Is there an app that makes a meal plan from what is in my fridge?

Yes, and there are three kinds of them.

Yes. Several apps build meals from food you already have, and they differ in how they learn what that food is: SuperCook asks you to tick ingredients off a list, Cooklist reads your grocery loyalty card, and WhatsCook.ing reads a photograph of your shelf or fridge, then plans the week around it and around your goals and tracks the nutrition of what you cook. An app with the wrong idea of your kitchen writes a week you cannot cook.

We make one of the three above, so read this as a competitor's guide. Section five says where ours is the wrong choice.

One: you tick it off a list.

SuperCook's own description is the plainest sentence in the category: "SuperCook only shows you recipes that require the ingredients you already have." It is free, with no in-app purchases listed, and holds 4.82 stars from 21,712 ratings.

What it gets wrong is upkeep: the list is only as accurate as your last edit, and a kitchen changes daily. It returns recipes rather than a week, with no plan, no gaps list and no nutrition.

Two: your loyalty card tells it.

Cooklist describes itself: "It connects to your grocery store loyalty cards and automatically downloads all of your food purchases into a digital pantry." It is the pantry-first app here with real scale: 4.73 stars from 11,292 ratings, Pro from $5.99 to $9.99 a month, or $49.99 or $59.99 a year.

What it gets wrong is the difference between bought and left. A receipt records a shopping trip, not a shelf: it misses the rice you finished on Tuesday, and food you paid cash for, were given or grew.

Three: it reads a photograph.

This is what our app does. You photograph the shelf or fridge, the items and quantities become a pantry list you can edit, and the week is written around what is there. Ingredients a recipe needs that you do not have are marked "To buy" on that recipe, and the shopping list leads with the foods that close your nutrient gaps.

What it gets wrong is the frame: the jar at the back and the freezer drawer are missing until you photograph them, and a label read at an angle can come back wrong.

A recipe for tonight is not a plan for the week.

For one evening, an ingredient matcher is the right tool.

A week is harder: it decides seven days at once, keeps the same dish from appearing twice, spreads what you own across them, subtracts the pantry from the shopping list, and brings quantities down as meals get cooked.

To tell which you are holding: a planner that does not know your pantry lists the whole recipe. If you add your pantry and the list does not get shorter, the pantry is decoration.

Can you correct it, and does the count come down?

Every method gets things wrong, so check two things. You should be able to add, edit and delete any item by hand, and what you added should survive the next import or photo. And a pantry that only goes up is a shopping history: after a meal is cooked, its ingredients should come off in roughly the right amount.

Who actually makes it?

A search for SuperCook also returns SuperCook Track Calorie Recipe, a different app from a different developer with 12 ratings. Read the developer name and the rating count, not just the stars.

What happens to your data if the app stops?

Mealime rates 4.81 stars from 53,992 ratings, and its closing page says the app "will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026" and that all personal data will be deleted when it shuts down. Paprika is the opposite arrangement: $4.99 once, recipes kept on your own devices.

What WhatsCook.ing does, and what it costs.

You answer a questionnaire on diet, goals and body metrics, photograph the shelf, and the app writes the week around what it found and your goals, with a shopping list led by your nutrient gaps. Cooking a meal logs it, scoring the day across four pillars and moving a BioAge figure: an estimate built from your age and the nutrition of the meals you log, with its method shown in the app. It is not a medical measurement.

It is $29.99 a month or $179.99 a year on the US App Store after a 7-day free trial through your Apple Account, the most expensive price on our comparison table, and there is no free tier.

Where it is the wrong choice.

It is an iPhone app, with no Android version, and arrived on the App Store on 22 September 2026. It does not order groceries or scan barcodes. The questionnaire is long and the first plan takes three to four minutes.

If you want free, SuperCook costs nothing and the core of Samsung Food is free, with premium at $6.99 a month. If the deciding and the waste cost you nothing today, they are better value than ours.

Five pages that go deeper.

Ten apps in one table on the comparison page, including the ones that beat us. On the shutdown: what to use now that Mealime is closing and the Mealime alternative page. Also planning a week without going to the store, and the questions page.

Every figure above, and where it came from.

Prices and ratings are what Apple showed on the US App Store on 9 September 2026, and counts rise daily. Listings read that day: SuperCook, Cooklist, Mealime, Paprika 3 and Samsung Food.

The lookalike listing, SuperCook Track Calorie Recipe, was read on 21 September 2026. Mealime's closing notice, for the 21 October 2026 date and the deletion of personal data, was read on 14 September and checked again on 21 September 2026.