Recipe apps compared, honestly

How this was put together

Twelve apps pulled from the App Store and read properly: their prices, their ratings, and their own descriptions taken at face value for what they claim. Sorted by rating count, which is the closest public stand-in for how many people actually use them.

This is a snapshot. Prices change, features ship. The date it was checked is at the bottom of the table, and if something here is out of date, tell me and I will fix it.

Checked on the App Store, 30 August 2026.

What every one of them has

A grocery list: twelve out of twelve. Universal. If you are choosing an app and a shopping list is what you need, this is a solved problem and almost anything on that table will do it.

Meal planning: eleven out of twelve. Nearly universal, usually a week view you drag recipes into.

Sift has neither. That is the honest headline of this page, so it goes near the top.

The one thing not one of them does

Zero of twelve claim a browser extension that detects a recipe as you browse. Every single one of their import stories is the same: open our app and paste a link, or use the share sheet. You go and fetch the recipe.

Two more places where the field is thin:

• Ingredient substitutions with real ratios. Only one of the twelve claims anything like it, and it suggests a swap without telling you how much to use or what changes if you do.
• Timers read out of the step text. Five of twelve have timers at all, and every one of them is a timer you set yourself.

What people complain about

Read across the one, two and three star reviews in this category and the same three things come up.

1. Ads that block the next step mid-cook. The most-repeated complaint in the whole category, and the most avoidable.
2. Paywall surprises. A feature the listing did not say was paid, discovered at the moment you try to use it.
3. Imports that mangle the ingredients, or paste the author's holiday story into the method.

Where Sift fits

It is free with no ads and no in-app purchase today, so the first two complaints do not apply. It reads a page four ways and every route lands on the same editable card, which is the third. And the extension means the recipe finds you.

It has no grocery list and no meal planner. If either is the thing you actually need, one of the apps in that table is a better answer, and I would rather say so here.