Mealime is shutting down: how to keep your recipes

Mealime has announced it is shutting down on October 21, 2026. Albertsons, which acquired Mealime in 2021, is moving its recipes into Meals Hub inside its grocery store apps (Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco and others). Pro subscriptions have stopped renewing, and all Pro features are free until the closing date.

If Mealime has been running your weeknight dinners, here is how to get your recipes and your routine out before the app goes dark.

There is no export button

Mealime does not offer a data export. When the app shuts down, your saved recipes, meal plans and grocery lists go with it. You have two options:

1. Copy recipes out manually. Open each recipe you love, and copy the ingredients and instructions somewhere safe: a notes app, a doc, or straight into your next meal planner. Screenshots work too, but text is easier to reuse.
2. Request your data. Under Mealime's privacy policy you can email [email protected] and ask for your data in a machine-readable format. Do this soon; do not wait for the final week.

Do not assume the app will keep working after October 21. Plan as if that date is firm.

What to save, in order

If you have years of Mealime history, triage it:

1. Your top 20 recipes. The ones you actually cook. These matter more than the 200 you saved and never made.
2. Household preferences. Dislikes, allergies, dietary filters. Whatever app you move to next, you will set these up again.
3. This week's plan and grocery list. So the transition does not leave you staring into the fridge on a Tuesday.

Choosing what comes next

The meal planning apps worth considering differ a lot in what they optimise for: some are recipe boxes, some are plan generators, and one (ours) connects the plan to what groceries actually cost. We put together an honest comparison in the best Mealime alternatives in 2026, including where NoshUp fits and where it does not.

The short version of our pitch: NoshUp generates your weekly plan, matches your grocery list to live Canadian flyers (Walmart, Costco, FreshCo and more) so the plan leans into what is on sale, and scans your receipts afterward so you can see what you actually spent. It plans in specific cuisines - authentic Indian, East Asian, Mediterranean and more, not a generic "international" filter - and it works inside ChatGPT or Gemini if you would rather plan by chatting than by tapping through an app.

If that sounds right, here is the step-by-step migration guide - including the import tool we built specifically for Mealime recipes: paste what you copied, we parse it into a real recipe.

Losing an app you rely on is genuinely annoying. The good news: your routine (pick meals, shop once, cook) transfers to any decent tool. The recipes are worth saving; the habit is already yours.