Best Meal Planning Apps to Make Life Easier
Written by TYE Medical on Aug 26th 2025
We tend to eat on the fly without thought when we don’t have a plan. This can have disastrous consequences for our health in the long term. Meal planning is a key factor in kickstarting a healthier lifestyle and managing weight. But with all the demands on our time and attention, meal planning can also be a real strain. Even when you carve out time to strategize your meals, the resources and options are overwhelming. Where do you start? It’s even more difficult if you have dietary restrictions as many seniors do.
Meal planning is a specific area where technology can be your friend. Meal planning apps can make your life easier and help you achieve your health and weight goals while navigating dietary restrictions.
Here are the best meal planning apps to make life easier.
1. Mealime
While there are several reasons to choose Mealime over other apps, this meal planning app is also one of the most budget-friendly apps, giving you lots of value even with the free version. And if you choose to pay for full features, it costs $2.99 per month. Other features that set it apart include a grocery list, recipe database, and access to nutritional information in the paid version. You can also add your own recipes to the app database when you pay for a monthly subscription.
Another user favorite when it comes to features is the option to exclude certain ingredients. You can avoid meat, dairy, gluten, or a host of ingredients you just don’t like, such as bell pepper, for example. This feature is available even in the free version of the app and is called “eating preferences”.
You can also choose your general diet preferences such as low carb, keto, paleo, vegetarian, flexitarian (less meat), pescetarian (vegetarian that eats seafood), or vegan. You can also choose the classic diet option that means there are no general restrictions on carbs or meat.
Another option in the preference settings whether your meals are auto-generated according to your preferences or selected by you. Even with the busiest schedule, you can enjoy a week’s worth of planned meals with almost no time invested. However, choosing your own meals is still convenient and easy as you scroll through several categories of options with full color photos.
All Mealime recipes take less than 40 minutes to prepare and use fresh, simple ingredients.
2. Paprika
Paprika is intended as a recipe manager app but also offers menu planning features. Most people find this app useful for organizing recipes as it even has a browser extension that makes tracking your favorite online recipes very simple. While this app doesn’t offer a preloaded database of recipes, its primary feature is allowing you to add your own recipes to create your own organized database of potential meals.
Desirable features include still affordable pricing at $4.99 per month, grocery list capability, nutritional data that is imported with the recipe. Paprika is a great choice if you prefer a more hands-on approach to meal planning and want to be in the driver’s seat. If you have your favorite go-to recipe resources lined up, then the organizational features included with this meal planning app may make this a great option for you.
After you save recipes directly from the web and add it to your weekly meal plan, a grocery list begins to populate based on your selections. Don’t worry about duplicate ingredients on your list because Paprika takes care of that, consolidating similar ingredients found in different recipes.
Some users might find this app slightly more complicated to use because of browser integrations and a more challenging user guide.
3. PlateJoy
With PlateJoy, you can customize meal plans based on weight loss goals and dietary preferences. This app is user friendly with full-color photos. It has grocery list capabilities, a preloaded recipe database, and grocery list capabilities. You can also sync PlateJoy with a fitness tracker like Apple Health or Fitbit. However, this meal planning app comes with a heftier price tag of $12.99 per month.
PlateJoy also helps you create balanced meals and make nutritious choices. This makes it a great app if you’re new to eating healthier and would like guidance with your meal choices. Like other apps, this one also generates a grocery list but goes even further, allowing you to log food that you already have in stock at home. This means only the ingredients that you don’t have are added to the list. You can even send your grocery list to Instacart if you live in a serviceable area.
4. Plan to Eat
This is another app that doesn’t come with a preloaded database of recipes, but you can manually enter recipes or input the URL for any online recipe to import it into the app. It’s an affordable option at only $4.95 per month. You have access to nutritional data if it’s provided with the original recipe, whether input manually or imported from the web. Most users will enjoy the grocery list capability to make shopping easier. This app also consolidates similar ingredients across meals so that your shopping list doesn’t contain duplicate ingredients.
Plan to Eat supports your meal planning efforts, allowing you to organize your recipes and conveniently access them to develop a weekly plan. This is a useful option for those who already have a personal collection of favorite recipes and just want a better way to organize and access them to generate a workable meal plan for the week.
One unique feature is a weekly planner that tabulates your daily nutrients to help you stay on top of your health goals and maintain a balanced diet. Additionally, you can share your Plant to Eat recipes with people you know.
5. Eat This Much
Eat This Much is an affordable meal planning app at $4.99 per month that includes several desirable features like grocery list capability, a preloaded recipe database, and nutritional data in the paid version of the app.
Users also enjoy the “virtual pantry” feature that allows you to input and track ingredients you already have on hand so that you don’t buy duplicate items from your app-generated grocery list. The app’s unique feature is its barcode scanner that scans food items directly into your virtual pantry, reducing the need for manual entry. The scanner is part of the app and allows you to scan barcodes included on any prepackaged foods.
Additionally, in the paid version, you can use a calendar to organize your recipes and visualize your meal plan as you designate different meals for different days. Not only do you get to choose meals for the week, but you can also assign them to calendar days so you have a weekly or monthly menu at your fingertips.
One particular negative for this app is that it may be more difficult for some users who are less technologically savvy. Despite that the app is visually appealing, it is less user-friendly and a bit more complicated to use.
6. MealPrep Pro
This meal planning app has many of the features users are looking for, which is why it costs a bit more than others at $8.99 per month. Like Mealime, you can choose your eating style such as Mediterranean, Low–Carb, Keto, High Protein, Vegan, Vegetarian, or Pescetarian.
With MealPrep Pro you can even set a calorie range to help you meet your weight and health goals. Also, as with Mealime, you can set allergy restrictions and exclude ingredients you don’t like or prefer. If you have specific dietary guidelines that you need or want to follow and also want to track calories, this app may be your best option.
Highly customizable settings allow you to choose your preferred prep level and the number of meals per week to plan for. If you share cooking responsibilities with someone else, you can also share your meal plan with a partner. With MealPrep Pro you will gain access to a preloaded database of original recipes complete with nutrition information.
With a name like MealPrep Pro, it’s not surprising that it delivers features that help you prep meals in advance. The meal prep feature guides you in both prepping and planning, showing you what to prep on each day to stay ahead of your menu. You can also integrate an existing grocery list into the app.
The Best Meal Planning App for You
Life is busy and with all the food options, recipes, and restaurants readily available, making choices about meals and intentionally planning can be daunting task. Meal planning apps take some of the stress out of this needly planning.
We have listed several meal planning apps to aid you in your journey. Consider your best options and try a free version to see which is right for you. Find one that suits your lifestyle, personality, health goals, and weight loss goals.
Some seniors may opt for one that contains not only the features they need and is also more user-friendly. The app must practically work for you in order to be successful. If it’s not an app that suits your tastes, abilities, and lifestyle, then it won’t be one that you use consistently.
