Mela is probably the prettiest recipe manager on iOS, and it comes from a developer with a real design pedigree. If you own it and it does everything you need, keep it. People go looking for an alternative for narrower reasons: they want more from planning and groceries, or they want the whole flow, from saved link to shopping trip, to live in one place.
Why people who love Mela still switch
The praise is real: clean typography, a pleasant reader, solid import. The gaps people mention are just as consistent. The calendar and grocery features are intentionally minimal, which is fine until meal planning becomes how your household actually eats. And as of this writing Mela is a per-platform purchase in the Apple world only, so the plan-shop-cook loop tends to leak into other apps: one for the plan, one for the list.
What to look for in an alternative
The full loop in one app. Save the recipe, put it on the week, generate the grocery list, cook step by step. Every hop between apps is where the system falls apart on a busy Sunday.
A grocery list that thinks. Duplicates should merge (two recipes calling for onions become one line) and the result should sort by store aisle.
Import you can verify. Paste a link into Trivet’s free import helper and watch what comes out before you install anything. Scaling is testable in the browser too, with the recipe scaler.
Data that stays yours. On-device storage, sync through your own iCloud, and full export. Mela is good about data ownership; the alternative should be at least as good.
How Trivet compares
- Reliable web import, unlimited recipes, scaling, cooking mode, and full export are free forever.
- Premium adds the meal planner, photo and screenshot scanning, iCloud sync across your devices, and the aisle-sorted grocery list.
- Pricing is honest: $19.99 a year, or a one-time $29.99 for lifetime. No per-platform re-buying. See pricing.
- No account, no ads, and an App Privacy label that reads Data Not Collected.
The honest caveat
Mela’s reading experience is genuinely lovely, and if you mostly collect and read recipes rather than plan and shop from them, you may not feel its limits at all. Trivet’s bet is different: the recipe is the start of a week, not just a page to read.
Moving over
Import your ten most-cooked recipes into Trivet from their original links, plan one week, and build the grocery list with one tap. That single loop is the whole difference; if it clicks, the rest of your collection follows in an afternoon.