Comparing Paprika
Paprika keeps your recipes beautifully. It still leaves you staring at them on Sunday night. Eat Roostly decides the week: dinners matched to your Google Calendar and to everyone's allergies and diets, with the shopping list built.
Start freeNo credit card · about 2 minutes
Free to start · web, iPhone, and Android · allergy and diet filtering free on every plan
Paprika is one of the best recipe managers around. It downloads recipes from websites, sorts your grocery list by aisle, and tracks a pantry with expiry dates. You buy it once per platform, with cloud sync included.
The meal planner is a calendar you fill yourself: drag recipes onto days, or reuse a saved menu. That works if choosing is the fun part. If choosing is the chore, a bigger archive makes it harder. Five hundred saved recipes do not tell you which one survives a 7pm soccer practice, a Thursday flight, and a kid who just went dairy-free.
Paprika stores what you might cook. Eat Roostly decides what you will cook this week, around your schedule and your household's rules.
Set your household once and a week of dinners appears in a minute or two. Swap any meal, and pick Simple, Standard, or Involved for the week's effort.
Before planning, Eat Roostly checks the dinner window, roughly 4pm to 9pm, on each day. Busy nights get quick dinners, and nights you are away get nothing planned and nothing bought. Free on every plan. On Home Chef and up, dinners can also be added to your Google Calendar as events.
Each person gets their own allergies, intolerances, and diet, and every plan is filtered against all of them. Best-effort, and free on every tier.
Photograph your shelves and the week is planned around them. Only missing items land on the aisle-organized list, which paid plans can send to a Kroger cart.
No credit card · about 2 minutes
The read side: busy nights, trips, and dinner parties.
The write side: dinners as Google Calendar events, visible on iPhone or Outlook through Google.
| Paprika | Eat Roostly | |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides the meals | You do. Place recipes on a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar, or reuse a menu. | Eat Roostly generates the week in a minute or two. Swap any meal. |
| Reads your calendar before planning | No documented feature. | Yes, Google Calendar, free on every plan. |
| Puts the plan on your calendar | The iOS app lists export to Calendar and Reminders. No subscribable feed found in Paprika 3. | Home Chef and up: dinners written to Google Calendar as events. Google only, no .ics feed. |
| Allergies and diets per person | None documented. | Per person, filtered on every plan. Never paywalled. |
| Plans around your pantry | Tracks a pantry with expiry dates. You decide what to cook from it. | Photograph your shelves; the week uses what you own. |
| Shopping list | Merged and sorted by aisle. | Aisle-organized for the week. Kroger cart on paid plans. |
| Recipe import | Downloads recipes from websites. Imports MasterCook, Living Cookbook, and MacGourmet. | Paid plans: one at a time by URL or photo of a recipe card. No bulk importer. |
| Getting your data out | Paprika can export your recipes. | One tap in Settings downloads everything, free on every plan. |
| Platforms | Native apps for iOS and iPadOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. | Web, iPhone, and Android. No native Mac or Windows app. |
| Price | One-time purchase per platform: iOS $4.99, Android $4.99, Mac $29.99, Windows $29.99. No free tier. | Free plan at $0. Home Chef $6.99/mo or $69.99/yr. Family Table $12.99/mo or $129.99/yr. |
About Paprika 4 (as of October 3, 2026): Paprika 4 began beta testing on July 6, 2026 and entered open beta on September 28, 2026. It adds calendar feeds you can subscribe to in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or Outlook, plus family sharing, photo scanning, social import, and nutrition analysis. Paprika says premium features will require a subscription afterwards; prices and the status of Paprika 3 purchases have not been announced. As described, the new feed sends your planned meals out to a calendar.
If you already know what you want to cook and love curating a collection, Paprika is excellent, and we are not a deep recipe archive. It has native Mac and Windows apps, which we do not, and a one-time price, where our paid plans are a subscription. If planning the week is a pleasure for you, keep Paprika.
Eat Roostly is for the cook who has plenty of recipes and still dreads deciding.
Each person's allergies, intolerances, and diet, entered once, then your calendar so the planner can see your week.
A minute or two later you have dinners matched to each night, with the shopping list built.
On a paid plan, add recipes one at a time by URL or recipe-card photo. There is no bulk importer, so keep Paprika as the archive.
Coming from Mealime? It closes October 21, 2026. Here is where to land if you cook around dietary needs.
No credit card · about 2 minutes
A week planned within low-FODMAP guidelines.
Each person's allergy list, checked on every plan.
Dinners planned with blood sugar in mind.
Paprika 3's iOS app lists export to Calendar and Reminders, and we found no subscribable calendar feed in Paprika 3. Paprika 4, in open beta since September 28, 2026, adds calendar feeds you can subscribe to in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or Outlook. Both send your planned meals out to a calendar. Neither documents reading your calendar to plan around it.
Not in bulk. Paprika can export your recipes, but Eat Roostly has no bulk importer to read that file. On a paid plan you can add recipes one at a time by pasting a URL or photographing a recipe card.
Paprika has said that after Paprika 4 launches, premium features will require a subscription. As of October 2026 it has not announced prices or what happens to existing Paprika 3 purchases. Paprika 3 is a one-time purchase per platform today.
Yes. Paprika is a recipe manager and Eat Roostly is a planner, so they do different jobs. Keep your archive where it is and let Eat Roostly decide the week.
Yes, there is a free plan with 2 AI meal plans a month, Google Calendar reading, a shopping list, and full allergy and diet filtering, and it needs no card. Home Chef is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, and Family Table is $12.99 a month or $129.99 a year.