Comparing Plan to Eat
Plan to Eat gives you a calendar to drag your own recipes onto. Eat Roostly reads your Google Calendar, then plans the week itself, inside everyone's allergies and diets. And there is a free plan that does not end after two weeks.
Start freeNo credit card · about 2 minutes
Free to start · web, iPhone, and Android · calendar reading free on every plan
Plan to Eat is a well-made recipe planner. You clip recipes from any website or photo, drag them onto a calendar, and the shopping list fills itself, sorted by aisle. It shows daily nutrition totals, and its one AI feature suggests ingredient substitutions. After a 14-day trial it costs $5.95 a month or $49 a year.
Every Sunday, though, the empty week is still yours to fill. Plan to Eat can share your plan out to Google Calendar as an iCalendar feed, but the calendar never feeds back. It does not know about Wednesday's 7pm soccer practice or Thursday's flight.
Most apps write your meal plan to a calendar. Eat Roostly reads the calendar first, then plans the week around it.
Set your household once and a full week of dinners appears in a minute or two. Swap any meal you do not want, and pick Simple, Standard, or Involved for the week's effort.
Eat Roostly checks the dinner window, roughly 4pm to 9pm, on each day of the plan week, including trips. Busy nights get quick dinners, and nights you are away get nothing planned and nothing bought. Free on every plan. Home Chef and up can also put each dinner on your Google Calendar.
Tags help you find recipes. Eat Roostly goes further: 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.
| Plan to Eat | Eat Roostly | |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides the meals | You do. Drag your own recipes onto a calendar. | 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 | Share Meal Plan gives an iCalendar feed for Google, Apple, or Outlook. One-way. | Home Chef and up: dinners written to Google Calendar as events. Google only, no .ics feed. |
| Allergies and diets per person | Find recipes by main ingredient and custom tags. No documented allergy filtering or per-person profiles. | Per person, filtered on every plan. Never paywalled. |
| Plans around your pantry | You choose the recipes, so cooking from what you have is your call. | Photograph your shelves; the week uses what you own. |
| Shopping list | Filled automatically from your plan, sorted by aisle. | Aisle-organized for the week. Kroger cart on paid plans. |
| Recipe import | Clip from any website or photo; import recipe files from other programs. | Paid plans: one at a time by URL or photo of a recipe card. No bulk importer. |
| Getting your data out | Whole recipe book as CSV or TXT from the website, even after your subscription lapses. | One tap in Settings downloads everything, free on every plan. |
| Platforms | Web, iOS, and Android. | Web, iPhone, and Android. |
| Price | No free tier. 14-day trial, no card, then $5.95/mo or $49/yr on the web ($54.99/yr in the iOS app). | Free plan at $0. Home Chef $6.99/mo or $69.99/yr. Family Table $12.99/mo or $129.99/yr. |
If you already know what you want to cook and enjoy curating your own recipe book, Plan to Eat is a good home, and better at that job than we are. If you want paid features, its $49 a year is less than Home Chef's $69.99. If you want your plan as an .ics feed in Apple Calendar or Outlook, Plan to Eat has one, and our dinners go to Google Calendar only.
Eat Roostly is for the household that would rather not fill the week at all.
From the Plan to Eat website, download your recipes as CSV or TXT.
Each person's allergies, intolerances, and diet, entered once, then your calendar. Generate your first week a minute or two later.
On a paid plan, add recipes one at a time by URL or recipe-card photo. There is no bulk importer, so start with the handful your household asks for.
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.
In one direction. Plan to Eat's Share Meal Plan option gives you an iCalendar feed URL that you can subscribe to in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook, so the meals you planned show up there. Nothing in its help docs describes reading your calendar to decide what to cook.
No. Plan to Eat offers a 14-day free trial with no card, then costs $5.95 a month or $49 a year on its website. The annual in-app price on iOS is listed at $54.99.
Eat Roostly has a free plan with no card and no time limit: 2 AI meal plans a month, Google Calendar reading, a shopping list, pantry-aware planning, and full allergy and diet filtering for 2 household members. Home Chef is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year if you want unlimited plans.
Not in bulk. Plan to Eat lets you export your whole recipe book as a CSV or TXT file, even after your subscription lapses, but Eat Roostly has no bulk importer to read it. On a paid plan you can add recipes one at a time by pasting a URL or photographing a recipe card. Keep the export as your archive.
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.