RecipeSage vs Gratly: An Honest Comparison

Let us deal with the obvious problem first. We make Gratly, and RecipeSage is free, open source, and genuinely good. If you are looking for the part of this article where we explain why the paid thing is secretly better, it is not here.

RecipeSage is the right answer for a lot of people. What follows is an honest account of who it is not the right answer for, and why.

The thing worth understanding before any feature list

Both tools have a free tier. They are limited in opposite directions, and almost nobody notices this until they hit the wall.

• RecipeSage limits how fast recipes come in. Storage is unlimited, but the hosted version caps daily imports: 2 import jobs per day, and 7 URL autofills per day, for non-contributors.
• Gratly limits how many you keep. Saving from websites is unmetered, so you can clip fifteen recipes on a Sunday afternoon, but the free tier holds 20 active recipes.

That difference is not academic. Moving an existing collection of 100 recipes into RecipeSage's free hosted tier means running up against a daily import ceiling for weeks. Doing the same into Gratly's free tier takes an afternoon, and then you are 80 recipes over the cap.

Neither is a trick. They are different costs: theirs is server time for import processing, ours is storage. But it means the right pick depends heavily on whether you are migrating a library or building one slowly.

At a glance

What "free" actually means for each

This is where being precise matters, because both of us describe ourselves as free and we mean slightly different things.

RecipeSage is free software. It is AGPL licensed, so you can read the code, and you can self-host your own instance for personal, non-commercial use. Do that and there is no paywall of any kind, because you are paying the hosting bill yourself.

The hosted version at recipesage.com has limits, and they are honest about why: some operations cost real money to run, so image resolution, multiple images per recipe, unlimited assistant messages and the daily import allowances sit behind an optional contribution. Contributors get roughly ten times the daily limits. Contributions are monthly or one-off, and you pick the amount.

That is a fundamentally more generous model than ours, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Gratly is a free tier of a paid product. Saving and cleaning from any website is unmetered and free forever, along with cook mode, timers, serving scaling, unit conversion and printing. Storage caps at 20 active recipes, and the planner, shopping lists, video import and household sharing are paid. See what is free and what is Plus.

Where RecipeSage wins

You can own it outright. Self-host and your recipes live on hardware you control, with no company able to change the terms, raise a price, or shut down. Nothing we offer competes with that, and for some people it is the only thing that matters.

Planning and shopping lists cost nothing. These are our paid features and their free ones. If weekly planning is the actual job, RecipeSage does it for free and we charge for it.

No storage ceiling. A 500-recipe library is fine on their free tier. It is four times our free cap.

Firefox, and real desktop apps. They ship an extension for Chrome and Firefox, plus native desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux. We are Chrome and Edge only, with no desktop app.

It works offline. RecipeSage keeps a local copy in the browser, so your collection stays searchable and readable without a connection. Ours does not.

Where Gratly wins

No daily wall on saving. This is the practical one. If you clip recipes in bursts, a 2-per-day import ceiling is the limit you will actually feel, and ours does not exist. You can save thirty recipes in one sitting on the free tier.

The cooking half is more finished. Cook mode with the screen kept awake, timers pulled out of the steps themselves, scaling and unit conversion in place, and printing, all free. RecipeSage covers this ground; ours is more polished, and polish is a fair thing to prefer.

There is a company behind it. Support, a roadmap, and someone accountable. Open source cuts the other way too, so treat this as a preference rather than a fact: a community project cannot be taken away from you, and a company can.

Import from social video. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, on paid plans. See saving recipes from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Who should pick which

Pick RecipeSage if you want to pay nothing and mean it, you care about owning your data, you need free meal planning and shopping lists, you have a large library to store, you use Firefox or Linux, or offline access matters. Also if you are migrating a big collection and can spread it over time.

Pick Gratly if you clip recipes in bursts and do not want a daily ceiling, you want the cook-mode side to feel finished, or you are on Chrome and want one-click saving from the page you are reading.

A combination is legitimate. Gratly's extension is a fast way to get a clean recipe off a cluttered page; RecipeSage is a good permanent home. Nothing stops you using both.

The question to ask either of us

Can you export? RecipeSage answers this convincingly, because the format is open and the whole thing is self-hostable. Any tool that cannot answer it is one you cannot leave. Ask us the same question and hold us to the answer.

FAQ

Is RecipeSage really free? The software is open source and self-hostable at no cost. The hosted version at recipesage.com is free to use with daily limits on imports and some image features, which optional contributions raise.

What are the RecipeSage free limits? On the hosted version, non-contributors get 2 import jobs and 7 URL autofills per day, standard-resolution single images per recipe, and a capped number of assistant messages. Contributors get about ten times the daily allowances.

Does RecipeSage have an iPhone app? Their download page directs mobile users to install it from the browser and add it to the home screen rather than to an App Store listing. There are native desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Which is better for a large recipe collection? RecipeSage. Storage is unlimited on their free tier and ours caps at 20 active recipes. Expect the migration itself to take a while because of the daily import limits.

Which is better if I save recipes in bursts? Gratly. Saving from websites is unmetered on the free tier, so a long session of clipping does not hit a wall.

Does Gratly have free meal planning? No. The planner and shopping lists are paid features for us and free ones for RecipeSage. If that is the deciding factor, they are the better pick.

Can I use both? Yes, and it is a reasonable setup. Neither requires exclusivity and both have free entry points.

Try whichever fits

If paying nothing and owning your data is the priority, RecipeSage is the honest answer and we would rather you were happy than converted.

If the daily import ceiling is the thing that would frustrate you, or you want the cooking side to feel finished, add Gratly to Chrome for free.

Related: the best free recipe organizer apps, JustTheRecipe vs Gratly, and Recipe Bro vs Gratly.