Mealie
Self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner with URL scraping, shopping lists, and multi-user support. Docker-based, runs on SQLite by default
Quick Start
docker compose up -d Overview
Mealie is a self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner that does the thing recipe apps should have always done: paste a URL, get a clean recipe. The scraper works against most major cooking sites and pulls ingredients, steps, and metadata without you retyping anything. The recipes live on your server.
From there, Mealie gives you a weekly meal planning calendar where you drag saved recipes into days, and a shopping list that collapses your weekly ingredients into a single list sorted by supermarket section. Multiple household members can have separate accounts while sharing the same recipe library, which is genuinely useful for households where more than one person cooks.
Setup is Docker-only and SQLite is the default database, so there is no external database to configure. A fresh instance is running inside ten minutes. The web UI works as a PWA, which covers most daily use cases. There is no official native mobile app, but MealieSwift covers iOS reasonably well.
The gaps are worth knowing before you commit. There is no nutritional data or calorie tracking. If that is what you want, look elsewhere. Migrating your recipe library from Paprika or a similar app is not smooth. Mealie has an import tool, but expect to spend time correcting misformatted recipes. The URL parser is good but not perfect, and scraped recipes occasionally need a manual edit before they are ready to use.
For a household that wants a private, ad-free place to store and plan recipes without paying a monthly fee, this is the easiest of the self-hosted options to recommend.
Mealie: Pros & Cons
| Pros (The Wins) | Cons (The Friction) |
|---|---|
| Import: URL scraping works against most cooking sites with no retyping. | No nutrition data: No calorie or macro tracking; not built for diet management. |
| Meal planning: Weekly calendar and auto-generated shopping lists by supermarket section. | No native app: PWA only; MealieSwift covers iOS but no official Android app. |
| Multi-user: Separate accounts share one library; good for shared households. | Migration: Importing from Paprika or similar is slow and often needs correction. |
| Simple setup: Docker plus SQLite; no external database required. | Parser accuracy: Scraped recipes occasionally mis-format and need manual fixes. |
Use Cases
Specific ways to use Mealie for your workflow.
Deployment Strategy
Recommended ways to host Mealie in your own environment.