Chefless vs Mealisto
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chefless
Save, share, and plan meals with friends and family. Organize your personal recipes with notes and signatures, and collaborate on meal plans in shared kitchens. Explore global cuisines and track your cooking year.
- Save personal recipes with notes and signatures
- Share recipes privately or publicly
- Fork and modify existing recipes
- Collaborate on meal plans in shared Kitchens
- Track cooking progress and year in review
- Offline recipe access
- AI Recipe Helper (Pro feature)
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Chefless keeps the recipes you cook, helps you plan your meals, and turns that plan into a shopping list. Use it on your own or with the people you cook for. Bring in recipes from anywhere Paste a link from a recipe website, or from a public social media post with the recipe in its caption. You can also paste the recipe text, or take photos of a cookbook page, a screenshot, or a handwritten card, up to four pages at a time. You check each recipe before you save it. Chefless marks anything unclear for you to look at and leaves a missing amount blank for you to fill in. Keep recipes the way you like them A recipe can hold up to five photos, ingredients, steps, cooking times, servings, and tags for diet, cuisine, and meal. You decide whether each recipe is private or shared. Sign your recipes in your own handwriting and group them into cookbooks. You can also make your own version of another cook's recipe, called a remix, and their name stays on it as the original. Plan meals together in a Kitchen A Kitchen is a shared space where your household plans meals and shops together. Everyone sees the same meal calendar. Members suggest meals, and the Kitchen lead, or someone the lead chooses, approves them. Members can say whether they are coming to a meal, and the lead can tell everyone the food is ready with one tap. People join with an invite code, and your private recipes stay visible only to you. Plan the week and shop once Look at your plan by week, month, or year, and give each planned meal its own number of servings. Make one shopping list from your plan or your Kitchen's plan for the days you pick, and Chefless adds repeated ingredients together. When the plan changes, update the list. It keeps the items you checked and the things you added yourself. Cook mode Cook mode shows you one step at a time. Start a timer and Chefless alerts you when it finishes, as long as you allow notifications. The amounts follow the servings you choose and can show in metric or imperial units, and your screen stays on while you cook. Find something new to cook Follow other cooks and see what they make. Browse For You, Trending, Friends, and Seasonal, or search by cuisine, dietary need, meal, and cooking time. Chefless lists cuisines from your part of the world first, using the region setting on your phone. Comment on recipes, post a photo of a dish you made, and rate the recipes you cook. Your passport collects a stamp for each cuisine you cook. Your language and your privacy Chefless works in English, Arabic, Turkish, and Spanish. You can make your account and your recipes private, and report a recipe, comment, or profile that should not be there. You can also delete your account and its data from Settings. You will not see ads. Free and Chefless Premium A free account includes up to five recipes (your own and saved ones together), one remix, one cookbook, planning from two days before today to two days after, and a Kitchen with up to two members. Cook mode, shopping lists, following other cooks, and the passport cost nothing. Chefless Premium gives you unlimited recipes, remixes, and cookbooks, the full calendar, and unlimited members in a Kitchen you lead. You also get the AI Recipe Helper to write a recipe from ingredients you have, suggest swaps for a dietary need, or turn rough notes into a tidy recipe. It shares a limit of 20 uses a day with imports that read a photo, a caption, or pasted text. Pantry and Cook What I Have show you the recipes you can make with what is in your kitchen, and a chef hat badge appears on your profile. Chefless Premium costs $5.99 a month or $34.99 a year. Your subscription renews until you cancel it. To stop the next charge, cancel in your account settings at least 24 hours before the renewal date. Questions or ideas: admin@chefless.org Privacy Policy: https://chefless.org/privacy Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Mealisto
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Never wonder what to cook again! Say goodbye to the daily dinner debate. Mealisto is your ultimate family meal planner, recipe organizer, and smart grocery list all in one app. Whether you're managing picky eaters, tracking strict nutrition goals, or juggling multiple food allergies, Mealisto makes feeding your family effortless — together. Key Features: • Collaborative Family Planning: Everyone sees the weekly menu in real time. Vote on meals, swap dishes, and keep the picky eater, the athlete, and the toddler all happy. • Safe & Personalized: Set allergies and diet preferences for each family member once. Mealisto automatically filters recipes, flags conflicts, and suggests safe swaps. • Smart Auto-Shopping Lists: Every planned recipe adds the right ingredients to a combined list, sorted perfectly by supermarket aisle. No more forgotten onions or duplicate milk. • Nutrition & Macro Tracking: Set targets for calories, protein, carbs, and fats. Mealisto suggests meals that fit and shows exactly how each day stacks up against your goals. • Import Your Family Classics: Add Grandma’s lasagna in seconds. Paste a link, snap a photo, or type it in to keep all your favorite recipes in one place. • Step-by-Step Guided Cooking: Cook with large, kitchen-friendly instructions designed for messy hands. Timers and chef tips appear exactly when you need them. • Discover Rated Recipes: Browse hundreds of inspiring meals, rated by real cooks. Filter by time, cuisine, or what is already in your fridge. Stop stressing about dinner and start enjoying it. Download Mealisto today and eat better – together!
Screenshots
Verdict
Chefless and Mealisto 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. Chefless sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $5.99 per month and Mealisto sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Chefless ships an update every 2 weeks, Mealisto every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chefless | Mealisto |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 5 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 10 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 69 MB | 30 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | SAHAB LLC | Christian Ruedi* Moser* |
In-app purchases
Chefless
- Chefless Pro Monthly$5.991 Month
- Chefless Pro Annual$34.991 Year
Mealisto
- Mealisto Pro (Monthly)$3.991 Month
- Mealisto Pro Annually$24.991 Year









