The fastest way to choose between slrp and Mealime is to look at where your recipes come from. Pick Mealime if you want to choose dinner from a curated app-built recipe library, with strong dietary filters and minimal decision-making. Pick slrp if you already collect recipes from food blogs, Instagram, NYT Cooking or your favourite cookbook authors and want to plan meals together from your own library — not someone else’s catalog. Both apps generate aisle-grouped grocery lists; the meaningful difference is what gets onto the plan in the first place.
Both apps are free to start. Mealime has a paid tier (Mealime Pro) that unlocks the full recipe library; slrp is free without any paid tier today. Beyond pricing, the two apps make different bets about where good recipes come from — the rest of this post is what that looks like in daily use.
Quick comparison
| slrp | Mealime | |
|---|---|---|
| Recipe source | Import any URL from any site | Mealime’s own curated catalog |
| Sharing | Built around couples — one shared library, plan, and list | Family plans (up to 4) on the paid tier |
| Platforms | Web + iOS | iOS + Android |
| Dietary filters | Tag your own recipes; ad-hoc filtering | Strong pre-built dietary filters (low-carb, paleo, gluten-free, etc.) |
| Grocery list | Auto-merged, aisle-grouped, pantry-aware, real-time sync | Auto-generated, aisle-grouped, app-internal sync |
| Cook mode | Full-screen step-by-step, screen-stays-awake | In-app cooking view with step pacing |
| Pricing (2026) | Free | Free tier + Mealime Pro paid plan |
| Built in | Melbourne, Australia | Vancouver, Canada |
What Mealime does well
Mealime’s thesis is that decision fatigue is the real meal-planning problem — not the cooking, not the shopping, just the “what should we eat?” question. Their solution is a curated recipe library where every recipe has been tested by their team, tagged for dietary needs, and timed for 30-minute weeknight cooking.
If you don’t already collect recipes — if you don’t have a Pinterest board, a screenshot folder, or 200 NYT Cooking saves — Mealime is a genuinely good answer. Choose two or three recipes for the week, the app builds your grocery list, and you cook. The dietary filtering is strong: switch to “low-carb” or “gluten-free” and the entire library re-filters cleanly.
Their app is also more mature on Android — Mealime ships on both iOS and Android; slrp is iOS-only on mobile so far (with a full web app as the second surface). If your household has any Android phones, Mealime is the more practical choice today.
Three other things Mealime gets right that are worth naming:
- Nutrition tagging on every recipe. Each recipe has calorie and macro information built in, which matters if either of you tracks macros or eats around a structured plan.
- Single-person mode. Most recipes scale cleanly to one or two servings, which is rare; many recipe apps default to four.
- Family plans on Mealime Pro. Up to 4 people can share a plan and list on the paid tier — useful if your household is bigger than two.
What slrp does well
slrp’s thesis is that your recipes are the recipes you actually want to cook — the ones a friend sent you, the one you found on a food blog three years ago, the one in the cookbook on the shelf. The meal planner’s job is to corral those, not replace them with someone else’s catalog.
You paste any recipe URL and slrp extracts the title, ingredients, cook time, and method automatically — works with BBC Good Food, NYT Cooking, Bon Appétit, RecipeTin Eats, Serious Eats, and thousands of food blogs (anywhere with recipe JSON-LD, which is the structured-data format Google requires for recipe rich results). For sites without structured data, slrp saves the link gracefully.
The sharing model is built around two people. There’s no “family plan” pricing tier because shared kitchens are the default, not the upgrade. Both partners share one library, one meal plan, and one grocery list — you can each add recipes during the week and pick from your shared collection on Sunday. When one of you ticks limes off the grocery list, the other sees it instantly on their phone.
Three slrp-specific things worth naming:
- Pantry-aware grocery lists. Tell slrp what you always have at home and those ingredients are quietly removed from the list before you leave the house. Less coriander, more dinner.
- Ingredient merging across recipes. Three recipes each want an onion? The list says “3 onions”, not three separate rows. Quantities and units convert where sensible (½ cup + 4 tbsp becomes ¾ cup).
- Web + iOS, not just mobile. Plan the week on your laptop, shop from the phone, cook from the iPad on the bench. Same shared library, same grocery list, same view of what’s for dinner.
Where the difference actually matters
The two apps overlap on grocery-list mechanics and cook-mode basics; the meaningful divergence is the recipe model.
Curated vs. open library. Mealime owns the recipe catalog — their team writes and tests every recipe in the app. slrp owns the import pipeline; the recipes come from wherever you find them. If you trust Mealime’s editorial taste, that’s a feature: every recipe has been vetted. If your favourite recipes come from a specific cookbook author or food blog, Mealime can’t bring them in, and that’s the dealbreaker.
