Hearth vs Plan to Eat

Plan to Eat is a deep, loved manual meal planner — drag recipes onto a calendar, get an aisle-sorted list. If you like planning by hand, it's excellent. But it doesn't cost your meals, doesn't track your pantry, and runs $49 a year. Hearth adds cost and pantry, and costs $12.

Plan to Eat pricing/features from public 2026 listings ($5.95/mo or $49/yr (about $55/yr via the iOS App Store)); we aim to keep this fair — corrections welcome.

Why people switch from Plan to Eat to Hearth

• You want the plan to know what things cost. Per-serving cost in real dollars and this week's local sales, built into planning. Plan to Eat has neither.
• You want the list to subtract your kitchen. One line per ingredient across the week's recipes, minus what you already have, updating as you cook.
• You want cook mode that walks you through the steps, not just a calendar that tells you which night it is.
• You'd rather pay $12/yr than $49–$55/yr — and get a 30-day trial instead of 14.

Where Plan to Eat wins (the honest part)

• Deep, flexible manual planning. The drag-and-drop calendar is best-in-class if you enjoy planning by hand; Hearth's planner is simpler.
• A long track record and a big community with a large shared recipe library behind it.
• Mature native apps on iOS and Android, where Hearth is an installable web app.

If hands-on calendar planning is the joy for you, Plan to Eat is a proven, polished choice. If you want the plan to also tell you what it costs, what's on sale, and what's in your kitchen — for a quarter of the annual price — that's Hearth.

See how Hearth compares to every major app →