Compared by criteria, not ranked

Best Meal Planning Apps, Compared by What the Plan Does

A meal planner can mean a recipe library, a weekly plan built to your targets, or a plan that writes the shopping list. This page compares five apps on those parts, and on whether the same app also logs what you actually ate.

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How we compared

The criteria, chosen before we filled in the table:

Meal plans
The thing you came for: a day or week of meals decided for you.
Meal plans on the free plan
Whether you can try the planner before paying.
Automatic grocery list
Planning saves time only if shopping follows from it.
Food logging in the same app
A plan you cannot check against what you ate is half a tool.
Pantry or grocery delivery
Planning around what you already own wastes less.
Recipes in the app
A plan needs recipes, from a library or built for you.

What we checked: each app’s own site (home, pricing, feature and help pages), on October 23, 2026. Not review sites, blogs or app-store listings.
“Not listed” means we found nothing on the pages cited; it does not mean the app lacks the feature. Prices are left out because they change and differ by country.
Order: alphabetical by app name, CalorTracker included. It is not a ranking, because the right app depends on which criterion matters to you; the section after the table lists, per criterion, which apps do it.
CalorTracker’s own row comes from our code, not from a web page.

The comparison

5 apps compared on 6 criteria, in alphabetical order
App	Meal plans	Meal plans on the free plan	Automatic grocery list	Food logging in the same app	Pantry or grocery delivery	Recipes in the app
CalorTracker (our app)	Yes. Premium; batch prep with macros per portion	No. Meal plans need the trial or Premium	Yes. Shopping list with the plan (Premium)	Yes. Photo, voice and text logging in the same diary	No. No pantry and no grocery delivery	Yes. Recipes generated for your targets
Carb Manager	Yes. Premium^[1]	No. Premium^[1]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[1]	Yes. Food logging with barcode scanning^[2]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[1]	Yes. Keto recipes from a test kitchen (Premium)^[3]
Eat This Much	Yes. Daily plans free; weekly plans Premium^[4]	Yes. Daily plans^[4]	Yes. Automatic grocery list (Premium)^[4]	Yes. Food tracking is free^[4]	Yes. Virtual pantry; Instacart and AmazonFresh^[5]	Yes. Custom foods and recipes are free^[4]
Lifesum	Yes. Diet and meal plans, including Mediterranean, Keto and Fasting^[6]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[6]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[6]	Yes. Photo, voice, text or barcode^[6]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[6]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[6]
Yazio	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[7]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[7]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[7]	Yes. Photo and barcode^[7]	Not listed. Not listed on the pages checked^[7]	Yes. Over 3,000^[7]

Last verified October 23, 2026. Numbers in brackets point to the sources below.

One app at a time: Eat This Much alternative, Mealime alternative. CalorTracker features mentioned here: Meal planner, All features. Our post on how accurate AI calorie counting is explains why every AI estimate should be checked.

By criterion

Apps whose cell says yes, in alphabetical order. Read the table for the conditions (Premium, limits).

Meal plans: CalorTracker, Carb Manager, Eat This Much, Lifesum
Meal plans on the free plan: Eat This Much
Automatic grocery list: CalorTracker, Eat This Much
Food logging in the same app: CalorTracker, Carb Manager, Eat This Much, Lifesum, Yazio
Pantry or grocery delivery: Eat This Much
Recipes in the app: CalorTracker, Carb Manager, Eat This Much, Yazio

Worth knowing

Mealime is left out on purpose. Its closing page says it will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026, and that all personal data will be deleted when it shuts down.^[8]
Eat This Much says it can send the grocery list to Instacart or AmazonFresh and plans around what is already in your virtual pantry.^[5]

Where CalorTracker falls short

Meal plans are Premium: the free plan does not generate them, and the trial has its own swap limits.
No pantry and no grocery delivery integration.
No barcode scanner: packaged food is logged from a photo of the label or by hand.
The iOS app is not public yet: today CalorTracker runs on the web and on Android.

Sources and last verified

Every fact about another app on this page comes from that app’s own site, checked on October 23, 2026. Plans and limits change, so check the app before you decide.

We re-verify this page every quarter. Next review due by January 21, 2027. We also re-read every source before a page goes live if its facts are more than 90 days old.

Carb Manager home page: https://www.carbmanager.com/ (checked 2026-10-23)
Carb Manager help: scanning barcodes: https://help.carbmanager.com/docs/log-foods-by-scanning-barcodes-and-snapping-pictures (checked 2026-10-23)
Carb Manager Premium page: https://www.carbmanager.com/premium (checked 2026-10-23)
Eat This Much pricing page: https://www.eatthismuch.com/pricing (checked 2026-10-23)
Eat This Much home page: https://www.eatthismuch.com/ (checked 2026-10-23)
Lifesum home page: https://lifesum.com/ (checked 2026-10-23)
Yazio home page: https://www.yazio.com/en (checked 2026-10-23)
Mealime: closing page: https://www.mealime.com/closing (checked 2026-10-23)

Frequently asked questions

Which meal planner has a free plan?

Of the apps here, Eat This Much lists daily meal plans on its free plan. CalorTracker, Carb Manager and the others either charge for plans or do not say on the pages we read.

Why is Mealime not in the table?

Its own closing page says it will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026. A shut-down app is not an option to compare.

Can the plan and the food log be in one app?

In every app in the table the answer is yes for logging. They differ in how the plan is built and what it includes, which is what the other columns show.

Does CalorTracker have a barcode scanner?

No. For packaged food, photograph the nutrition label so the AI can read it, or type the numbers in.

Try it on your own meals

Start free, log your first meal from a photo, and see whether it suits the way you track.

Start free on the web

Every app name is a trademark of its respective owner; this page is an independent comparison.