Chef vs Cooking Smarter
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chef
Discover and cook thousands of recipes with a modern interface. Create your own recipes, generate shopping lists, and analyze nutritional values. Offers premium features for unlimited recipe creation and private recipes.
- Recipe discovery
- Custom recipe creation
- Automated shopping lists
- Nutritional value analysis
- Recipe scheduling
- Modern design
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Chef® helps you discover thousands of recipes and to schedule and cook them, from shopping to serving. • Discover a new way to explore flavors with Chef®'s modern design. • Create your own recipes to schedule them. They will also be analyzed by our unique algorithm to estimate their nutritional values. • Simplify groceries by automatically generating shopping lists, and add your own items. The Chef® Plus subscription allows you to create as many recipes and shopping lists as you want, and to create private recipes. With the Chef® Max subscription, enjoy all the benefits of Chef® Plus, but also get the nutritional values of your recipes and enhance your recipe images. Renewed monthly, these subscriptions will be charged to your iTunes account. At the end of the one-month period, unless you have disabled this feature, your subscription will automatically renew for your iTunes account. You will be charged the subscription price within 24 hours after the end of the validity of the initial purchase. You can cancel the automatic renewal at any time before these 24 hours. No refund can be made for the unused period of a subscription. For more information on the terms of use and privacy policy of Chef®, visit https://the-chef.app/policy. By using the app, you accept its terms of use, available at https://the-chef.app/terms.
Cooking Smarter
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Are you a busy, corporate foodie who wants to learn how to COOK HEALTHY FOOD that tastes amazing QUICKLY without spending time thinking about what to cook, wasting hours cooking & tidying, or feeling overwhelmed? The 6 week Cooking Smarter NOT Harder challenge will enable you to up your cooking game with professional, time saving cooking techniques all centred around healthy eating. I bet you’ve tried recipes from cooking shows, cook books and meal kits.. And nothing has quite worked for you, right? How do you find the TIME to cook a 2hr dish from a cook book when you don't have half the exotic ingredients… if you're running a business or have a full time job? How do you justify spending money on fancy kitchen appliances and cook books if you barely use them? - Why's it so nerve-racking to cook for friends or partners? - Is the constant battle to resist just ordering in ready made food really worth it? - Are you buying and wasting food because you run out of inspiration or time to cook it? How often? - What about doing a cooking course at a culinary school? STOP. JUST STOP. If any (or all) of the above questions run through your head… day after day… I might be able to help. Not that long ago, I was in your shoes. Those early days were rough. I'd take a step forward only to take three more back. I was drowning in Pinterest Recipes, enticing TikTok videos, cook books, not knowing which one to try for fear of wasting time, food and money or worse yet failing miserably Anyways, if that's kinda how you feel right now Let me give you a road map, so that you stop hitting dead ends or getting lost on back roads, and instead take the fast lane to becoming a home cook that you can be proud of! So I had this crazy idea to build a step by step plan to guide you from not finding the time and skills, to cooking really tasty food that's healthy and impressive all without spending lots of time thinking, preparing or even cleaning in just 6 weeks. The Challenge follows the Cooking Smarter Not Harder programme, which is a unique system to become a confident home cook you & your partner/ friends can be proud of. With professional cooking techniques and a Henry Ford style workspace methodology applied to home cooking you can bring out a maximum amount of flavour from foods, while saving time, wasting less, and not having to follow set recipes. The key milestones in the program available through this app are: Week 1: Equip your Arsenal & Train your Palate Week 2: Organise to Optimise Week 3: Ninja Knife Skills Week 4: Spice up Your Life! Week 5: Choose the Easy Root Week 6: FastFood SuperFood Additional key add-ons include: **** Thought Out for You 6 Week Super Quick Meal Plan *** Over 100 easy recipes covering breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks **Digital Shopping List Cheat Sheet * A community section to keep you accountable for the duration of the course so that you don't quit until you see results INFORMATION ABOUT THE APP By signing up, you will get access to subscription(s) that include features such as progress tracking, and offline sync, available to subscribe free of charge. The download of Cooking Smarter is free of charge. Read our full Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy: https://passion.io/terms-of-service https://passion.io/privacy-policy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Cooking Smarter at none against Chef's 1. Cooking Smarter also leads on update cadence (every 7 months vs every 21 months). Chef's advantage is ads (none vs shown) and iOS requirement (13 vs 15.1). On price and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Chef sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $1.99 per month. Cooking Smarter asks for nothing beyond the download.
Chef ships an update every 21 months, Cooking Smarter every 7 months. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chef | Cooking Smarter |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (21 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 21 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 21 months | Every 7 months — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 109 MB | 118 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Guillaume Cendre | Gregory Schaad-Jackson |
In-app purchases
Chef
- Chef Premium - One Month$1.991 Month
Cooking Smarter
No in-app purchases









