A free weekly meal planner that writes your shopping list
Planning the week is the bit that saves the most money and the most 6pm panic. Here's a simple way to do it, on paper or in a free app that writes the list for you.
A free meal planner can be as simple as seven nights on a sheet of paper, but the time sink is the shopping list. Cookt is a free iPhone meal planner with no limit on meals: drop saved recipes onto the nights you'll cook them and it writes one combined, aisle-sorted shopping list.
Get Cookt free on the App Store
A simple weekly plan that sticks
The plans that last are the ones that don't try too hard. A few habits help.
- Plan the nights you'll actually cook, not all seven. Leftovers and a night off count.
- Start with one quick dinner you already know, so a busy night has an easy answer.
- Reuse ingredients: a bunch of coriander can cover a curry on Monday and tacos on Thursday.
- Put the dinner that uses the most perishable food early in the week.
- Write the shopping list from the plan, not from memory.
The paper version
A sheet with the days down the side works fine: dinner in one column, what you need to buy in the other. Pin it to the fridge and everyone knows what's for tea.
The catch is the list. You have to read every recipe, add up the repeats and sort it by aisle yourself, and start again when plans change midweek.
Plan the week in Cookt
Cookt is free on iPhone and Apple Watch, and the meal plan has no limit on meals.
- Save recipes you like from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or any website, or pick from the recipes already in the app.
- Open the plan and drop a recipe onto each night you'll cook.
- Tonight sits at the top, so you always know what's next.
The shopping list writes itself
Plan the week and Cookt builds the list from your recipes. Amounts are combined, grouped by aisle, and anything already in your pantry is skipped. Every line says which dinner it's for.
On the night
Open tonight's dinner and switch to cook mode: one step on screen in big type, with the timer in the step that needs it. Running timers show on your Lock Screen and Apple Watch, and what you actually cooked stays logged in the plan, which makes next week's plan easier to write.
Short on time? The 30-minute dinners collection on this site is a good place to fill the busy nights.
Questions
Is there a free meal planner app?
Yes. Cookt is free to download on iPhone, and the meal plan and shopping list are part of the free plan, with no limit on meals.
Is there a meal planner app that creates a shopping list?
Cookt does. Plan dinners onto nights and it builds one list with amounts combined and grouped by aisle.
What's a good meal planner app for a family?
Look for one that scales recipes and writes the list. In Cookt you can change the servings on any recipe and every quantity scales with it, and the shopping list is built from your plan.
Is there a meal planner app with recipes included?
Cookt comes with recipes to discover, from breakfast to baking, and you can add your own from videos, websites or cookbooks.