Roundup
The best Yummly alternatives in 2026.
Yummly went offline on December 20, 2024, and there was no bulk export at the end — years of saved recipe boxes simply disappeared. If you are rebuilding, the lesson is worth taking with you: pick the next app for how easily recipes go in, how well it cooks, and above all whether you can ever take your library back out. That third question is the one Yummly users never thought to ask.
Prep SlateBest all-round replacement
Built around the two things Yummly's shutdown made non-negotiable. Rebuilding is fast: URL import handles almost any recipe site, and photo import reads ingredients and steps out of screenshots and cookbook pages. And the exit door is open on purpose: your whole library exports as JSON and printable pages at any time, even after you cancel. Between those ends sits the part we care most about, a cook mode where the screen stays lit, each step sits beside its own ingredients, the ingredient a step calls for comes to the top of the list as you advance, progress survives a reload, and per-step timers keep counting in the background — and on iPhone, “Hey Prep, next” moves it along without touching the screen. It also connects to the AI assistant you already use — Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or anything else that takes a connector — so it can reach your library and plan the week around your calendar. The honest gaps: voice is iPhone-only, there is no social-video import yet, and no discovery feed — you bring the recipes, which is rather the point.
Paprika
The safe-harbor pick, and the one many Yummly refugees chose first. Rock-solid URL import, native apps on every platform, and a one-time price, so your library never expires with a subscription — a different but equally real answer to the trust question. The trade-offs are the long-standing ones: ingredients and directions are separate tabs you tap between while cooking, your place is kept only while the recipe stays pinned, and each platform is a separate purchase.
NYT Cooking
The closest thing to Yummly's browse-and-be-inspired feel, because it is a curated, professionally edited library with a genuinely good cook mode — larger type, distractions stripped, screen kept awake. You can import outside recipes into the Recipe Box now, which softens the old walled-garden complaint, but the experience is still clearly built for cooking their recipes first, and access to your box lives and dies with the subscription.
ReciMe
The pick if most of your recipes live on TikTok and Instagram — pulling recipes out of social video is its standout feature, and it runs on iOS, Android, the web, and a Chrome extension. Check the results, though: auto-extracted steps can occasionally be off. The free tier caps imports at five a week, and the cooking side is thinner than the saving side — we could not find per-step timers or a saved place in its cook mode.
SideChef
If what you loved about Yummly was being guided, SideChef guides harder than anyone: a photo or video on every step, voice commands, timers built in. But it leans on its own supported content, so it shines on its recipes and is weaker as a home for the collection you are trying to rebuild — which is the actual job here.
Rankings reflect suitability as a Yummly replacement — import, cooking experience, and data portability — as of July 2026, drawn from each app's own documentation and independent reviews. Apps and features change; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will update it. We make Prep Slate, and we have tried to be fair about where the others are genuinely better.
The short version
Rebuild somewhere with an exit door.
Paprika if you want to buy once and be done. NYT Cooking if you want an edited library more than your own. ReciMe if your recipes live on social video. If you want the whole loop — import anything, cook from it without fighting your phone, and export everything the day you feel like leaving — that is the specific shape Prep Slate was built in, partly because of what happened to Yummly's users.
What happened to Yummly?
Yummly shut down on December 20, 2024, after Whirlpool wound the team down earlier that year. The app and website went offline together, and there was no bulk-export tool at the end, so saved recipe boxes simply disappeared. It is the clearest lesson this category has produced: an app that holds your recipes should let you take them back out, any time, in a format you can use.
Can I still get my recipes out of Yummly?
Not through Yummly, the service is gone and took its saved boxes with it. But most Yummly saves pointed at recipes that still live on the open web. If the original sites are in your browser history or bookmarks, URL import rebuilds each recipe in seconds; for anything that only survives as a screenshot or a printout, photo import pulls the ingredients and steps back in.
Which Yummly alternative is safest for the long run?
Judge on the exit, not the entrance: can you take your recipes out, in a usable format, whenever you want? Prep Slate exports your whole library as JSON and printable pages at any time, even after you cancel. Paprika takes a different but also safe route, a one-time purchase, so your library never expires with a subscription. Whatever you pick, make sure the answer to "can I leave?" is yes before you move in.
A note from
the maker
I am a home cook, not a chef, and I have written software for a living for fifteen years. Prep Slate is where the two finally met.
I've used multiple recipe apps over the years. They all do very similar things: save recipes, hold a meal plan, shop for ingredients in those recipes. But I still struggled at the most important part: actually making the recipe.
So I built the tool I wanted while cooking, and I built it the way I build everything, slowly enough to get it right. Six months of nights and weekends later, I have an app I want to use every time I make food. A focused cook mode, a connection to Claude and ChatGPT for automating meal planning, kitchen math that rounds the way a cook does, and an export that works the day you leave.
I care about good food and good software for the same reason. Both come down to a lot of small decisions nobody notices until one is wrong. If Prep Slate earns a place next to your stove, it has done its job.
Mark
Home cook and software developer. Maker of Prep Slate.
Rebuild your recipe box somewhere it can't vanish.
Fourteen days free. Import a few favorites, cook one dinner, then decide.