Nearly every meal planner app is free. That's true and almost useless, because "free" covers everything from a genuinely complete tool to a seven-day trial wearing a disguise. The interesting question isn't whether an app has a free tier — it's which wall you'll hit, and how soon.
Here's what free actually tends to mean, which limits bite first for two people cooking in Australia, and how to work out whether you'd ever need to pay.
The four shapes of "free"
Almost every app falls into one of these, and the label on the app store tells you nothing about which.
- Genuinely free, ads pay for it. Full features, interrupted by advertising. Fine until you're cooking from your phone with the screen propped up.
- Free tier with a hard cap. Usually a number — ten recipes, three meal plans, one shared list. Works beautifully until the day it doesn't, which tends to be around week three.
- Free for one, paid to share. The most irritating pattern for couples. The app works perfectly until you try to add the person you're cooking with.
- Free trial dressed as a free tier. Everything works for a week or a month, then it stops. Nothing wrong with it as a model, but it isn't a free tier and shouldn't be shopped for as one.
For two people, the third pattern is the one to watch. A meal planner that doesn't share is a notebook with extra steps.
Which limit you'll hit first
In rough order of how quickly they bite for a couple cooking most nights.
| Limit | When it bites | How much it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Sharing with a second person | Day one | Fatal — this is the whole point |
| Number of saved recipes | Week 2–4 | High, and it never stops growing |
| Recipe import from a URL | First time you find a recipe online | High — typing recipes in by hand doesn't last |
| Grocery list generation | First full week | High if you plan, irrelevant if you don't |
| Number of plans or weeks stored | Month 2 | Low — most people don't revisit old weeks |
| Nutrition and macros | Only if you want it | Low for most couples |
The pattern is clear enough: the limits that matter are the ones that touch sharing and recipes. The ones that don't matter much are the ones apps love to advertise.
What's worth paying for, and what isn't
Being blunt, because this is where a lot of money goes on subscriptions nobody uses by March.
Worth paying for: sharing with your partner, unlimited recipes, and importing from a URL. Those three are the difference between a tool you use for years and one you abandon.
Rarely worth paying for: a large built-in recipe catalogue. It sounds valuable and it mostly isn't — people cook the recipes they already like, from sites they already read. A catalogue is someone else's taste.
Depends entirely: nutrition tracking, and AI-generated plans. Genuinely useful if you want them, dead weight if you don't. Don't pay for either as a bundled extra you'll "probably use".
If budget is the actual driver here rather than principle, meal planning for two on a budget goes at the grocery bill directly, which is where the real money is.
The Australian wrinkle
Two things are worth knowing if you're planning meals here rather than in the US.
First, most of these apps are American, and it shows in the small stuff. Cup measurements instead of grams, produce that's seasonal in the wrong half of the year, and store integrations for chains that don't exist here. None of it is fatal. All of it is mildly annoying every single week.
Second, the built-in recipe catalogues skew heavily American. That matters less than it sounds if you import your own recipes, and quite a lot if you were planning to lean on the catalogue. A tray of Potato & Red Pepper Hash with Fried Eggs & Parmesan is a Sunday here and a brunch there, and the app has no idea.
Our longer take on the local options is in the best meal planning app in Australia.
How to test a free tier properly
Two weeks, both of you, and a specific set of things to try. Most people test an app by browsing it, which tells you nothing.
- Add your partner on day one. Not later. If sharing is paywalled or awkward, you've learned the most important thing immediately.
- Import five recipes from the web. Real ones you actually cook, from the sites you actually read. Note how many come in cleanly.
- Plan four nights, not seven. Seven is a fantasy for most couples and it makes every app look bad. Four is the realistic test — we've argued that case in how many meals to plan per week.
- Generate the list and go shopping with it. The supermarket is where list apps reveal themselves.
- Change something on Wednesday. Every plan survives Monday. The question is what happens when Wednesday falls over.
If an app clears those five on a free tier, the free tier is real. If it asks for money at step one, it's a trial.
Free apps you already own
Worth saying before anyone spends money: two of the best shared planning tools in Australia are already on your phone, cost nothing, and will never send you an upgrade prompt.
Apple Reminders or Google Keep, plus a shared note
A shared list for the shopping and a shared note with seven lines on it — Monday through Sunday — covers the basics completely. No import, no nutrition, no aisle sorting. But both of you can edit it, it syncs instantly, and it never expires.
The honest ceiling: it doesn't hold your recipes, so every week you're re-finding the same links, and the list doesn't know what's already in the cupboard. That's the wall, and plenty of couples never hit it because they cook the same fifteen things.
A shared calendar
Underrated for the specific problem of who's home which night. Meal planning fails more often because nobody checked the week than because nobody chose recipes. If your actual problem is coordination rather than inspiration, fix that first and you may not need an app at all.
Paper on the fridge
Not a joke. A whiteboard with the week on it is visible to both of you without anyone unlocking anything, which is more than most apps manage. It fails on the shopping trip, since you can't take the fridge with you — which is usually the point where people start looking for software.
Start with whichever of these you'll actually keep up. An app you stop opening is worse than a note you keep writing.
What slrp's free tier includes
Straight answer, since you're here.
Sharing is free. Both of you get the same library, the same meal plan, the same grocery list, and neither of you is a guest on the other's account — we'd rather not paywall the one thing that makes a couples app a couples app.
Importing recipes from a URL is free, and it's the part we've put most effort into: you paste a link and get the recipe without the life story above it. Meal planning and the grocery list that falls out of it are free too.
The AI side is metered rather than locked. Generated meal plans, meal-prep suggestions and photo import of a cookbook page each come with a few free goes, and after that they need slrp plus. That's the part with a genuine per-use cost behind it, so it isn't subsidised by the free tier — but you get to try each one properly before deciding whether it's worth anything to you.
If you never touch those, the free tier isn't a crippled version of something better. It's the app.
Whether that's the right trade for you depends on whether you want the planning done for you or just want somewhere sane to do it. Plenty of couples never need the AI bits, and that's a perfectly good outcome. Something like Orange Glazed Pork Chops with Almond Green Beans doesn't need an algorithm to end up on a Tuesday.
The honest summary
If you want free and you're planning alone, you have genuinely good options and you should not pay anyone. Apple Reminders and a notes app will carry you a long way, and there's no shame in it.
If you're planning with someone else, the question narrows fast: find out what sharing costs, because that's the feature most likely to sit behind the paywall and it's the one you can't work around. Everything else — recipe limits, plan history, nutrition — you can live without or work around for months.
Test for two weeks with your partner actually involved. Most free tiers are fine. The ones that aren't will tell you within a fortnight, and a fortnight is a cheap way to find out.
And be a little suspicious of any app that makes sharing the premium feature. Charging for AI, storage or nutrition is a reasonable business; charging you to include the person you live with is charging you for the product working at all.
