CookinBuddy vs ReciMe vs Osta: which recipe app should you actually use?
An honest side-by-side of the three recipe-saving apps — what each one is genuinely best at, what they cost, and why we think CookinBuddy wins for the way most people cook.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: we make CookinBuddy. So you should read this the way you'd read any comparison written by one of the contestants — with your guard up. What we can promise is that every fact below comes from the apps' own App Store listings as of July 2026, and that we've been straight about the things ReciMe and Osta do better than us. A comparison that pretended otherwise wouldn't be worth reading.
The short version
All three apps do the same core trick: you send them an Instagram reel, a TikTok, or a website link, and they turn it into a proper recipe with the ingredients pulled out. If that's all you need, honestly, any of them will do.
They diverge on what happens next:
- ReciMe is the big, mature one. Ten million users, nutrition macros, cookbooks, a meal planner. The Swiss Army knife.
- Osta is the lean one. Import, clean recipe display, shared folders and lists. Cheapest premium tier of the three.
- CookinBuddy is the one built around the moment your hands are covered in flour — voice-driven cooking, a 30+ category grocery list, and an AI that suggests dinner from what's in your fridge.
Side by side
| CookinBuddy | ReciMe | Osta | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Import from social & web | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Import from a photo | Yes, free | Yes | Premium only |
| Hands-free voice cooking | "Hey Buddy" — next, back, read aloud | Screen stays unlocked | No |
| Grocery list | 30+ auto-categories | Yes | Yes, shareable |
| Shared / collaborative editing | Yes | Cloud sync across devices | Shared folders & lists |
| Nutrition & macros | No | Yes | Premium, when available |
| Dedicated meal planner | No | Yes | No |
| Offline access | Yes | Yes | — |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Premium | $9.99/mo · $59.99/yr | $9.99–$59.99 | $5.99/mo · $39.99/yr |
| App Store rating | Too new to display | 4.8 (264k+ ratings) | 4.8 (6.5k+ ratings) |
Figures from each app's App Store listing, July 2026.
Where ReciMe genuinely beats us
Nutrition tracking. ReciMe calculates calories, protein, carbs and fat for any recipe. We don't do this at all. If you're tracking macros, that's not a small gap — that's the whole reason you'd pick an app, and you should pick theirs.
A real meal planner. ReciMe has a proper week-planning view. We help you shop for the week; we don't give you a calendar grid to drag dinners onto. If you like planning that way, they've built it and we haven't.
Maturity. 264,000 ratings at 4.8 stars and ten million users is not nothing. It means the edge cases have been found by other people already. We're new, and new software has rough edges — ours included.
Where Osta genuinely beats us
Price. $5.99 a month against our $9.99. If you want the import-and-organise core and nothing else, Osta is the cheaper way to get it, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
Simplicity. Osta's pitch is a clean recipe display with no clutter and no ads, and they deliver it. If every extra feature reads to you as noise, that restraint is a feature.
Where we think CookinBuddy wins
Here's the argument, and it rests on one observation: saving a recipe is a solved problem. Cooking from it isn't.
All three apps import a reel just fine. But the moment you actually start cooking, the differences show up:
True hands-free cooking. Say "Hey Buddy" and then "next", "back", or "read" — and it reads the step out to you. Not "the screen stays on while you scroll with a knuckle", which is where the others land. Actually hands-free, which is the only thing that matters when you're handling raw chicken. This is the feature we built the app around and it's the one nobody else has.
A grocery list that knows the shop. 30+ auto-categories means your merged list arrives already sorted the way you walk the store, not as one long column. We've written about why that ordering matters so much — it's the difference between a 20-minute shop and an hour.
"What can I make with this?" Tell Buddy what's in the fridge and it suggests what to cook from your own saved recipes. That's the actual 6pm question, and it's the one most recipe apps still can't answer.
Import from a photo, on the free tier. Photographing a cookbook page or a handwritten recipe card works without paying. On Osta, camera scanning is a premium feature.
Family cooking. Shared recipes with collaborative editing, and a grocery list that updates for everyone as items get ticked off — so nobody buys the milk twice.
So which should you pick?
Genuinely, honestly:
- Track your macros? ReciMe. We don't compete here.
- Want a drag-and-drop weekly planner? ReciMe.
- Want the cheapest decent importer? Osta.
- Want to cook without touching your phone, shop from a list that's already aisle-sorted, and get dinner ideas from what's in your fridge? That's the one we built, and we think it's the best version of it going.
The good news is that all three have free tiers, and importing a couple of recipes into each takes about ten minutes. That's a far better way to decide than any comparison table — including this one.
CookinBuddy is free on iPhone. Try it against the others and keep whichever one you actually open at 6pm.
Facts about ReciMe and Osta were taken from their public App Store listings in July 2026 and may have changed since. If we've got something wrong about either app, tell us and we'll correct it.