Honest Cooking Kitchen vs CookingBear
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Honest Cooking Kitchen
Discover over 5,000 tested recipes with beautiful photos. This app helps you find meals based on ingredients you have, your schedule, and preferences. It also offers smart tools for meal planning and creating shopping lists.
- 5,000+ tested recipes
- Pantry search for ingredient-based meals
- Personalized weekly meal planner
- Automated shopping list generation
- Cook mode with step-by-step guidance
- Recipe collections and smart search filters
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The only cooking app you'll ever need. Honest Cooking Kitchen is 10,000+ professionally developed recipes with beautiful photos, every one tested in a real kitchen, plus the tools to figure out what to actually make tonight. 10,000+ Recipes Worth Cooking Recipes created by the best food bloggers and writers in the world. Browse by cuisine, course, season, ingredient, or dietary preference. The library is deep enough that you'll keep finding things you haven't tried yet, while at the same time creating your perfect dinner rotation. 100 Classics The 100 legendary recipes that will take your home cooking to the next level. From Italian to Indian and very much in between, these are the ones you'll come back to again and again. Track your progress and become a legend. 100 Basics The foundation of every home kitchen: the techniques and recipes you need to know, from dressings and sauces to baking and simple egg dishes. Track and evolve. Pantry Search Type in what's in your fridge and get real recipes built around it. Add what you're cooking tonight and it steers the results. Useful for using up that half a cabbage before it goes bad. Weekly Meal Plan Curated weeks of dinners, ready to cook. Pick a plan (a week in Italy, thirty-minute dinners, a vegetarian week, and more) or build your own from the full library. Answer a few quick questions and we'll recommend one to start. Swap any night, mark the nights you're eating out, and pin the recipes you want on repeat. Every plan becomes a shopping list that already knows what's in your pantry. Shopping Lists Tap any recipe and get a shopping list. It knows what's already in your kitchen, sorts by aisle, and you check things off at the store. It works. Save and Rate Save recipes into collections and rate what you cook. Your saves, ratings, and collections follow you across the app and the web. Search Filter by cuisine, course, difficulty, time, protein, or dietary need, and dial in calories and macros if you're tracking. Fast, and it doesn't bury what you're looking for. Cook Mode Cook hands-free: one step at a time, with your full ingredient list and timers a tap away, and a step overview so you always know where you are. FREE vs PREMIUM Free: Browse the full library of 10,000+ recipes and collections, and use standard search. No account required to look around. Premium: Full recipes, Cook Mode, the Weekly Meal Planner, Pantry Search, nutrition search, 100 Basics and Classics progress, saved collections, and pantry-aware shopping lists. $4.99/month or $29.99/year. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://honestcooking.com/privacypolicy
CookingBear
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CookBook is a simple way to keep your kitchen organized—without spreadsheets or manual typing. ADD GROCERIES FAST • Scan your grocery receipt to extract items automatically • Confirm quantities and dates in one place • Keep your pantry/fridge list clean and up to date STAY AHEAD OF EXPIRY DATES • See what’s expiring soon at a glance • Track items by purchase date so you know what to use first • Reduce food waste with clearer visibility of what you already have SHOP SMARTER • Build a grocery list based on what you’re missing • Avoid buying duplicates when you already have the item at home • Keep household shopping organized COOK+ (OPTIONAL SUBSCRIPTION) Cook+ unlocks premium features such as enhanced receipt scanning and advanced grocery intelligence. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can manage or cancel your subscription in your App Store account settings. COOK+ FREE TRIAL & SUBSCRIPTION Start a 2‑week free trial on eligible plans. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the free trial, you will be charged the price shown at purchase. Cook+ is an auto‑renewable subscription that renews automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. You can manage or cancel your subscription in your App Store account settings. Deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. You will continue to have access for the remainder of the current period after cancellation. TERMS OF USE CookBook uses Apple's standard End User License Agreement (EULA). By downloading this app, you agree to the terms outlined at: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
Honest Cooking Kitchen and CookingBear are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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. Honest Cooking Kitchen sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and CookingBear sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $6.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Honest Cooking Kitchen ships an update weekly, CookingBear every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Honest Cooking Kitchen | CookingBear |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 55 MB | 232 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Kalle Bergman | Muhammad Fauzan Bin Mohamad Isa |
In-app purchases
Honest Cooking Kitchen
- Honest Cooking Premium7 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Honest Cooking Premium (Annual)7 Days trial$29.991 Year
CookingBear
- Cook+ Monthly14 Days trial$6.991 Month
Questions
Is Honest Cooking Kitchen free?
Is CookingBear free?
Do Honest Cooking Kitchen or CookingBear have ads?
Which is updated more often, Honest Cooking Kitchen or CookingBear?
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