Weekmeal vs Mealime
The short answer: These two are closer than any other pair in this category. Both are free, both generate a week of meals, both build the grocery list for you. The difference is what they plan around. Mealime plans around your tastes. Weekmeal plans around your tastes and this week’s sale prices.
At a glance
| Mealime | Weekmeal | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Mealime : Free, with a Pro upgrade from $2.99 USD | Weekmeal : Free forever, with Pro at $2.99 CAD/month or $29.99 CAD/year |
| Free tier | Mealime : Generous — weekly planning and grocery lists included | Weekmeal : Permanent — 25 recipes, 1 active plan, 1 featured flyer ingredient/week |
| Plans built from | Mealime : Its own recipe catalogue plus your preferences | Weekmeal : Your recipes plus the current specials at your store |
| Knows grocery prices | Mealime : No | Weekmeal : Yes |
| Your own recipes | Mealime : Limited — you cook from their catalogue | Weekmeal : Yes, store and plan with your own |
| Grocery list | Mealime : Automatic, grouped by category | Weekmeal : Automatic, grouped by store aisle, emailed to you |
| Dietary restrictions | Mealime : 200+ personalization options, applied to your profile | Weekmeal : Set per diner — each person’s restrictions applied to every plan |
| Where it runs | Mealime : iOS and Android apps | Weekmeal : Any browser, nothing to install |
| Rating | Mealime : 4.8 ★ (54,000 ratings, iOS) | Weekmeal : Newer product, smaller user base |
Mealime data verified 2026-08-08 from the App Store and mealime.com. Weekmeal prices in CAD, taxes extra.
What Mealime does better
It’s free, and genuinely so. Not a trial, not a teaser. Weekly meal planning and automatic grocery lists are in the free tier. Over 4.5 million people use it. That’s not a small thing and we won’t pretend it is.
The recipes are built for weeknights. Thirty minutes, short ingredient lists, minimal cleanup. Mealime is very good at the specific problem of “it’s 5 p.m. and I have no plan.”
Personalization is deep. More than 200 options for tastes, allergies and dislikes, applied to everything it suggests.
Native apps with hands-free cooking mode. Your phone won’t sleep mid-recipe. Small feature, genuinely useful with wet hands.
If you want a free planner with a good recipe catalogue and no setup, Mealime is excellent. For a lot of households, it’s enough.
What Weekmeal does that Mealime doesn’t
It plans around what’s actually on sale.
Mealime will suggest a great salmon recipe the week salmon is expensive. It has no way to know — it was never built to look at prices. Its plans come from its catalogue and your preferences, and stop there.
Weekmeal reads the current flyer specials at your store and builds the week around them. Households following the plan save around 25% on a typical week’s groceries.
One sale, several suppers. When chicken drops, Weekmeal reuses it across two or three meals in the same week. Buy once, eat well three times.
Your recipes, not just ours. Mealime largely asks you to cook from its catalogue. Weekmeal stores your own recipes — grandmother’s included — and plans with them.
Restrictions per person, not per account. Mealime applies preferences to your profile. Weekmeal applies them to each diner at your table. If one person is gluten-free and another is vegetarian, every plan handles both at once, automatically.
A list ordered like the store. Grouped by aisle and sent to your inbox, so you walk the store once.
Which one should you pick?
Choose Mealime if:
- You want a free planner with zero setup
- You’re happy cooking from a curated catalogue
- Speed on weeknights is the whole problem
- You prefer a native app to a website
Choose Weekmeal if:
- Your grocery bill is the thing you want to shrink
- You want to plan with recipes you already own
- Several people at your table have different restrictions
- You’d rather your menu follow the sales than ignore them
Frequently asked questions
Is Mealime free?
Yes. Weekly meal planning and automatic grocery lists are included at no cost. There’s a paid Pro upgrade, listed on the App Store at $2.99 USD as of August 2026.
Is Weekmeal free?
Yes, permanently. The free tier includes 25 stored recipes, one active 7-day plan plus three archived, one featured flyer ingredient per week, and the consolidated grocery list. No credit card required.
What’s the real difference between Mealime and Weekmeal?
Both plan your week and build your grocery list. Mealime builds plans from its recipe catalogue and your preferences. Weekmeal builds them from your recipes and the current sale prices at your grocery store, so the plan is designed to cost less.
Can I use my own recipes?
In Weekmeal, yes — that’s the default. Mealime is built primarily around its own catalogue.
Does Weekmeal work in the United States?
Yes. Weekmeal.app serves the US market with the same product.
Ready to see what you’d keep?
Try it without an account — pick your household size and diet, and generate a menu right on the homepage.