Comparison

SideСhef vs uForage

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

Head to head
About

SideСhef

Discover and cook delicious meals with step-by-step instructions, personalized recommendations, and integrated grocery shopping. This app simplifies meal planning and helps you explore new cuisines, even if you're a beginner cook.

Highlights
  • Step-by-step recipe guidance
  • Personalized recipe recommendations
  • Integrated grocery list creation
  • One-click online grocery shopping
  • Meal planning tools
  • Smart appliance control
  • Beginner-friendly cooking tutorials
Features
Read full description

SideChef’s 18,000 step-by-step recipes help you get from “what’s for dinner?” to cooking your next meal in just minutes. Filter by diet and preferences, search by ingredients, create a grocery list, and instantly shop ingredients from your favorite grocer. Called “best app” by USA Today and the New York Times’s “favorite cooking app,” SideChef empowers you to eat healthier, save money, and live your most delicious life. PERSONALIZED RECIPE RECOMMENDATIONS Quickly find recipe inspiration tailored to your preferences. Filter by dietary requirements, allergies, food preferences, and ingredients you already have at home to find a recipe you like in less than one minute. ONE-CLICK GROCERY SHOPPING Easily create a grocery list, and shop ingredients directly from Instacart, Walmart, Amazon Fresh, Target, and more online grocers. Ingredients are intelligently matched to in-store products, and updated with real-time prices and availability. Make smarter decisions by seeing the percentage of each ingredient used in a recipe – an easy way to plan for leftovers and minimize food waste, while also saving money. GREAT FOR BEGINNERS New to cooking? Our step-by-step recipes include an image or video at every cooking step so you know exactly what to do. Built-in timers ensure you never overcook anything again, while how-to videos teach you valuable culinary skills – from how to properly dice an onion, to how to press tofu. Rate recipes, upload photos, exchange tips, and share cooking fails and successes with the SideChef home cooking community. EASY MEAL PLANNING Use our meal planning tool to select recipes for the week, or save appealing recipes to your cookbook. Browse thousands of curated recipe collections and meal plans for more inspiration and ideas on what you’ll cook next. RECIPES FOR EVERYONE Personalized recipe recommendations for these diets and allergens: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Low-Carb, Paleo, Keto, Gluten, Egg, Dairy, Soy, Peanut, Tree Nuts, Fish, Shellfish Recipes cover a variety of cuisines: American, Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, French, and more! Browse recipes from your favorite culinary influencers – top food bloggers, writers, and renowned chefs. PRAISE FROM MEDIA “If you’re always scorching the stew and you just can’t seem to achieve perfectly puffed chocolate chip cookies, let this free app serve as your new cooking companion.” — Real Simple “If you’ve ever ruined an entire meal because of a seemingly tiny mistake in timing or ingredient proportioning, then we have an app for you.” — Business Insider _________________ By downloading and using this app or purchasing a SideChef Premium subscription, you are agreeing to the SideChef terms of use and service: https://www.sidechef.com/terms For more information about how we use your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy: https://www.sidechef.com/privacy-policy. By downloading this app, you acknowledge the terms of our Privacy Policy. SIDECHEF PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION PRICING & TERMS SideChef is free to download and use. Should you choose to upgrade to SideChef Premium, we offer two auto-renewing subscription options: * Monthly SideChef Premium subscription: $4.99 USD. Cancel anytime. * Annual SideChef Premium subscription: $49.99 USD. Cancel anytime. These auto-renewing subscription plans renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours prior to the end of the subscription period. Your payment will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase. Your subscription will automatically renew each month or year 24-hours before the end of the current period. You can turn off auto-renew at any time from your iTunes account settings.

About

uForage

Discover fresh, local food sources, from wild edibles to roadside stalls and micro-farms. This app aims to reduce food waste and end hunger by connecting communities with accessible food options.

Highlights
  • Find wild growing food
  • Discover roadside stalls
  • Connect with micro farms
  • Locate local growers and bakers
  • Reduce food waste
  • Access free food sources
Features
Read full description

uForage is a free community food map. It shows you what's growing near you right now: roadside stalls, backyard fruit trees with too much fruit, small growers, honey, eggs, and wild food you walk past every day without seeing. Search for what you actually want. Eggs, lemons, herbs, honey. Results are sorted by what's closest to you, with directions to get there. Got more than you can eat? List your surplus in under a minute. Someone nearby is already looking for it, and your excess goes to a neighbour instead of the compost. Not sure what something is? Point your camera. uForage uses image recognition plus a community of real people to help identify wild and backyard food, with safety and spray warnings on listings. Foraging worldwide. uForage connects to a global database of more than 1.6 million wild food locations, so the map works whether you're in the Northern Rivers or northern Italy. Detail on non-Australian wild food listings requires a subscription. Why we built it Food should be accessible to everyone regardless of income. Community food networks are more resilient than supply chains, and we learned that the hard way during the 2022 Northern Rivers floods, when the roads were cut and the shelves were empty and the people who were okay were the ones who knew their local growers. uForage is free to use, built by two people in Murwillumbah, and mapped by the community that uses it. Winner, Business NSW Regen Connection Accelerator. As featured on ABC, NBN News and 7NEWS.

Screenshots

SideСhef4 screens
uForage4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: SideСhef at 4.7 against uForage's 2.8. SideСhef also leads on ratings volume (1.7K vs 6). uForage's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

Both are free to download. SideСhef sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. uForage asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

SideСhef holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 2.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SideСhef has 1.7K ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 67% of SideСhef's written reviews are positive against 75% of uForage's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SideСhef ships an update every 2 months, uForage every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
SideСhef versus uForage: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSideСhefuForage
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (1.7K ratings) — better2.8 (6 ratings)
Positive reviews66.7% of reviews75.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings1.7K — better6
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.115.1
Further details — not scored
Size71 MB98 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperSideChef Group LimitedAchiapa Nuvoli Family Trust

Customer experience

SideСhef

All ratings1,669 ratings
Positive95.3%
Neutral1.4%
Negative3.2%
Written reviews150 reviews
Positive66.7%
Neutral4.0%
Negative29.3%

uForage

All ratings6 ratings
Positive33.3%
Neutral33.3%
Negative33.3%
Written reviews20 reviews
Positive75.0%
Neutral15.0%
Negative10.0%

In-app purchases

2 purchases

SideСhef

Subscriptions2
  • SideChef Premium - Monthly7 Days trial$4.991 Month
  • SideChef Premium - Annual7 Days trial$49.991 Year
None

uForage

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SideСhef free?
SideСhef is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is uForage free?
uForage is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, SideСhef or uForage?
SideСhef is rated higher. SideСhef averages 4.7 out of 5 from 1.7K ratings, while uForage averages 2.8 from 6 ratings.
Do SideСhef or uForage have ads?
Neither SideСhef nor uForage shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SideСhef or uForage?
SideСhef ships an update every 2 months, and uForage every 3 weeks. Most recently, SideСhef was updated on November 1, 2026 and uForage on October 30, 2026.

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