We built slrp on a simple promise: the two of you should never have to ask "what's for dinner?" again, and you shouldn't have to pay to make that stop. That promise isn't changing. What is changing is that we've built two new things — both powered by AI, both genuinely useful on the nights you're too tired to think — and we want to tell you exactly what they are, what they cost, and, just as importantly, what stays free.
So here's the whole story, plainly. No countdown timers, no "act now," no small print you'll resent later. Just what's new and where the line sits.
First, the part that matters most: the free stuff stays free
Everything you already do in slrp is free, and it's staying that way — not "free for now," not "free until we hit a number," just free. Saving recipes from any link, as many as you like. Building a flexible meal plan with your partner. The shared grocery list that writes itself from your plan. The pantry that strips out what you already own. Cook mode. All of it, on the house, for both of you, forever.
We're saying this first and saying it clearly because the thing we never want is for you to open slrp one day and find a feature you relied on suddenly locked behind a paywall. That's not how we're doing this. If you've been using slrp to keep all your recipes in one place and plan your week together, nothing about that experience gets worse. The free app doesn't shrink to make room for a paid one.
So what's new?
Two headline things are new — plus a couple of smaller helpers in the same spirit — and all of them are the kind of help you want on a Sunday night when the week is a blank page and neither of you has the energy to fill it. They're AI features, which is the honest reason they're the paid part: they cost us real money every time they run. Here they are.
AI meal planning: the blank week, filled in
You know the stall. It's Sunday evening, you both agree you should plan the week, and then you sit there staring at an empty plan with a vague sense that you own plenty of good recipes but can't remember a single one. That gap — between having recipes and actually choosing them — is where most meal plans die.
AI meal planning closes it. Tell slrp roughly what you're after — a few dinners, mostly quick, something vegetarian midweek — and it builds a plan from the recipes already in your library — the ones you've saved because you actually like them — and, when you want, it discovers genuinely new ones out on the open web, steered toward your favourite sites and checked against your diet before you ever see them. Not random meals scraped off the internet; real recipes, verified, arranged into a week that makes sense. You look it over, swap anything you're not feeling, and you're done. The blank page is filled before the kettle's boiled.
It pairs with everything you already know about slrp. The plan it builds is the same flexible plan you'd make by hand — no rigid seven-day grid — and it still feeds straight into your automatic grocery list. If you've read our take on how many meals to actually plan per week, you'll be pleased to know the AI leans the same way we do: it plans a realistic few, not an ambitious seven you'll abandon by Wednesday.
Photo import: the cookbook page, read in
The other new helper is for the recipes that don't live at a web address. The splattered page in your favourite cookbook. The card in your nan's handwriting. The magazine tear-out stuck to the fridge. Until now, getting those into slrp meant typing them out by hand, which nobody does, which is why those recipes stay trapped on paper.
With photo import, you snap a photo of the page and slrp reads it — the title, the ingredients, the method — straight into your library, structured the same way a link import would be. Check it over, tidy anything the camera misread, and save. Your paper recipes join the same searchable, shared recipe library as everything else, ready to drop onto a plan and turn into a grocery list. The whole point of keeping your recipes in one place finally includes the ones that were never online to begin with.
Around those two sit a few smaller helpers, same idea, smaller doses: ask slrp for a handful of fresh dinner ideas when you're out of inspiration, or have it find a twist on a dish you already love — new recipes from the open web, steered to your favourite sites and checked against your diet before you see them.
Where the line sits: free organises, plus does the thinking
If you take one thing from this post, take this: free slrp organises what you bring; slrp plus does the thinking for you.
Bringing recipes in yourself — pasting a link, saving as many as you want — is free and always will be. Planning your week by hand, sharing the list, managing the pantry: free. The paid part is only the AI doing work on your behalf — building the plan, reading the photo. That's the clean division. You're never paying for the recipes you save or the plans you make yourself; you're only ever paying for the AI that saves you the effort. If you love doing it by hand, slrp stays completely free for you, forever.
What it costs — and why it's per couple
slrp plus is $8.99 a month, or $69.99 a year — and here's the part we're proud of: that's per couple, not per person. One subscription covers both of you. We didn't want to be the app that charges you, then charges your partner again for the same shared kitchen. You cook together; you pay once, together.
And before you decide anything, you get a proper taste on us: your first few goes at each helper are free — three AI plans, three photo imports, and a handful of fresh-idea and discovery runs. Not a trial with a ticking clock — just enough real use to know whether the help is worth it to you. Plenty of couples will find the free app is all they need, and that's genuinely fine. plus is there for the nights you'd rather hand the thinking off, not a toll you have to pay to keep using slrp.
We'll be honest about the "why" too, because we'd want the same. The rest of slrp costs us almost nothing to run per couple, which is exactly why it can be free forever. The AI features are different: every plan the AI builds and every photo it reads costs us real money in the moment it happens. Charging a small, fair amount for those — and only those — is what keeps the free app sustainable instead of something we quietly have to claw back later. We'd rather put an honest price on the expensive part than nickel-and-dime the free one.
Who slrp plus is for — and who it isn't
plus isn't for everyone, and we don't want it to be. If you enjoy picking your own recipes and building your own plan — if that Sunday ritual is part of the fun for you two — then the free app is the whole app, and you should keep it exactly as it is. You lose nothing by skipping plus.
plus is for the other kind of week: the one where you're both flat out, the plan isn't happening, and "we'll just figure it out each night" quietly turns into three takeaways and a fridge full of sad vegetables. It's for the cookbook shelf you love but never actually cook from because typing a recipe out is a chore. It's help for the tired weeks, not a tax on the good ones. If you'd rather hand the thinking off now and then, it's there. If you wouldn't, it isn't in your way.
It's live today
No waitlist, no "coming soon": slrp plus is switched on for everyone right now. If you're already using slrp, open your meal plan and you'll find the AI helpers waiting — your free goes included, no card needed to try them. If you're new, sign up free, start cooking together with the whole core app, and hand the thinking off whenever you feel like it. The full details live on the pricing page.
The same slrp, with a little more help
Nothing about slrp's heart is changing. It's still a warm, unfussy app for two people who like cooking together, and the core of it is free for good. We've just added a little AI help for the moments you want it — the tired Sunday, the cookbook you can't be bothered typing out — and put a fair, per-couple price on the parts that genuinely cost us to run.
If you're new here, the best place to start is still the basics: our complete guide to meal planning for couples walks through the whole free workflow, and meal planning for couples covers the gentle method underneath it. The AI is the cherry, not the cake. The cake — and it's a good one — is still on us.