Yummly shut down in late 2024. For the millions of users who relied on it for recipe saving, personalised meal plans, and grocery lists, this left a gap.
If you're searching for what to use instead, this guide covers the best alternatives depending on what you actually used Yummly for.
What Yummly Did
Yummly was a recipe aggregator with a personalisation engine. It let you:
- Save recipes from across the web
- Set dietary preferences and get personalised suggestions
- Generate meal plans based on your preferences
- Build grocery lists from planned meals
- Filter by cuisine, time, dietary restrictions
Different people used it very differently — some mainly saved recipes, others used the meal planning features, others mainly used the grocery list. The best alternative depends on which of these you valued most.
The Best Yummly Alternatives
For Recipe Saving: Whisk (Samsung Food)
If you mainly used Yummly to clip and organise recipes from the web, Whisk (now Samsung Food) is the most direct replacement. It has a browser extension for clipping recipes, organises your saved collection, and links to grocery ordering from some retailers.
It's free and works on any device. The main limitation: no meaningful AI planning, and the recipe suggestion engine is less sophisticated than Yummly's was.
Best for: Recipe collectors who want a clean, free replacement for Yummly's saving feature.
For Recipe Organisation: Paprika
Paprika is the other major recipe clipping app. It costs a one-time fee (around £5 mobile, £25 desktop) and has no recurring subscription. It's excellent at organising large recipe collections, has good offline access, and syncs across devices.
Best for: People who want to own their recipe library permanently and don't want a subscription.
For Meal Planning and Grocery Lists: Plan to Eat
Plan to Eat was Yummly's closest competitor in the meal planning space. It focuses on scheduling recipes you've saved into a weekly calendar and generating a shopping list. The interface is cleaner than it used to be, and the grocery list functionality is one of its strengths.
Best for: People who used Yummly primarily for the weekly planning and shopping list features, who bring their own recipe collection.
For AI-Powered Meal Planning: FridgeFirst
Yummly's meal planning was personalisation-based — it suggested recipes that matched your preferences. FridgeFirst takes a different and more useful approach: it builds your meal plan from what's already in your fridge.
You add your ingredients, set your family's dietary preferences, and FridgeFirst generates a week of meals you can actually cook right now — along with a grocery list for only what's missing. It supports diverse cuisines including South Asian, which Yummly handled poorly.
If you used Yummly because you wanted a tool to answer "what should I cook this week?" rather than just save recipes you found yourself, FridgeFirst is the closest replacement for that specific value.
Try FridgeFirst free for 14 days — no credit card →
Which Yummly Feature Did You Use Most?
| I mainly used Yummly for... | Best Alternative |
|---|---|
| Saving recipes from the web | Whisk (Samsung Food) |
| Organising a large recipe collection | Paprika |
| Weekly meal planning | Plan to Eat |
| "What should I cook?" suggestions | FridgeFirst |
| Grocery list from meal plan | FridgeFirst or Plan to Eat |
| Dietary preference filtering | FridgeFirst |
| South Asian / diverse cuisine | FridgeFirst |
What Yummly Got Wrong
Looking back, Yummly's main weaknesses were:
Western-centric. The personalisation engine worked well for Western food but was limited for South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Caribbean cuisines.
Library-dependent. The meal suggestions came from Yummly's recipe library. It had no concept of what was in your fridge.
Owned by Whirlpool. After Whirlpool acquired Yummly in 2017, the product stagnated. It was primarily a hardware integration tool (linking to Whirlpool appliances) rather than a genuine meal planning product.
The gap Yummly left is real. The best alternatives listed above each solve a specific part of what it did — there's no single perfect replacement. If you need the full package (recipe saving + meal planning + grocery list + diverse cuisine), FridgeFirst comes closest for the planning and grocery side, with Whisk or Paprika alongside for recipe saving.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Yummly close?
Yummly was owned by Whirlpool, the appliance company, which acquired it in 2017 as part of a connected kitchen strategy. As Whirlpool shifted strategic priorities, Yummly was discontinued in late 2024. Users received notification of the closure and a period to export their data.
Can I get my Yummly recipes back?
If you exported your data during the closure period, your recipes should be available in the export. Whisk and Paprika both allow importing from external formats. If you didn't export in time, the recipes may only be recoverable from your browser history if you saved the original source URLs.
Is there any app exactly like Yummly?
No single replacement replicates everything Yummly did. Whisk or Paprika replace the recipe saving. Plan to Eat or FridgeFirst replace the meal planning. The landscape in 2026 has specialised tools rather than one aggregator.
What's the best free Yummly replacement?
Whisk (Samsung Food) is fully free and handles recipe saving well. Mealime's free tier handles basic meal planning. FridgeFirst offers a 14-day free trial with full access to test whether it works for you before committing.