Comparison

Love, Manuela vs Specsmith

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Love, Manuela

Access over 470 home-baked recipes with step-by-step photos and clear instructions. Discover a wide variety of cakes, fillings, cookies, and more, all designed for delicious results. This app offers a growing digital cookbook with easy navigation and helpful features for bakers of all levels.

Highlights
  • Over 470 baking recipes
  • Step-by-step photo instructions
  • Easy recipe categories
  • Improved search and filtering
  • New Cake Mode to keep screen awake
  • Personalizable recipe notes
Features
Read full description

Love, Manuela is a baking app created by Norwegian baker Manuela Kjeilen, known as @passionforbaking. For more than a decade, Manuela has shared her love of baking with people around the world. She has published nine baking books, hosted her own baking show on TV in Sweden, and inspires more than 1.6 million followers on Instagram with her cakes, recipes, and beautiful baking ideas. Inside the Love, Manuela app, you get instant access to more than 470 baking recipes, all written in English, with high-quality step-by-step photos for every recipe from beginning to end. One-time purchase. No subscription. New recipes are included when they are added. For Manuela, taste always comes first. Beautiful cakes are lovely, but the most important thing is that every bite tastes delicious. Her recipes are created to let the flavors shine, with soft textures, creamy fillings, balanced sweetness, and desserts that taste just as good as they look. From everyday treats to celebration cakes, the recipes are made for home baking. Inside the app, you will find sponge cakes in many variations, ganaches in delicious flavors like strawberry, latte, and banana milkshake, lots of Scandinavian-style cakes, light fillings, cheesecakes, ice creams, sweet dough, frostings, cookies, cupcakes, and so much more. The app is made to feel like a growing digital baking book that you can return to again and again. It is easy to navigate, with clear recipe categories, improved search and filtering, and helpful tags so you can quickly find what you are looking for. A few more categories have also been added to make browsing even easier. Each recipe opens with a large photo and a short introduction, followed by clear directions, recipe notes, a place where you can write your own notes, and step-by-step photos that guide you through the recipe. Whether you are baking a cake, preparing a filling, whipping a frosting, or making cookies, the app is designed to help you feel confident in every step. New Cake Mode helps keep your screen awake while you read and follow a recipe, so you do not have to keep touching your phone or tablet while your hands are busy baking. The app has also been refined with improved UI, a smoother overall user experience, and an improved password reset flow. Love, Manuela is not a subscription. It is a one-time purchase of $12.99, converted to your local currency by the App Store or Google Play. You get access to all recipes inside the app instantly, and when new recipes are added in the future, they are included at no extra cost. Your purchase is connected to the store account you buy it with, either App Store or Google Play. You can restore your purchase anytime using the same store account. What you get inside the app: More than 470 baking recipes Recipes written in English only Clear and easy-to-follow instructions High-quality step-by-step photos for every recipe Easy recipe categories Improved search and filtering Helpful tags to find recipes faster A place to write your own notes inside each recipe Recipe notes and tips from Manuela Cake Mode to keep your screen awake while baking Access to new recipes when they are added One-time purchase on this platform No subscription This is not a baking video app. The Love, Manuela app is focused on written recipes, high-quality photos, clear directions, recipe notes, and step-by-step pictures for every recipe. It is created for bakers who love to read, follow, save, and return to recipes whenever they want. The Love, Manuela app has more than 75,000 registered users worldwide, and Manuela’s recipes are loved by home bakers, cake lovers, professional bakers, and bakeries around the world. If you love soft cakes, sponge cakes, ganache, creamy frostings, light fillings, cupcakes, cookies, Scandinavian-style baking, sweet dough, cheesecakes, ice creams, and homemade desserts that taste as good as they look, you are going to love the Love, Manuela app. Happy baking! XO, Love, Manuela

About

Specsmith

This app provides bar teams with instant access to cocktail specifications, prep recipes, and batching calculations. It's designed for quick, at-a-glance readability in a busy service environment, ensuring consistency and accuracy.

