Most meal planning apps are built around a week. That's not a flaw exactly — a lot of people shop weekly, so a weekly calendar matches how they live. But if you're planning once a month, most of the popular options either don't have a monthly view at all, or they bolt one on as an afterthought to a recipe box that was never designed for it.
The Good Plate's Pick of Meal Planning Apps
If you want to have a meal planning app that talks to your smart speaker, is free and low cost for premium features, AnyList is the way to go.
Here's an honest look at what's actually out there, sorted by what kind of person each one fits.
Meal Planning Apps Comparison at a Glance
| Tool | Planning Horizon | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper / Index Cards | Monthly (you set the format) | Free | Zero setup, total flexibility |
| Monthly Meal Planner Workbook | Monthly, built for it | One-time purchase | People who want something made specifically for this system, that lives on the fridge |
| DIY Spreadsheet | Monthly (you build it) | Free | Full control, comfortable building your own tabs and formulas |
| AnyList | Monthly calendar | Free core / Complete $9.99 individual, $14.99 household per year | Voice input (Alexa, Siri), syncs to Google Calendar, good free tier |
| BigOven | Daily, weekly, or monthly | Free / Pro $2.99 mo or $24.99 yr | People who want the planner and a recipe box in one app |
| Plan to Eat | Weekly only | $5.95/mo | Strong weekly calendar UX, not built for a full month |
| Mealime | No real calendar | Free / $5.99 mo | People who want a plan handed to them, not building their own |
| Paprika | Recipe manager first, planning secondary | $4.99 one-time per platform | A simple recipe box with no subscription |
The Free Options
Paper or index cards. This is where a lot of people start, and there's no shame in staying here. Write the month out, tape it to the fridge, done. The only real requirement is that you can look at it and know what's happening on any given day without having to think hard about it.
A spreadsheet you build yourself. If you already think in rows and columns, nothing beats the control of building your own. No app to learn, no subscription, no features you don't need.
Meal Planning Apps With an Actual Monthly View
AnyList is free for the core features — creating and sharing lists, a meal planning calendar, syncing that calendar with Google Calendar and other apps. The paid tier, AnyList Complete, adds unlimited recipe imports and a few conveniences, but you don't need it to plan a month. The standout feature for anyone juggling a full kitchen and a full inventory: voice input through Alexa or Siri. Add something to a list the second you notice you're out, without stopping what you're doing.
BigOven still supports daily, weekly, or monthly planning, which puts it in a small group of apps that haven't quietly dropped the monthly option in favor of weekly-only. It also pulls double duty as a recipe manager, so if you want your recipes and your calendar in the same place, this is a reasonable one-stop option.
Meal Planning Apps That Don't Really Do Monthly
Plan to Eat has a genuinely well-built weekly calendar, drag-and-drop recipes, reliable shopping list generation — it just stops at a week. If your rhythm is weekly, it's a solid choice. If you're trying to plan once and shop once a month, you'll be fighting the app's structure the whole time.
Mealime takes a different approach entirely: instead of building your own plan, it hands you one from its own recipe database based on your preferences. There isn't a calendar to speak of in the way a monthly planner needs. It's built for a different problem — "tell me what to cook" rather than "help me organize what I already decided to cook."
Paprika is a recipe manager first. It's solid at what it does — clipping recipes from websites, organizing a collection, a one-time purchase instead of a subscription — but meal planning is a secondary feature bolted onto a recipe box, not the reason the app exists. As of 2026, Paprika was in beta testing for smart speakers.
A Note on "Recipe Manager" vs. "Meal Planner"
A lot of apps in this space use the two terms almost interchangeably, but they're solving different problems. A recipe manager wants to organize the recipes you already have. A meal planner wants to organize your month. Some apps do both reasonably well — AnyList and BigOven are the two here that actually manage it. Others are excellent at one and an afterthought at the other. Know which problem you're actually trying to solve before you pick a tool, and don't let a beautifully designed recipe box talk you into thinking it's a planning system.
None of these tools do the thinking for you — that part is still on you, and it's what the Monthly Meal Planning course walks through step by step. The tool is just where you write the decisions down once you've made them.