Recipe keeper
A recipe organizer that keeps what you give it
Trivet holds every recipe you cook in one private, searchable place on your iPhone. Paste a link and it imports cleanly. Scale it, plan the week around it, shop for it, and cook from it. No account, no ads, and a full export whenever you want out.
What to look for in a recipe keeper app
Six things separate an app you still use in three years from one you abandon after a weekend of typing recipes into it.
Import that works the first time
This is where most apps fail and the one you will use daily. Test it before you commit: paste a link from a site you actually cook from and see what comes back.
Your recipes stay yours
Look for a full export. If there is no way to get every recipe out in a file you keep, you are renting your collection.
Search by ingredient, not just title
A collection is only organized if you can find the recipe by what is in the fridge.
Serving scaling that handles fractions
Doubling a recipe should give you 1 1/2 cups, not 1.5 cups, and it should convert between cups and grams.
A cooking mode that keeps the screen on
The gap between saving recipes and cooking from them is bigger than it sounds.
Pricing you can live with
Recipe collections last decades. A subscription that caps imports is a bad match for a thing you keep forever.
How the main options compare
We make one of these, so treat this the way you would any maker's table. Where another app is the better answer, it says so.
| App | The short version | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Trivet | Reliable import, planner, scaling, cooking mode, on-device with iCloud sync | Free, or $19.99/yr, or $29.99 once |
| Paprika | Beloved and one-time priced, but the planner is buggy and the design has aged | One-time, per platform |
| ReciMe | Modern AI import, though reviews report it failing often, with a capped free tier | Subscription |
| Mela | The best-looking of the group, lighter on planning and groceries | One-time |
| AnyList | An excellent shared grocery list that added recipes later | Subscription |
Longer versions: the full comparison, switching from Paprika, switching from ReciMe, switching from Mela.
From a saved link to dinner on the table
Keeping recipes is only half of it. Trivet carries a recipe the whole way: import it, scale it to the number of people actually eating, drop it on the week, turn the week into a grocery list with the duplicates merged and everything sorted by aisle, then cook from it with the screen awake and the timer running on the Lock Screen.
- Unlimited recipes, cookbooks, tags, and photos
- Search by title or by an ingredient you have on hand
- Scaling with real cooking fractions, metric or imperial
- Per-recipe notes for what you changed last time
- Apple Watch, widgets, and Siri for the list and the timers
- Full export to a file you keep, any time
Starting from paper?
Plenty of collections are still in a box or a binder, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you are organizing the paper first, the free printable templates cover recipe cards, box dividers, and family cookbook pages. When you are ready for a copy that can be searched and cannot flood, digitizing the box takes an afternoon.
Questions
- What is a recipe keeper app?
- An app that stores your own recipes in one searchable place, rather than serving you recipes from a magazine or a brand. The good ones import from a link so you are not retyping, scale servings, and let you cook from the screen without it going dark.
- What is the best recipe keeper app for iPhone?
- It depends on what you want fixed. Paprika if a one-time price matters most and you can live with a weak planner. Mela if design is the priority. Trivet if import reliability, a working meal planner, and keeping the collection on your own device are what you are after. There is an honest comparison of all of them on this site.
- Is there a free recipe keeper app?
- Trivet is free for unlimited recipes, web import, cookbooks and tags, search, serving scaling, cooking mode, a basic grocery list, and full export. Premium adds the meal planner, photo scanning, iCloud sync across devices, and aisle-sorted groceries.
- Do recipe keeper apps need an account?
- Most do, because the recipes live on their servers. Trivet does not. Your collection is stored on your iPhone and syncs through your own iCloud, so there is no sign-up, no password, and no copy of your recipes on anyone else’s computer.
- Can I move my recipes from another app?
- Yes. Trivet reads Paprika export files directly, and anything with a web link can be imported by pasting the link. Getting out is just as easy: the whole library exports to a plain JSON file whenever you want it.
Try the import before you commit to anything
Paste a recipe link into the free browser tool and see what comes back. It is the same engine the app uses.
Or run it right here: the import helper.