Mealime shut down on October 21. We asked four AI assistants for an alternative, and they couldn't agree.

Short answer: Mealime shut down on October 21, 2026. Its official successor is Meals Hub, a free planner built by the Mealime team that lives inside Albertsons Companies grocery apps such as Albertsons, Safeway, Vons and Jewel-Osco, according to Plan to Eat's Meals Hub review. If you don't want a planner tied to one grocery chain, Samsung Food is the one app all four AI assistants we asked agreed on. If your own recipe collection is what you'll miss, Plan to Eat and Paprika 3 are built for that.

A weekly meal plan laid out on a kitchen table with colorful dishes

Mealime said on its closing page that the app would be discontinued as of October 21, 2026, and that all personal data would be deleted when it shut down. According to Mealime, all of its recipes carry over to Meals Hub, but preferences and settings have to be set up again there. Recipes you added yourself are a different story. Mealime doesn't offer a bulk recipe export, according to competitor Plan to Eat, and Mealime's closing page doesn't mention one.

That left a lot of people asking the same question, and more and more of them ask a chatbot instead of a search engine. So I did too.

The experiment

On September 25, 2026, about four weeks before the shutdown, I opened a fresh chat in each assistant and pasted the same prompt:

"Mealime is shutting down on October 21, 2026. I use it for weekly dinner plans and grocery lists. Which app should I switch to, and why? Give me your top 3."

I used ChatGPT with web search on, Perplexity, and Gemini in Thinking mode, and I searched `mealime alternative` on Google to see its AI Overview. I tried Microsoft Copilot as well, but it wouldn't answer without a sign-in, so it's not included.

What they said

Assistant	#1	#2	#3	Mentioned Meals Hub?
ChatGPT	Cooklist	Samsung Food	Plan to Eat	No
Perplexity	eMeals	Plan to Eat	Samsung Food	Yes, as a bonus #4
Gemini	eMeals	Samsung Food	Paprika	No
Google AI Overview	Prepear (grouped list, not ranked)	Samsung Food, Paprika 3, Plan to Eat, Eat This Much, FoodiePrep	—	No

That's three different first picks from four assistants asked the same question on the same day.

Where they agreed

Samsung Food is the only app all four named. That makes sense. It's free, it saves recipes from anywhere, and it builds a grocery list. Its paid tier, Food+, is $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year on Samsung's own page, which matches what ChatGPT and Perplexity quoted.

Plan to Eat came up three times, always for the same reason: it's built around your own recipe collection, and its recipe clipper pulls recipes in from the web. Plan to Eat says its importer can read a list of Mealime recipe links, up to 100 at a time. We couldn't confirm whether those links still work now that the app has shut down. There's no free plan: it's $5.95 a month or $49 a year after a 14-day trial, and Plan to Eat says it doesn't ask for a card to start the trial.

Where they went wrong, or went quiet

Only Perplexity mentioned Meals Hub. That matters, because for many Mealime users the least disruptive move is the one Mealime itself recommends, especially if you already shop at a Safeway or Albertsons store. Three of the four assistants skipped it.

Gemini didn't check the shutdown at all. It accepted the date I gave it and moved on without citing a source. The answer happened to be right, but only because my prompt was.

Prices were close enough to be useful but loose. Gemini put eMeals at "$5–$10 a month" and Perplexity said "from $4.99 a month on an annual plan." eMeals' own page says $4.99 a month on a 12-month subscription, or $35.99 for three months, so Perplexity was right and Gemini was vague. Before you pay for anything, check the pricing page yourself.

And the rankings mostly repeated a small set of pages. Perplexity and Google leaned on alternatives posts that other meal-planning apps published in September, and each of those posts ranks its own product first. An assistant's top three is often somebody's marketing, one step removed.

What to do now

Start with your recipes, because they're the only part you can't rebuild. Mealime's own recipes are in Meals Hub, according to Mealime, so you can find those again there. If Mealime still opens on your phone, copy out any recipes you wrote yourself before you delete the app.

Then choose based on what you used Mealime for, not on a chatbot's ranking:

- You want someone to hand you a weekly menu: Meals Hub if you shop at an Albertsons-owned store (Mealime says you can still browse, plan and make lists without one), or eMeals if you want to send the list to Walmart, Kroger, Amazon or Instacart. - You want to keep and organize your own recipes: Plan to Eat ($49 a year) or Paprika 3 (a one-time purchase per platform: $4.99 on iOS, $29.99 on Windows). - You want free and flexible: Samsung Food. - You want dinners planned around what's already in your kitchen: Cooklist, KitchenPal, or Cooking with Robots.

The part where I tell you about my app

None of the four assistants mentioned Cooking with Robots. I build it, so I noticed. That's fair, too, because it isn't a like-for-like Mealime replacement.

It starts from the other end. You take a photo of your pantry or fridge, and it plans the week around what you already have, then writes a grocery list for only what's missing. You can tick that list off in the store or send it to Instacart. It's free, with no paid tier. It won't import your Mealime recipes, and it's web-only, with no native app.

If Mealime's appeal was "tell me what to cook this week," try it with whatever is in your fridge tonight and see if it earns a spot. If your recipe collection is what you'll miss, go with Plan to Eat or Paprika. I'd rather you keep your recipes than pick my app.

Why this matters beyond Mealime

Yummly shut down in 2024, PlateJoy in 2025, and now Mealime. Each time, people were left without an easy way to take their data with them. If you're choosing your next app, check whether it has an export before you check its price.

Method: One fresh chat per assistant on September 25, 2026, with the identical prompt above. ChatGPT was logged in with web search on. Perplexity was not signed in (Pro Search triggered automatically). Gemini was in Thinking mode. Google's AI Overview came from a search for `mealime alternative`. Copilot needed a sign-in and wasn't tested. The assistants' answers are from that day. Prices and the shutdown details were re-checked on each company's own page or official App Store listing on October 22, 2026.

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