't count toward your Google storage. Gemini list creation in Keep needs a Google AI plan or a Pixel phone.

Feature by feature

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

Feature	RecipeSage	Google Keep
Price	Free, open source	Free with a Google account
Smart shopping list with aisle categorizationA Keep grocery list is a checklist you fill in by hand. RecipeSage adds a recipe's ingredients in one click, merges duplicates, and groups items by aisle.	Yes	No
Structured ingredient fieldsKeep stores a recipe as free text or a checklist. RecipeSage parses ingredients into quantity, unit, and item, which is what unlocks merged shopping lists and scaling.	Yes	No
Auto import recipes from a URL	Yes	No
Drag-and-drop meal planner	Yes	No
Recipe scaling and unit conversion	Yes	No
Cook Mode (full-screen, distraction-free cooking view)	Yes	No
Nutrition tracking (macros, vitamins, minerals)	Yes	No
Firefox and Chrome extensionKeep's Chrome extension saves a page link, selected text, or an image to a note. RecipeSage's clipper parses the page into a structured recipe with ingredients and steps.	Yes	Partial
Import recipes from a photo (OCR)Keep's Grab image text pulls the words out of a photo into a note. RecipeSage's photo import turns them into a recipe with ingredients and steps.	Yes	Partial
Import recipes from PDFs and documents	Yes	No
Recurring meal plan items	Yes	No
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.	Yes	No
Native desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux)Keep is used on computers through the web app. Its old Chrome app was retired in 2021.	Yes	No
Shared lists with your household	Yes	Yes
Real collaboration with separate accountsKeep shares note by note with other Google accounts, and every collaborator can edit.	Yes	Yes
Works offline	Yes	Yes
Web app	Yes	Yes
iOS app	Yes	Yes
Android app	Yes	Yes
Smartwatch appKeep has a Wear OS app for creating notes and checking off lists from your wrist. RecipeSage doesn't have a watch app.	No	Yes
Open source	Yes	No
Self-hostable	Yes	No
Data portabilityTakeout exports each Keep note as HTML plus a JSON metadata file. That's open and readable, but not a recipe format. RecipeSage supports well-recognized standardized recipe formats like JSON-LD.	Yes	Google Takeout
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
AI cooking assistantGemini can write a checklist inside Keep (with a Google AI plan or on Pixel) and search your notes from the Gemini app. It isn't recipe-aware, so there's no scaling or shopping list built from your saved recipes.	Yes	Partial

Why people switch from Google Keep to RecipeSage

Cook ModeRecipeSage's full-screen 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. Keep shows a recipe the same way it shows any other note.
Structure is what unlocks recipe featuresA shopping list that combines garlic across three recipes and 2x scaling both need parsed ingredients. In Keep a recipe is a block of text, so those features can't exist there.
A real meal plannerRecipeSage has a drag-and-drop weekly calendar with recurring items and one-click add-to-shopping-list. Keep has no meal planner, so a weekly plan ends up as another note.
Groceries straight from your recipesSend a recipe to your RecipeSage shopping list and its ingredients merge with what's already there, sorted by aisle. The list can be shared with your household, just like the Keep checklist you're used to, minus the retyping.
A recipe-focused clipperRecipeSage's Firefox and Chrome extension turns a recipe page into a clean recipe with ingredients and steps, leaving the life story and the ads behind.
Built-in kitchen toolkitRecipeSage has built-in converters for units, pan sizes, and cooking temperatures. Keep has none of these.
Open source and self-hostableRecipeSage is AGPL-licensed, you can run it on your own server, and you can export your whole library to JSON-LD, PDF, or text any time.
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.

Where Google Keep is honestly stronger

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

Fast, free notes for everything elseKeep opens instantly, is already on a lot of Android phones, and handles quick notes, reminders, voice memos with transcription, and to-do lists. RecipeSage is recipes-only by design, so Keep stays useful for everything that isn't a recipe.
Checklists on your wrist and across GoogleKeep's Wear OS app lets you check off a grocery list from your watch, and Keep ties into the rest of Google, from Copy to Google Docs to Gemini. RecipeSage doesn't have a watch app or that kind of ecosystem.

Bringing your Google Keep recipes over

RecipeSage's notes and documents importer reads a Google Takeout export as-is. Each Keep note becomes a recipe, and is split into a title, ingredients, and instructions.

1Go to Google Takeout at takeout.google.com and sign in.
2Click "Deselect all", then select only Keep.
3Create the export and download the .zip file when it's ready. Takeout can take a while to prepare it.
4Takeout includes every Keep note, so remove any notes that aren't recipes from the zip if you'd like to keep them out.
5Create a free RecipeSage account at recipesage.com.
6In RecipeSage, open Settings then Import then Import from notes apps & documents, and upload the .zip file.

Keep notes are free text, so not every note will split cleanly into ingredients and steps. Those still come across with their full text in the notes field and the label "automatic import unformatted", so you can find them and tidy them up whenever you like. Your Google Keep notes stay exactly as they are.

Start importing Read the notes apps & documents import guide

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 Google Keep

Will my Keep notes come over as proper recipes?

Most will. RecipeSage uses AI to read each note and fill in the title, ingredients, and instructions. If a note is too loose to split up, it's still imported with its full text and labeled "automatic import unformatted" so you can tidy it later.

What about my notes that aren't recipes?

Takeout exports all of your Keep notes, and every note in the zip is imported as a recipe. Open the zip and delete the non-recipe notes before uploading, or delete the extras in RecipeSage afterward. Each note should hold a single recipe for the best result.

Do my Keep labels and photos come across?

Not automatically. Keep stores labels in separate metadata files that the importer doesn't read, and photos attached to Keep notes usually won't be matched to their recipe. You can add labels in bulk and re-attach photos for your favorites after importing.

I have hundreds of recipes in Keep. Is there a limit?

Each import handles up to 500 notes. If you have more, split them across a few zip files and run the import once per zip.

Can I keep using Google Keep for my grocery list?

Sure. Plenty of people keep Keep for quick notes and to-dos. That said, RecipeSage's shared shopping list can fill itself from your recipes and meal plan, so it may be worth a try for groceries too.

Is there a free alternative to Google Keep for recipes?

Yes. RecipeSage is a free, open source alternative to Google Keep for recipes, 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.

Google Keep is handy for quick notes and checklists. It's just not built for recipes. Bring your recipes over to RecipeSage, keep Keep for everything else, and see how it feels :)

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The free, open source Google Keep alternative for recipes