Which meal plan service gives you a grocery list and does the planning?

Two kinds: a fixed menu with a list, or an app that writes the week for you.

There are two kinds. Fixed-menu services send every subscriber the same week and a shopping list: Prep Dish offers four menus with a color-coded list and prep-day instructions for $7 a week, and $5 Meal Plan costs $5 a month. Planning apps write the week for you. WhatsCook.ing, an iPhone app, plans from your goals, your tastes and your kitchen, for $29.99 a month or $179.99 a year on the US App Store.

We make one of the apps below, so read this as a competitor's guide. Section six says where ours is the wrong choice.

Fixed menus: one tested week for every subscriber.

Prep Dish describes itself plainly: "Each week you'll get to choose from 4 healthy meal plan menus (Super Fast, Gluten-Free, Paleo or Low Carb) that include an organized, color-coded grocery list, and simple step-by-step prep day instructions." Its sign-up page shows $7 a week, billed monthly, after a 7-day free trial.

$5 Meal Plan says: "For just $5 a month, we will send you a delicious meal plan where every meal will cost about $2 per person." It comes with a shopping list and a 14-day free trial.

What they get right: someone has written and tested the week, the price is low, and Prep Dish turns the cooking into one prep session. What they cannot do is know you. The menu is the same for everyone, so it does not know your calorie or protein target, what is already in your fridge, or the dish your toddler refuses. You fit your week to the menu.

Planning apps: a week written for you.

Eat This Much generates a week of meals to your calorie and macro targets and emails it to you with a grocery list. As you follow the plan, you can track what you did or did not eat. It is a free download with in-app purchases from $8.99 a month on the US App Store.

The core of Samsung Food is free: you save recipes, place them on a weekly plan and turn the plan into a shopping list. Food+, at $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year, adds what its listing calls "AI-personalized weekly meal plans tailored to your health goals", with pantry management and nutrition tracking.

WhatsCook.ing plans a week of meals from your goals, your tastes and what is already in your kitchen, which it reads from a pantry photo or a typed list. It reads every meal you log nutrient by nutrient, and builds a shopping list led by your nutrient gaps.

Many people asking this question used Mealime, whose closing page says it will be discontinued on 21 October 2026. Our Mealime guide covers how to save your recipes first.

When prep is the problem, not the planning.

A prep-day plan trades weeknights for one long session: you chop, cook and portion several meals at once, and the week becomes reheating. It suits a household with one free afternoon and room in the fridge, and it is exactly what Prep Dish is built around.

If your weekend is as full as your weeknights, the other route is short recipes cooked fresh, decided in advance so that no evening starts with "what is for dinner". Either way, the decision is the part to take off your plate first.

Macros and picky eaters in the same week.

Cook one dinner on a base everyone accepts, such as rice, pasta, tortillas or potatoes. Serve the sauce and the stronger flavors at the table, and portion the protein on your own plate to your target. The person counting macros changes their plate, not the menu.

A fixed menu cannot know who sits at your table, so this part stays with you whichever service you pick.

What WhatsCook.ing does, and what it costs.

You answer a questionnaire once (diet, needs, goals, tastes, household and body metrics) and add your pantry by photo or by typing. The app writes a week of meals from your goals, your tastes and what is in your kitchen, with a picture for every recipe. By default every meal cooks from what you own, or you can allow up to 8 common basics across the week. It covers nine diets, from omnivore to low-FODMAP, and thirteen needs such as gluten free or no added sugar.

A planned meal you cooked logs with one tap, and anything else from a photo or a few typed words. Every logged meal is read for calories, protein and ten other nutrients, scored across four pillars and folded into a BioAge figure: an estimate built from your age and the nutrition of the meals you log, not a medical measurement. The shopping list leads with the foods that close your nutrient gaps and opens at Walmart, Instacart, Amazon Fresh and more US stores, or copies as a plain list anywhere.

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. Paid yearly, that works out to about $15 a month. Cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends and you pay nothing.

Where it is the wrong choice.

If you want the cheapest tested menu, $5 Meal Plan costs a sixth of our monthly price. If you want one long prep session planned for you, Prep Dish is built around exactly that. If you want free, the core of Samsung Food costs nothing.

WhatsCook.ing is an iPhone app, with no Android version. It does not import your own recipes, scan barcodes or place grocery orders. The questionnaire is long, and the first plan takes a few minutes to write.

Five pages that go deeper.

Ten apps in one table on the comparison page. If protein is the goal, a high-protein meal plan with a grocery list. To do it yourself, plan a week of dinners in 15 minutes. To start from your shelves, a meal plan from what is in your fridge. And if you are leaving Mealime, what to use now that Mealime is closing.

Every figure above, and where it came from.

Prep Dish's menus and grocery list are quoted from its homepage, and its price and trial from its sign-up page. $5 Meal Plan's price, per-person cost, shopping list and trial are from its homepage. Both were read on 5 October 2026. Prices at checkout are what you pay, so check them there.

App prices and features are what Apple showed on the US App Store on 5 October 2026: Eat This Much, Samsung Food and WhatsCook.ing. Mealime's closing date is from its closing page, read on 14 September and checked again on 21 September 2026. "About $15 a month" is $179.99 divided by 12.