An AnyList alternative for recipe-first planners

Updated 9 October 2026

AnyList is a well-known shared grocery list app that also handles recipes and meal planning. Plate & Page starts from the other end: your cookbook first, then the week’s plan, then the list that falls out of it.

Both apps cover recipes, meal plans and groceries, so the choice comes down to where you spend your time. AnyList’s website opens with “One app for stress-free shopping, cooking, and meal planning.” If the shopping list is the center of your household, that may be exactly right. If you mostly think in recipes, and want the list to be built from what you plan to cook, read on. Everything said about AnyList here comes from its own website, quoted and dated below.

At a glance

AnyList’s site also describes suggestions as you type, a list that “automatically groups items by category”, shared lists that show up instantly for everyone sharing, and adding items with Siri. On its AnyList Complete page, it presents desktop browser extensions for importing recipes and a “Meal Planning Calendar”.

From recipe to grocery list in Plate & Page

In Plate & Page the grocery list is the last step, not the first. A typical week looks like this:

1. Save the recipes you cook. Share them from Safari, paste a link or text, or use photos of printed pages. See how to save recipes from any website.
2. Plan the week. Each day has breakfast, lunch, dinner and other slots. Drag recipes in, use Copy Last Week, or Draft This Week from your own cookbook and review the suggestions.
3. Build the list. Plate & Page gathers every planned meal’s ingredients, scales them to the servings you planned, combines matching ingredients and groups them by aisle. You review it and untick what you already have before anything is added.
4. Shop. Check items off in the app or from the Grocery List widget on iPhone and iPad, and add extras or paste a list with Import Grocery List.

The planner, building a list from your plan and Import Grocery List are part of Premium. The manual grocery list is free. The guide shows each step to plan a week and build your grocery list.

Household sharing

Plate & Page shares through Apple’s own iCloud invitations rather than a separate account. Create a household, invite the people you live with, and your recipes, meal plans, folders and groceries stay in sync between you. Your personal list stays separate from the household list, and you choose which one a built list goes to. Creating a household is part of Premium; the people you invite can collaborate without buying it, and Premium itself supports Family Sharing.

Pay once instead of yearly

AnyList’s site lists AnyList Complete as a yearly price. Plate & Page Premium is a single US$9.99 purchase that stays yours, with Family Sharing, and one listing covers iPhone, iPad and Mac. Plate & Page also has no account, no ads and no tracking; its App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected”. There’s more on what’s free and what Premium adds in a recipe app with no subscription, and on the Mac app in a recipe app made for the Mac.

When AnyList is the better pick

• Your household mainly needs a shared shopping list. AnyList’s site leads with shopping, and describes shared lists that show up instantly for everyone sharing.
• You want to use it on a PC or in a web browser. AnyList’s site presents AnyList for the Web. Plate & Page has no web or Windows version.
• You want an Apple Watch app. AnyList’s site presents AnyList for Apple Watch.
• You save recipes with desktop browser extensions. AnyList’s site presents extensions for Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

If, on the other hand, your week starts with “what shall we cook?”, Plate & Page is built around that question. It’s free to download, with five recipes you create and three reviewed imports, so you can try a real week before deciding. See everything on the Plate & Page home page.

AnyList details from anylist.com and anylist.com/complete, checked 9 October 2026. AnyList is a product of Purple Cover, Inc.; Plate & Page isn’t affiliated with it.