PlanMyMeals compared with Mealime, for a house whose headcount changes
Mealime is free and has millions of users. The difference shows up when Tuesday has four people and Thursday has two, and when you want to know what the week costs at the shops.
Side by side
The same questions, side by side.
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | PlanMyMealsFree plan for a 2-person household; Plus from €6.99/month for bigger households and AI features | MealimeFree to join; optional Meal Planner Pro from $2.99/month (US App Store) |
| Portion scaling | PlanMyMealsScales to who's actually eating each meal | MealimeA serving size set in eating preferences, up to 6 servings |
| Grocery cost of the week | PlanMyMealsA weekly budget the plan is built to, with the list priced before you shop | MealimeTheir support page says they cannot estimate what a weekly grocery bill will be |
| Store prices | PlanMyMealsPrice books for Continente, Auchan and Pingo Doce, with the same list compared across all three | MealimeNo statement found on the pages checked |
| Leftovers / repeat meals | PlanMyMealsBuilt into the plan as cook-once, eat-twice | MealimeNot stated on Mealime's own pages |
| Nutrition data | PlanMyMealsProtein per portion shown on every recipe | MealimeCalories, macro and micronutrients, Pro subscribers only |
| Recipe focus | PlanMyMealsPortuguese recipe corpus | MealimeGeneral weeknight recipes; full library requires Pro |
Mealime is free to join, and it says so plainly: “Join over 4,500,000 others for free today.” It builds a week of simple, roughly 30 minute recipes around more than 200 personalization options covering allergies, dislikes and diet type, and it lets you set a household serving size, for 2 or for 4, that applies to the plan.
An optional Meal Planner Pro upgrade sits on top, listed at $2.99 a month on the US App Store. Pro adds full nutrition data, calories, macros and micronutrients, on every recipe, and “Pro subscribers receive full access to our entire recipe collection.”
What their pages describe is a serving size set in your eating preferences, with a stated ceiling: “meals can be scaled to up to 6 servings by adjusting your eating preferences”, and “families with more than 6 people will have trouble using Mealime.” If Tuesday has four people and Thursday has two, that is the gap PlanMyMeals was built for.
They are direct about grocery cost. Asked what a week of their plans will cost, their own support page answers: “For this reason, we can't give a general estimate as to what your weekly grocery bill may be.” That is the honest answer for a planner with no price data behind it, and it is the piece PlanMyMeals set out to add.
What PlanMyMeals does differently
Choose what matters in your week. See how it works in the app.
If you're one or two people who want a free planner with a large, established recipe library, and you don't need Portuguese cooking or per-meal headcounts, Mealime is a genuinely good free option. Their homepage claims 4,500,000 users. Their App Store listing says over 7 million. The two figures don't agree, so the exact count is theirs to settle.
Its 200+ personalization options for allergies and dislikes are more granular than what PlanMyMeals offers today, and all of that works without paying anything.
Sources
Every competitor fact on this page is quoted from one of these pages.
See portions follow who is actually home
Try PlanMyMeals free for a household of two. No credit card needed.
