Plan to Eat is a meal-planning subscription from an independent team in Colorado. It costs $49 per year direct, or $54.99 per year through the Apple App Store, after a 14-day trial. There is no free tier.
My wife and I made RecipeSage as a free, open source alternative. Drag-and-drop meal planning, recipe organization, smart shopping lists, photo and PDF import, and nutrition tracking are all included at no cost.
How they price
RecipeSage
Free forever. No subscription, no ads. Unlimited recipes, meal planning, and shopping lists for every account.
Plan to Eat
$5.95 per month or $49 per year direct (USD). $54.99 per year on the iOS App Store. 14-day free trial, then paid. No free tier.
Feature by feature
We've tried to be fair here. Where Plan to Eat is genuinely stronger, we say so. Numbers and feature claims are sourced from each product's own documentation as of May 2026.
| Feature | RecipeSage | Plan to Eat |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, open source | $49 to $54.99 per year |
| Web app | Yes | Yes |
| iOS app | Free | Subscription |
| Android app | Free | Subscription |
| Browser extension (Firefox, Chrome) | Yes | Yes |
| Auto import from a URL RecipeSage's URL importer supports a wider range of recipe sites. | Yes | Yes |
| Import from a photo (OCR) | Yes | Yes |
| PDF import Plan to Eat supports adding PDFs one at a time, but not in bulk. | Yes | Partial |
| Import from Word documents | Yes | No |
| Drag-and-drop meal planner | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring meal plan items | Yes | Yes |
| Reusable meal-plan templates Plan to Eat's Menus feature is more developed than RecipeSage's equivalent. | Partial | Yes |
| Freezer / batch-cooking tracker | No | Yes |
| Smart shopping list with aisle categorization | Yes | Yes |
| Recipe scaling and unit conversion | Yes | Yes |
| Nutrition tracking (macros, vitamins, minerals) Plan to Eat focuses on macros; vitamin and mineral depth is less documented. | Yes | Partial |
| AI cooking assistant Plan to Eat's AI covers ingredient substitutions and beginner-mode directions, but not a conversational cooking assistant. | Yes | Partial |
| Typo-tolerant search | Yes | No |
| Real multi-user collaboration Plan to Eat's family sharing means sharing one login. | Yes | No |
| Works offline | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Data portability Plan to Eat lets you export your recipe book to CSV from the website, even after a subscription lapses. RecipeSage supports well-recognized standardized formats. | Yes | CSV export |
| Public sharing by link or embed, no account needed RecipeSage gives you a public profile to share a recipe, a label, or your whole collection by link, plus website embed codes. Plan to Eat sharing is limited to its Friends feature, where both people must be subscribers. | Yes | No |
| 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 Plan to Eat to RecipeSage
- No subscription RecipeSage is free, with no recurring bill and no time-limited trial. Plan to Eat is $49 to $54.99 per year with a 14-day trial.
- More import options RecipeSage imports from URLs, photos, PDFs, and Word docs. Plan to Eat covers URLs and photos and adds PDFs one at a time.
- Deeper nutrition data RecipeSage tracks macros, vitamins, and minerals per serving, with auto-fill from a nutrition label.
- Typo-tolerant search Search 'pankakes' and find your pancake recipe, or find that one recipe where you mistyped "asparaggus". Plan to Eat's search requires exact matches.
- Collaboration with separate accounts Each family member can have their own RecipeSage account and still share recipes, plans, and shopping lists. Plan to Eat's family sharing means using the same login.
- 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. Plan to Eat sharing is limited to its Friends feature, where both people must be subscribers.
- 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. Plan to Eat has no built-in cookbook generator.
Where Plan to Eat is honestly stronger
We're not pretending RecipeSage wins on everything. Here's what Plan to Eat does better than us today.
- Reusable Menus templates Plan to Eat's Menus (saved templates of recipes and notes) is more developed than RecipeSage's equivalents today.
- Freezer and batch-cooking tracker Plan to Eat has a dedicated Freezer feature for tracking frozen meals with date frozen and servings. RecipeSage doesn't have a direct equivalent.
Bringing your Plan to Eat recipes over
RecipeSage lists Plan to Eat as a supported migration source. You can export your recipe book from Plan to Eat in minutes and import it into RecipeSage, even if your Plan to Eat subscription has lapsed.
- 1 From the Plan to Eat website, find the export option in your account settings and choose Export to CSV. You'll get a single CSV with all of your recipes.
- 2 Create a free RecipeSage account at recipesage.com.
- 3 In RecipeSage, open Settings then Import then CSV, and upload the file Plan to Eat gave you.
- 4 Tags, course, and cuisine fields map across to RecipeSage labels.
Plan to Eat lets you export even after a subscription ends, so nothing is locked up if you change your mind later.
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 Plan to Eat
How can you offer this for free when Plan to Eat charges $49 a year?
Plan to Eat has a team they need to pay. RecipeSage is a side project for the two of us. Hosting is funded by optional donations and has been since 2018.
Will I lose my meal plans when I switch?
Plan to Eat's export covers recipes, not meal plans. You'll need to rebuild your upcoming meal plan in RecipeSage, but drag-and-drop makes that quick.
Is RecipeSage's meal planner as capable as Plan to Eat's?
Plan to Eat's Menus templates and freezer tracker are more developed than ours. RecipeSage covers the meal-planning basics (drag and drop, recurring, scaling, shopping list integration) and adds things Plan to Eat doesn't, like photo and PDF import and deeper nutrition.
What happens to my recipes if RecipeSage shuts down?
You can export everything to JSON-LD, PDF, or text any time. Because we're open source, anyone can keep running the code, including on your own server. We've been doing this since 2018 with no plans to stop anytime soon.
Is there a free alternative to Plan to Eat?
Yes. RecipeSage is a free, open source alternative to Plan to Eat, 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'd rather not pay a yearly subscription for meal planning, give RecipeSage a few weeks in your kitchen. It's free, so there's really no downside :)