Samsung Food Alternative - Free & Open Source

Whisk was an independent recipe app from 2012. Samsung acquired it in 2019 and rebranded it Samsung Food on August 30, 2023. The free tier exists, but photo scanning, AI meal plans, Smart Cooking Mode, Vision AI ingredient scanning, and ad removal all sit behind Samsung Food+ at $6.99 per month or $59.99 per year. The deepest features expect a Samsung Account and ideally a Samsung Family Hub fridge.

My wife and I made RecipeSage as a free, open source alternative with no ads and no Samsung lock-in. Photo and PDF import, drag-and-drop meal planning, smart shopping lists, recipe scaling, and typo-tolerant search are all free.

How they price

RecipeSage

Free forever. No ads, no Samsung account, no paywall. Open source under the AGPL.

Samsung Food

Free tier with ads. Samsung Food+ is $6.99/month or $59.99/year. Several core features require Samsung Food+.

Feature by feature

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

Feature	RecipeSage	Samsung Food
Price	Free, open source	Free with ads, or $59.99/year for Samsung Food+
Completely ad-freeSamsung Food+ removes ads as a paid feature.	Yes	No
Made by a small independent team	Yes	No
No Samsung account requiredBasic Samsung Food use works without a Samsung Account, but deeper features require linking one.	Yes	Partial
Web app	Yes	Yes
iOS app	Yes	Yes
Android app	Yes	Yes
Auto import from a URLRecipeSage's URL importer supports a wider range of recipe sites.	Yes	Yes
Free import from a photo (OCR)Photo recipe scanning is a Samsung Food+ feature.	Yes	No
Import from PDF and Word documents	Yes	No
Firefox and Chrome extensionBoth have a one-click browser extension for saving recipes from the web.	Yes	Yes
Data portabilitySamsung Food has no bulk export. RecipeSage supports well-recognized standardized formats.	Yes	No
Drag-and-drop meal planner	Yes	Yes
Recurring meal plan items	Yes	Partial
Smart shopping list with aisle categorization	Yes	Yes
Nutrition tracking (macros, vitamins, minerals)	Yes	Partial
AI cooking assistantSamsung Food has AI features but most require Samsung Food+.	Yes	Partial
Typo-tolerant search of your personal recipes	Yes	No
Open source	Yes	No
Self-hostable	Yes	No
Content license after account deletionSamsung's Terms grant Samsung a continuing content license that survives account deletion. See RecipeSage's legal page for our terms.	Ends with your account	Survives account deletion
Native desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux)RecipeSage has native desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Samsung Food is web and mobile only.	Yes	No
Cook Mode (full-screen, distraction-free cooking view)Samsung Food's Smart Cooking Mode requires the paid Food+ tier. RecipeSage's Cook Mode is free.	Yes	Partial
Built-in kitchen toolkitSamsung Food converts units. RecipeSage's toolkit adds a pan and bakeware converter that suggests bake time and temperature adjustments and a cooking-temperature reference for safe internal temperatures.	Yes	Partial
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 Samsung Food to RecipeSage

Free 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, all free. Samsung Food's Smart Cooking Mode requires the paid Food+ tier.
Built-in kitchen toolkitRecipeSage adds converters for pan sizes and cooking temperatures on top of unit conversion. Samsung Food converts units only.
Made by two people, not a hardware companyRecipeSage is built and run by a small team of two, not folded into a smart-appliance ecosystem.
No ads, no continuing content licenseRecipeSage doesn't run ads and doesn't claim a content license that outlives your account. Samsung Food's terms grant a continuing license that survives account deletion.
No Samsung lock-inFull features without buying a Family Hub fridge, without linking a Samsung Account, and without Samsung Health profile data shaping your meal plan.
Real data ownershipRecipeSage is open source, and lets you actually export your recipes. Samsung Food has no bulk export.
Premium features without a premium tierPhoto and PDF import, drag-and-drop meal planning, smart shopping lists, recipe scaling, and typo-tolerant search are all in RecipeSage for free. Most of those require Samsung Food+ at $59.99/year.
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. Samsung Food has no built-in cookbook generator.

Where Samsung Food is honestly stronger

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

Samsung smart-appliance integrationIf you own a Samsung Family Hub fridge, Bespoke oven, or cooktop, Samsung Food integrates directly with the hardware: fridge inventory, cook-setting handoff, and grocery ordering from the fridge. We don't.

Bringing your Samsung Food recipes over

Samsung Food doesn't offer a bulk export, but the RecipeSage Clip Tool browser extension makes the move about two clicks per recipe.

1Create a free RecipeSage account at recipesage.com.
2Install the free RecipeSage Clip Tool extension for Firefox or Chrome.
3Sign in to Samsung Food in the same browser, open a saved recipe, and click the RecipeSage extension icon to import it. About two clicks per recipe. Repeat for each one you want to bring over.
4Imported recipes land in your RecipeSage account tagged with an import label so the batch is easy to review.

Some Samsung Food recipes link back to the original source rather than storing full instructions. For those, importing the original recipe URL into RecipeSage's URL importer gives a more complete result.

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 Samsung Food

Why does it matter that Samsung owns Whisk?

If you don't mind, you don't have to switch. Some people are uncomfortable with their recipe data and shopping habits flowing into a large company's product ecosystem, especially when their terms grant a content license that continues after account deletion. RecipeSage is built for people who'd rather their recipes stay private and their own.

What about Samsung Food's calorie tracker?

RecipeSage has built-in nutrition tracking with macros, vitamins, and minerals per serving, and you can auto-fill from a nutrition label. It's not a full diet-tracking app, but it covers what most cooks need.

Is there a free alternative to Samsung Food?

Yes. RecipeSage is a free, open source alternative to Samsung Food, 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 Samsung's smart-fridge ecosystem is the entire reason you use Samsung Food, stick with it. If you mostly want a recipe app that doesn't lock you into a hardware brand, RecipeSage was made for that. Plus, RecipeSage is free so there's no harm in trying it :)

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The free, open source Samsung Food alternative