What Happened to Mealime
Mealime was discontinued on October 21, 2026. Its closing notice says Albertsons Companies bought Mealime in 2021 and is moving its recipes and meal planning tools into Meals Hub, a section of the Albertsons Companies grocery store apps and websites.
If you planned your dinners in Mealime every week, you now have to choose where to do that. This guide covers what the notice says you keep, what you have to set up again, and three places to plan your meals, including the one closest to Mealime.
What the Closing Notice Says About Your Recipes and Account
- Mealime’s recipes still exist. The notice says all Mealime recipes are available in Meals Hub, including the recipes that used to need Mealime Pro, along with thousands more.
- Your account does not move for you. You create or sign in to an Albertsons Companies store account to use Meals Hub. The notice says dietary preferences are set again in your Meals Hub profile, and that certain preferences and settings have to be set up there directly.
- Your Mealime data was deleted. The notice says all personal data is deleted when the Mealime app is shut down. It does not say that saved meal plans or favorite recipes carry over, so plan on choosing your regular dinners again.
- Pro subscribers stopped being charged. The notice says Pro subscribers would not be charged again before the shutdown.
Option 1: Meals Hub, the Closest Thing to Mealime
Meals Hub is made by the same team and holds the same recipes. According to the notice it is free, it continues to support dietary preferences and food restrictions, and new recipes are added regularly. You find it under “More” in an Albertsons Companies store app, and there is a web version on the store websites.
Mealime’s notice says Meals Hub still works if you don’t have an Albertsons Companies store nearby: you can browse recipes, make meal plans and build shopping lists without shopping there.
Choose Meals Hub if you liked cooking from Mealime’s own recipes and want to keep doing that.
Before you choose it, check two things. Meals Hub lives inside a grocery store’s app, so you plan your meals in an app built for that store’s shopping. And Albertsons Companies is a United States grocery company. The notice does not say whether Meals Hub is offered in other countries.
Option 2: Plan to Eat, for Planning From Your Own Recipes
Plan to Eat does not come with a recipe library. You save recipes from websites with its browser bookmarklet or extension, drag them onto a calendar, and it makes a shopping list from the meals you planned. It offers a 30-day trial.
Choose Plan to Eat if Mealime’s fixed library was the part you wanted to leave behind, and you already have recipes from websites and cookbooks you want to plan from. It does not track the food in your kitchen.
The Mealime vs Plan to Eat vs Pantryfy comparison covers it in more detail.
Option 3: Pantryfy, for Planning Around the Food You Already Have
Pantryfy is our app, so read this section with that in mind.
Pantryfy keeps four things together: the food in your pantry, fridge and freezer, your saved recipes, a weekly meal plan and a shopping list. You add recipes to the days of the week and build the shopping list from that plan, as you did in Mealime. The shopping list is sorted by store section and shows how much of each ingredient is already in your pantry.
What is different from Mealime. Pantryfy does not have a built-in recipe library like Mealime’s. You save your own recipes by pasting a link, sharing a TikTok, YouTube or Instagram video, pasting the recipe text or taking a photo of a recipe card. Setup offers a few starter recipes so your first week is not empty. On the Pro and Family plans, Pantryfy can also search the web for recipes and Autopilot can draft the week for you to review.
What the free plan includes. 50 pantry items, 25 recipes and 3 shopping lists, with no card needed. On the free plan you can save 3 recipes a day, whether from a link, pasted text or a video, and you get 10 photo scans in total. Moving ten favorite dinners across by link takes four days on the free plan.
Choose Pantryfy if you want your meal plan and shopping list to take account of the food you already have, and you are willing to save your own recipes.
How to Move Your Weekly Plan in One Evening
- Write down the dinners you cooked most. Five to ten is enough to cover the next few weeks.
- Find each recipe again. Look in Meals Hub for Mealime’s version, or use a recipe for the same dish from a website you trust.
- Save the recipes in the app you chose. In Meals Hub they are already there. In Plan to Eat, use the bookmarklet. In Pantryfy, paste each link and check the ingredients and steps it saved.
- Plan one week. Put the recipes on the days you will cook them.
- Build the shopping list from that week, and take it on your next grocery trip.
One week is enough to tell you whether the app fits how you cook.
Which One Should You Choose?
Stay with Mealime’s recipes by moving to Meals Hub if the recipes were what you valued. Choose Plan to Eat if you want to plan from your own collection. Choose Pantryfy if you also want to know what food you already have before you shop.
For a wider list of apps, see the best meal planning apps roundup. For the planning process itself, see the meal planning guide.