MyCookingCalendar vs Eat This Much: Which Meal Planner Wins?

MyCookingCalendar: 6,300+ recipes spanning 54+ cuisines (Turkish, Japanese, Mexican, Ethiopian, Korean, Italian, and dozens more), available in 12 languages. Every recipe ships with full nutrition data, photography, step-by-step instructions, and cooking tips — this is a curated recipe platform first.

Eat This Much: its meal 'plans' are generated by combinatorially assembling foods and simple recipes to hit a macro target, not by browsing a curated editorial library. Several independent reviews note that generated meals can repeat frequently and skew toward simple, functional combinations (protein + starch + vegetable) rather than distinct, cuisine-specific dishes — the recipe database is noticeably thinner and less varied than a dedicated recipe site, and photography/production quality is minimal since the point is the macro math, not the meal itself.

Winner for recipe variety, cuisine depth, and food you're excited to cook: MyCookingCalendar. Winner if you genuinely don't care what you eat as long as the numbers hit: Eat This Much is functional enough.

This is the real dividing line between the two apps. Eat This Much's whole reason for existing is: set a calorie/protein/carb/fat target, and the algorithm assembles a full plan to match it as closely as possible, with almost no manual input required. That is a genuinely useful, different approach for people whose top priority is hitting an exact macro number — bodybuilders, competitive lifters, and anyone on a strict cut or bulk. It removes decision fatigue almost entirely.

MyCookingCalendar's AI works the other way: it generates a personalized weekly plan from your calorie target, dietary restrictions, preferred cuisines, and pantry, but pulls from a real recipe library, so what you get back is dishes with a name, a cuisine, a flavor profile, and photography — not just a nutritional ledger. On top of the weekly planner, an AI chat assistant lets you ask natural-language questions like 'what can I make with chicken and lentils?' and get real recipe suggestions.

If hitting an exact macro number is your only goal, Eat This Much's automation is more purpose-built for that single job. If you want a plan built from recipes you'd actually want to eat and cook, MyCookingCalendar's approach fits better.

Eat This Much is macro tracking-native — the whole app is organized around calorie/macro targets, and logging what you actually ate against the plan is core to the experience. This is a real strength for users focused purely on numbers.

MyCookingCalendar Pro also includes a full macro tracker (calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber), a food-photo analyzer that estimates calories from a picture of your plate, and an intermittent fasting timer — turning it into a broader nutrition app rather than a planning tool with tracking bolted on.

Both apps take tracking seriously; Eat This Much's tracking is more tightly fused to its plan-generation loop, while MyCookingCalendar's tracking suite is broader (photo analysis, fasting) but slightly more separate from plan generation.

Eat This Much generates an automatic grocery list from your plan and, notably, offers direct grocery delivery integration with services like Instacart, letting you go from generated plan to ordered groceries in a couple of taps — a genuinely convenient feature MyCookingCalendar does not currently match.

MyCookingCalendar organizes its grocery list by category (produce, dairy, pantry) with manual edit and check-off support while shopping, but does not offer one-tap delivery integration.

Winner for frictionless one-tap grocery ordering: Eat This Much. Winner for a clear, editable, categorized list you shop yourself: roughly tied, both are well-built.

Eat This Much is available as a web app and native iOS/Android apps, with its meal-planning dashboard originally built web-first.

MyCookingCalendar is available on the web across all locales, with a companion iOS app called Bento for planning and tracking on the go.

Both apps are accessible on web and mobile; neither has a meaningful platform-availability edge over the other.

MyCookingCalendar: free plan (recipe browsing + basic planning) | Pro Monthly $3.99/month | Pro Yearly $39.99/year (~$3.33/month).

Eat This Much: free tier (one day of auto-generated plan at a time, food logging, barcode scanning) | Premium roughly $5/month billed annually, or a higher month-to-month rate (reported between $9–$15/month depending on promotion) for full weekly planning, automatic grocery lists, and delivery integration.

MyCookingCalendar's annual rate works out cheaper per month than Eat This Much's, and its free tier is less limited (unrestricted recipe browsing and basic planning vs. one day at a time only); the full recipe library, AI generation, and tracking features are gated to Pro.

• You want meal plans built from real, distinct recipes with photography, not just macro-matched food combinations. • You cook international cuisines regularly or want to explore new ones (54+ cuisines vs. a narrower functional database). • You want an AI chat assistant you can ask cooking questions, not just a plan generator. • You track calories, macros, or follow an intermittent fasting protocol and want that in the same app as your recipes. • Your household speaks more than one language (12 languages supported).

• Hitting an exact calorie/macro target is your top priority, above meal variety or cuisine. • You want a plan auto-generated in seconds with essentially zero manual input. • You want one-tap grocery delivery integration (Instacart, AmazonFresh) straight from your plan. • You're a bodybuilder, competitive athlete, or on a strict cut/bulk where precision matters more than food variety. • You don't mind repetitive, simple meals as long as the numbers are right.