Meal Planning App Alternatives for Busy Families on iPhone

It’s Dinnertime is a meal planning app for working parents on iPhone and iPad. It plans a week of dinners, keeps one grocery list in Apple Reminders, and cooks along with you, one step at a time. Here is where to start if you are coming from another app.

Join the beta

Pick Your Starting Point

Switching From Mealime

Mealime says it closes on October 21, 2026. What to save first, what Mealime’s closing page says, and how recipes can come in.

Switching From Paprika

Export from Paprika, then bring the file into It’s Dinnertime in three steps. Ratings and notes come across with your recipes.

Save Recipes From Instagram and TikTok

Tap Share on a post and choose It’s Dinnertime. Then put the recipe on your week and its ingredients on your Reminders list.

What It’s Dinnertime Does

Saves recipes from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook and any recipe website, by scanning a cookbook page, or by importing a Paprika file.
Plans the week of dinners, and lets a night be takeout or a written-in dinner like nuggets or leftovers.
Keeps one grocery list in Apple Reminders, sorted by department, that you can share the way you share any Reminders list.
Cooks along with you: one step at a time, voice control, and timers on the Lock Screen.
Has no account to make. Your recipes and your week stay on your phone and in your own iCloud.

Free and Pro at a Glance

Pro is free for everyone during the beta, including planning with Claude. Pricing comes at launch. This is how the guide splits the app today.

Free

Saving a recipe from a link, and bringing recipes over from Paprika.
Scanning a cookbook page, read on your phone, on an iPhone with Apple Intelligence.
Planning the week with Apple’s planner, or with your own API key from Anthropic, OpenAI or Google.
Takeout nights, written-in dinners, a prep day, sharing the week, and a household of two.
Your grocery list in Reminders, cook along with voice control, and Lock Screen timers.

Pro

Real prices for your list at Kroger-family stores and Walmart, sending it to your Kroger cart or opening your Walmart cart.
Planning, writing recipes, rescuing failed imports and asking while you cook, all with Claude.
Reading a photo of a cookbook page or a handwritten card, and suggesting dinners from what you have.
Adapting recipes, tidying the grocery list, planning around your calendar, and My prep list.
Past orders and what is running low, the full nutrition label, and Samsung oven alerts.
Room for six in a household.

You do not need a store, or any price, to plan, shop or cook. The guide lists every feature with its tag: what Pro adds.

What To Know Before You Switch

It is for iPhone and iPad with iOS 26 or later, in the United States only for now. There is no Android version yet.
It is a free public beta on TestFlight, and on its way to the App Store. You need Apple’s free TestFlight app to join.
Pricing at launch is not set on this site yet.

Questions

Short answers on cost, data and how it works are on the questions page. Planners and AI compares the three planners.

Disclosure: Smart Home Life LLC makes It’s Dinnertime. Other app names on these pages belong to their owners, and are used only to say what they are.

Still have a question? Support is a person, the same one who builds the app.