Highlights
  • Instant cocktail specs
  • Linked prep recipes
  • Batching calculations
  • Service-ready recipe display
  • Multi-workspace support
  • In-app recipe editing
  • Ad-free experience
Features
Read full description

Specsmith is the bar team's spec book, on the floor. Every cocktail program lives in a binder, a shared doc, or someone's memory — and none of those survive a Friday night. Specsmith puts the whole thing in your pocket: the spec, the prep recipe behind it, and the batch numbers, one tap from each other. BUILT FOR SERVICE Pull up a recipe mid-ticket. Measures sit in their own column so you can read a spec at arm's length across a crowded bar, not squint at a paragraph. No loading spinner between you and the drink. PREP THAT CONNECTS An ingredient that is made in house links to the prep recipe that makes it. Tap the honey ginger syrup on a Penicillin and you get the syrup, not a search box. The prep list is there on its own too, alphabetised, for the person doing Tuesday's mise. BATCHING WITHOUT ARITHMETIC Pick a menu, pick a multiplier, get the numbers. The maths happens on the server and matches what the desktop workspace shows for the same menu, so the bar and the office are never quoting different volumes at each other. THE WHOLE WORKSPACE Your menus and your recipes, including recipes that are not on a menu right now. Belong to more than one bar? Switch between workspaces from the menu list; the app remembers which one you had open. EDIT WHERE YOU STAND Fix a spec at the station where you noticed it was wrong. Change measures, methods, glassware and garnish, and photograph the drink with the camera. If a colleague edited the same recipe first, Specsmith says so instead of quietly overwriting their work. MADE FOR A BAR, NOT A PHONE DEMO Big type, one thumb, and a spec you can read without leaning in. No adverts, and no tracking across other apps. Specsmith for iOS is the companion to the Specsmith workspace on the web, where menus get built, costed and printed. Sign in with the account you already have, or create one with email and password, Apple, or Google. Most tools for building menus, managing recipes, and creating prep guides are on the web at getspecsmith.com.

Screenshots

Love, Manuela4 screens
Specsmith4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Specsmith at Free against Love, Manuela's $12.99. Specsmith also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.3) and update cadence (every 5 days vs every 5 months). Love, Manuela's advantage is ratings volume (170 vs 1) and chart position (#3 vs unranked). On ads, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Specsmith is free to download; Love, Manuela costs $12.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Specsmith holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Love, Manuela has 170 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Love, Manuela ships an update every 5 months, Specsmith every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 19, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 4 level
Love, Manuela versus Specsmith: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLove, ManuelaSpecsmith
Price$12.99Free — better
Rating4.3 (170 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews68.2% of reviews—
Number of ratings170 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 5 monthsEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
Best chart rank#3 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS13.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size29 MB3 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperPassion For Baking ASJeremy Oertel

Customer experience

Love, Manuela

All ratings170 ratings
Positive80.6%
Neutral4.1%
Negative15.3%
Written reviews179 reviews
Positive68.2%
Neutral9.5%
Negative22.3%

Specsmith

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Love, Manuela

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • App crashes or fails to open for some users
  • Inconsistent recipe display across devices

Requested features

3 requests
  • Step-by-step video tutorials
  • Option to save and organize personal notes
  • Ability to print or export recipes

Specsmith

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Love, Manuela

No in-app purchases

None

Specsmith

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Love, Manuela free?
Love, Manuela costs $12.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Specsmith free?
Specsmith is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Love, Manuela or Specsmith?
Specsmith is rated higher. Love, Manuela averages 4.3 out of 5 from 170 ratings, while Specsmith averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Love, Manuela or Specsmith have ads?
Neither Love, Manuela nor Specsmith shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Love, Manuela or Specsmith?
Love, Manuela ships an update every 5 months, and Specsmith every 5 days. Most recently, Love, Manuela was updated on October 19, 2026 and Specsmith on October 8, 2026.

Other comparisons