Tagging-driven vs. tag-as-you-go. Mealime’s filters are strong because their team has tagged the whole library upfront. slrp’s filters are whatever you assign — you tag a recipe “weeknight” or “impressive” or “mum’s favourite” and it’s findable later. The tradeoff: stronger filters out of the box vs. flexible filters that match how your particular household thinks about food.
Decision-light vs. choice-rich. Mealime is built to minimise the “what should we eat?” decision — pick from filtered suggestions and you’re done. slrp assumes you want to bring your own decisions and just need the workflow around them (plan, list, cook, sync). Couples who love food research lean slrp; couples who want dinner solved lean Mealime.
Country-specific assumptions. Mealime is built in Canada with a US-and-Canada-centric ingredient model (Imperial measurements, North American product names). slrp is built in Melbourne with metric defaults and Australian-grocery aisle conventions. Both apps can be used outside their home market, but you’ll feel the home-market bias.
Cooking together vs. cooking solo. Mealime supports family plans on the paid tier; the core experience is still personal. slrp’s sharing is built into the free tier from day one because the app exists for two cooks specifically. If you’re cooking alone most of the time, this is largely irrelevant; if you’re cooking with a partner most nights, the difference is felt every week.
Pricing
Mealime has a free tier with a limited subset of the recipe library and basic features. Mealime Pro unlocks the full catalog, family sharing (up to 4), dietary preferences, and removes ads — check Mealime’s site for current pricing.
slrp is free in 2026 with no paid tier today. We’re building toward a paid tier at the “50 engaged couples” bar with a grandfather offer for early users; that decision will be public when it happens. For now, no credit card required, no “upgrade for the good stuff” modal, no trial expiry.
Which is right for you?
Pick Mealime if you want recipes chosen for you, you have specific dietary needs that benefit from strong pre-built filters, you don’t already collect recipes elsewhere, or your household uses Android.
Pick slrp if you already save recipes from blogs, Instagram, or specific cookbook authors and want them in one shared place; you and your partner share one kitchen and want one library, plan, and list; you want a free tier that isn’t a teaser; or you’re in Australia (or anywhere using metric and aisle conventions that don’t default to US supermarkets).
It’s also fine to use both for a season. Mealime for two weeknight dinners, slrp for everything else. Most apps in this category are quietly used alongside each other anyway.
Full disclosure: slrp is our app — we’ve listed it where it genuinely fits, and named the areas where Mealime wins. If the descriptions of Mealime above feel off in any way (Mealime team or a regular user reading this), drop us a line and we’ll fix it. We’d rather get this right than win an unfair comparison.
Common questions about choosing between slrp and Mealime
Can I import recipes from food blogs into Mealime?
No — Mealime’s catalog is closed by design. You choose recipes from their library; you can’t paste a URL from BBC Good Food, NYT Cooking, or a food blog and have Mealime read it in. This is the single biggest functional difference. If your recipe collection lives outside any app today (bookmarks, screenshots, a cookbook shelf), Mealime won’t bring it with you. slrp is the answer to that specific problem.
Does Mealime work for couples?
Yes — Mealime Pro’s family plan supports up to 4 members sharing a plan and grocery list. The mechanics work fine for two people; it’s just that the sharing lives in the paid tier rather than being the core free experience. slrp built sharing in the other direction: it’s the default, free, and the whole product is shaped around it.
Which app has a better grocery list?
Both apps auto-generate aisle-grouped grocery lists from your meal plan, which is the bar. slrp’s list does additional work that matters in daily use: it merges duplicate ingredients across recipes (“3 onions” not three rows of “onion”), converts compatible units where sensible (½ cup + 4 tbsp = ¾ cup), and strips out pantry items you’ve told it you already have. Mealime’s list is solid for its catalog; it just doesn’t need to handle ingredient strings from arbitrary sites because the catalog is internal.
Can I switch from Mealime to slrp (or back)?
Yes, though there’s no automated import either direction — neither app exposes a public export of the other’s recipe shape. The practical migration: for the recipes you actually cook regularly (most couples have 15-30 of these), find the source URL or copy the recipe into slrp manually. For everyone else, just start fresh; you’ll rebuild a useful library within a month.
For the wider context, see our roundup of the best meal planning apps in 2026 (where Mealime is the pick for fastest weeknight decisions and slrp is the pick for couples sharing a kitchen). For the meta on meal planning together, read our complete guide to meal planning for couples. And if you’re evaluating whether you even need an app, our note on the simplest meal-planning fix for couples is the shortest possible version.
