Mela alternatives in 2026: Paprika, Crouton, Pestle or Cookfolio?

Looking for a Mela alternative? Let’s be clear up front: Mela is a beautiful app, an Apple award winner, rated 4.7/5 across 846 iOS reviews. You don’t leave it because it’s bad, you leave it over scope. Three questions, then four apps.

The 3 questions to ask yourself

1. What devices does your household cook with? Mela runs on iOS/iPadOS 15+ and macOS 12+ only. No Android, no Windows, no web. If a single device in your household sits outside the Apple ecosystem, the question is settled before you compare anything else.
2. Where do your recipes come from? Mela covers the web very well: built-in browser, RSS subscriptions to blogs (a rare strength, and a real one), text recognition for print cookbooks. On the other hand, no video import is documented, not YouTube, not TikTok, not Instagram. If your recipes arrive as video, that’s a wall.
3. Beyond the recipe book, what do you want? Mela delegates: planning to Calendar, groceries to Reminders. Elegant if you already live in those apps, frustrating if you wanted everything in one place.

Three facts complete the picture. Mela+ is bought separately per platform, $6.99 on iOS and $14.99 on macOS, so about $21.98 for iPhone + Mac (US App Store, 07/17/2026), and the developer states as much in the help pages. The pace has slowed: iOS 2.6.2 dates from 06/08/2025, macOS 2.6.1 from 05/24/2025, roughly 13 months without a release. And the interface exists in 4 languages only.

Cookfolio (web, iOS, Android)

Pricing: Pro €4.99/month or €39.99/year. Family €6.99/month or €59.99/year for 4 accounts, about €1.75 per account. Free: 5 recipes and 5 imports for life. Euro prices apply to web and Android payments; on iOS, the App Store applies its local price. Import: 10 formats and sources: photo (JPEG, PNG, WEBP), PDF, Word, text, web link, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Import method: on a web page, structured data is read first, AI only steps in as a fallback. On YouTube, the video itself is analysed, frame by frame and by sound, not just its description: 30 minutes maximum, private videos excluded. On TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, the caption is read first, and if it isn’t enough, the analysis switches to the video. Worth knowing: a web page import counts as 1 of the 5 free imports, just like a video. Also included: direct import of your .melarecipes file, the whole collection lands in one go (included in Pro or Family, caps of 600 entries and 150 MB). Drag-and-drop planner, shopping list derived from the planner with duplicates merged, adjustable servings, cooking mode with the screen kept on and timers detected in the steps, 6 complete languages, European hosting. Family opens a shared space for up to 4 accounts, each with its own login. Who it’s for: mixed iOS/Android households, people who want their recipes from any computer without installing anything, people whose recipes come from social media. Limits to know: no offline mode. Mela stores locally and opens your recipes on the subway, we don’t. No aisle sorting and no manual items in the shopping list. It’s a subscription, not a one-time purchase. On Windows, access goes through the browser (app.cookfolio.eu), not through an installed app. Verified on: July 17, 2026 (app code and current pricing).

Paprika 3 (iOS, macOS, Windows, Android)

Pricing: one-time purchase per platform, no subscription. US App Store on 07/17/2026: $4.99 on iOS, $29.99 on macOS. Official site: $29.99 on Windows, with pricing varying by country and VAT. Android price not verified: see Google Play. Each version is sold separately, so iPhone + Mac + Windows comes to about $65 at full price, outside the regular sales. Import: built-in browser, plus import from MacGourmet, MasterCook and the like. No video import documented on v3. Strength: this is where we have to be honest. Paprika beats Cookfolio on the shopping list, which merges ingredients and sorts them by aisle, with manual items. It beats Mela on planning, daily, weekly or monthly. It works offline, it has a native Windows app, and v3.8.5 is rated 4.9/5 across 53,000 iOS reviews. Worth knowing: on April 23, 2026 the developer announced on the official blog the opening of a Paprika 4 beta, whose announced additions include social media import, AI photo scanning, accounts for household members and book sharing. Everything above covers Paprika 3, the version published to date. Who it’s for: leaving Mela to get out of Apple while keeping the one-time purchase and offline access. Details in our Paprika comparison. Verified on: July 17, 2026 (US App Store listing, official site, developer blog).

Crouton (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS)

Pricing: free to download, in-app purchases recorded on 07/17/2026, including a main “Crouton Plus” unlock at $24.99. The listing doesn’t spell out what each purchase unlocks, so we won’t interpret it. For reference: that’s well above the $6.99 of Mela+ on iOS, both apps being free to download. Import: websites, books, handwritten notes, AI/OCR scanning, RSS, photos, text and PDF, explicitly documented, which Mela does not document. No video import, same as Mela. Strength: Apple Design Award 2024, hands-free mode while cooking, Apple Watch, planning, groceries via Reminders, iCloud sharing. Plus a v2026.1.2 released in mid-July 2026, against Mela’s roughly 13 months. Who it’s for: staying 100% Apple, with PDFs to import and a more actively updated product. Verified on: July 17, 2026 (US App Store listing).

Pestle (iPhone, iPad, Apple Silicon Mac, Apple Vision, Apple Watch)

Pricing: free forever on iPhone and iPad, capped at 15 recipes. Pro at $2.99/month, $24.99/year, or two lifetime options at $39.99 and $49.99 (US App Store listing, 07/17/2026). Pro unlocks unlimited recipes, sync, sharing within the household and planning. Import: websites via a Chrome extension, and claimed import from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube through the share sheet. It’s the only app in this comparison that stayed inside the Apple ecosystem to claim social media: Mela and Crouton don’t do it at all. The method isn’t documented: we can neither praise it nor criticise it. Strength: guided cooking mode with voice control, which Cookfolio doesn’t do. Limits to know: no native Android app, and on Mac an Apple Silicon M1 at minimum, which rules out Intel Macs where Mela simply asks for macOS 12+. The site mentions web access whose scope we haven’t assessed. Who it’s for: staying on Apple, with recipes coming from social media, and trying before paying. Verified on: July 17, 2026 (US App Store listing and official site).

Already on Mela?

Stay, if these five conditions hold: your household is 100% Apple for the foreseeable future, you prefer the one-time purchase to a subscription, you follow blogs via RSS (nobody does it as well), you want your recipes offline in your private iCloud container, and planning in Calendar with groceries in Reminders suits you. That’s a real case, and Mela serves it better than we do.

Mela falls short when a non-Apple device enters the household, when your recipes arrive as video, or when you want the recipe book in your own language. On video, here’s how our YouTube import works. Public reviews also mention search across large collections, paying twice for iOS + macOS and constrained export: a perception, not a measured fact.

Want to try it?

If you already have a Mela collection, here’s how to migrate it into Cookfolio: you drop in your .melarecipes file and everything lands at once. Otherwise, download Cookfolio, the free version lets you test without a credit card.