Free alternatives to Plan to Eat

Meal plans and groceries run through a tiny home ERP, because apparently the fridge needed one.

Versus paying: Grocy can calendar meals and generate groceries, but its inventory-first ERP interface makes the simple drag-recipe-to-calendar loop much slower and more complicated than Plan to Eat.

Setup: Docker container/Compose, or install the PHP application on a web server

Watch for: The first obstacle is deploying and exposing a PHP/Docker web app; the larger practical hurdle is configuring locations, units, products, barcodes, and household routines before its ERP-like screens become useful.

9,358 GitHub stars (checked Aug 6, 2026)

A household recipe server with meal plans and grocery lists; you supply the server and patience.

Versus paying: Mealie covers the core loop, but its calendar interaction, browser importer, mobile responsiveness, and maintenance burden are less polished than Plan to Eat's managed planner.

Setup: Docker Compose

Watch for: A non-expert needs Docker, persistent volumes, an update/backup routine, and usually a domain plus HTTPS; importing recipe sites also produces parsing failures that must be cleaned up manually.

12,900 GitHub stars (checked Aug 6, 2026)

Recipes, a calendar meal planner, and generated shopping lists, without the annual renewal.

Versus paying: RecipeSage is close functionally, but Plan to Eat has the more refined drag-and-drop calendar, recipe clipper, mobile workflow, and long-established support.

Setup: Hosted signup at RecipeSage, or Docker Compose for self-hosting

Watch for: The public service has no setup blocker; self-hosting adds Docker, a database, mail, storage, HTTPS, and backups, while both versions have less refined native-mobile interaction than Paprika or AnyList.

Drag recipes onto a weekly plan and turn it into groceries; ads replace the annual invoice.

Versus paying: Samsung Food removes the invoice but adds ads, recommendations, and vendor-cloud dependence, with less control and portability than Plan to Eat's focused personal recipe planner.

Setup: Install the mobile app or use the web app, then create a Samsung Food account

The full recipe-plan-shopping loop; free for personal self-hosting, but the license is not actually open source.

Versus paying: Tandoor does the recipe-plan-list loop, but self-hosting and its denser web UI are a large downgrade from Plan to Eat's simple hosted calendar and importer.

Setup: Docker Compose with PostgreSQL; manual Django deployment is also documented

Watch for: The first obstacle is a multi-container Django/PostgreSQL deployment with secrets, volumes, HTTPS, email, and backups; its Commons-Clause-modified AGPL license is also not an OSI-approved open-source license.