Mealime closes on October 21. Here's how to keep your recipes.

What's happening to Mealime

Mealime's closing page says the app “will be discontinued as of October 21, 2026.” Until then, Mealime Pro is free for everyone and Pro subscribers won't be charged again. When the app shuts down, Mealime says, all personal data will be deleted.

Mealime is pointing its users to Meals Hub, made by the same core team inside Albertsons Companies' grocery apps and websites (in a store app, tap More, then Meals Hub). Mealime says Meals Hub is free, includes all of Mealime's recipes, including the former Pro ones, and works even if there's no Albertsons Companies store near you. Your Mealime account doesn't move over, though: some preferences and settings have to be set up again there.

So the real question is what you want to keep. If it's Mealime's catalog and its ready-made plans, Meals Hub is the closest match. If it's the dozen or so dinners your household actually cooks, your own additions and your notes, save those somewhere you control. The rest of this guide is about that.

First, make a short list

Don't try to save everything. Open your favorites and your recent meal plans in Mealime and write down the recipes you've cooked more than once, plus any you added yourself. At a minute or two per recipe, twenty recipes is an evening's work, not a weekend's.

While you're there, note anything that lives only in your head or in Mealime: the swap you always make, the “double the garlic” note, which kid won't eat what. You'll add those as you save each recipe.

Way 1: save a recipe by its link

Mealime's own recipes have public web pages on mealime.com, and those pages carry standard recipe data: title, ingredients, steps, servings, time and photo. That data is read directly, so these recipes come in clean and need no AI.

1. In Mealime, open the recipe, tap ⋯ (More), then Share, and copy the link.
2. In Hedgehog Chef, open Import, paste the link on the Link tab and choose Import.
3. Check the preview. Choose Review & edit to add your notes, or Save recipe.

On Android, if you've installed Hedgehog Chef from Chrome, it appears in the share sheet: pick it instead of copying, and the import starts on its own. Every imported recipe credits Mealime and links back to the page it came from.

If a recipe came into Mealime from another website, import it from that website instead. Most recipe sites work, and you get the recipe as the person who wrote it published it.

Do this before October 21. Mealime hasn't said what happens to its web pages after the app closes, so the links may stop working.

Way 2: paste the text, or import a screenshot

For recipes without a link that works, such as ones you typed into Mealime yourself, copy the words or take screenshots.

Paste the text

1. Copy the ingredients and steps from Mealime.
2. In Hedgehog Chef, open Import, choose the Text tab and paste.
3. With Read it for me, the title, ingredients, steps and times are picked out for you to check. With Fill in by hand, you mark which lines are which yourself, with no AI involved.

Import a screenshot

1. Screenshot the recipe in Mealime. A long recipe can take a few screenshots: up to six pages of one recipe can be imported together.
2. Open Import, choose the Photo tab and add the screenshots.
3. Claude reads them and writes the recipe up. Check the amounts before you save: a cropped line is the usual culprit.

Photo import uses AI, so it needs AI features turned on in Settings. Pasting text with Fill in by hand works either way.

What you can't move automatically

Mealime's closing page mentions no export, and we couldn't find one in its help pages. That means some things have to be redone by hand, wherever you go next:

• Meal plans and plan history. Rebuild your usual week in Hedgehog Chef's planner, then save it as a menu so you can plan it again in a few taps.
• Your grocery list. Mealime's support pages say the web app can print the list or save it as a PDF. In Hedgehog Chef, paste several lines into the shopping list at once and each becomes an item, filed by aisle.
• Favorites, notes and preferences. Mark favorites again once the recipes are in, and set your household's diets and allergies in Settings → Household & diet so the AI planner respects them.
• Nutrition. In Hedgehog Chef, nutrition is calculated from each recipe's ingredients, so the numbers may differ a little from Mealime's.
• The catalog itself. Hedgehog Chef isn't a recipe catalog: it holds the recipes you save. If you want hundreds of Mealime recipes on tap, Meals Hub is the better fit.

After the move

Once your recipes are in, a few minutes of tidying makes them easier to use:

• Put them in a binder. In Recipes, select the ones you saved and choose Add to binder, for example “From Mealime”.
• Plan the first week. Drag recipes onto the week in the planner, or ask the planner for a week built from your favorites. How to plan a week of dinners in 15 minutes walks through it.
• Share the list. Mealime's lists couldn't be shared; its support suggested families sign in to one account. In Hedgehog Chef, everyone at home has their own login and the same list. See how to share a grocery list with your household.

For a side-by-side look at what Mealime did and what Hedgehog Chef does, with sources, read Hedgehog Chef vs. Mealime.