The right alternative depends on what you actually needed Mealime for. The options below serve different use cases, so the answer isn't the same for everyone.
If you're cooking for one or a couple
Samsung Food (formerly Whisk)
Strong free option for people who cook from recipe websites. You can save recipes from any site, paste a URL to auto-import ingredients, plan meals on a weekly calendar, and generate a shopping list. It doesn't have household voting or per-person allergy tracking, but for a solo cook or couple it covers the basics without a subscription.
Paprika Recipe Manager
One-time purchase, no ongoing subscription. It excels at recipe organization — web clipping, ingredient-sorted grocery lists, pantry tracking. Less focused on collaborative household planning, but if you want a recipe library and shopping list that's genuinely yours, with no monthly fee, Paprika delivers that.
If you're planning for a family or household
Fam to Table
Built specifically for households where multiple people have different preferences, restrictions, and opinions about what's for dinner. Everyone in the household gets their own profile with their own allergies and dietary restrictions. When you plan a meal, anyone can upvote, downvote, or comment on it. The grocery list generates from all planned recipes in one tap — de-duplicated, shared across all household devices. The core loop is free: no card required to get the calendar, recipe library, voting, allergy tracking, and grocery list all working together.
Plan to Eat
Well-established family meal planner with a shared calendar across household members and solid grocery list generation from your own recipe collection. Doesn't have the per-person allergy tracking or household voting that Fam to Table does, but it's been around long enough to be reliable, and $17.99/year is reasonable if you're committed to a structured planning habit.
Which one is right for you
If Mealime's curated recipe library is the thing you'll miss most, Samsung Food comes closest — it has web clipping from any recipe site, a meal calendar, and a free grocery list. If household coordination was the part you cared about — getting everyone on the same page, managing who's allergic to what, not fighting about dinner — Fam to Table is built for exactly that, and it's free to start.
The case for Mealime Pro at $5.99/month is mainly its speed and polish for a single user who wants minimal friction. For a household with more than two people, you're paying for features that still don't cover the multi-person coordination problem. That's where the free alternatives pull ahead.