Comparison

The best recipe apps for dietary restrictions, and which ones can adapt your own recipe

Published October 10, 2026 Last checked October 26, 2026

Which recipe app is best for a dietary restriction?

Samsung Food and Tasty are best for finding recipes that already fit a diet, Crouton and Sous Chef for adapting a recipe you already have, and Fig for checking packaged products. Which you need depends on whether you want new recipes or need to fix one you already have. To find recipes that already fit a diet, Samsung Food filters a large public catalog by 14 diets for free, and Tasty lets you set diets, allergies, and ingredients to avoid so it only shows matching recipes. To adapt a recipe you already love, Crouton (with its Discover subscription) can swap single ingredients and update the instructions, and Sous Chef can take a whole-recipe request like “make it dairy-free” and edit the ingredients and steps together. To check whether a packaged product fits your diet, Fig scans barcodes.

One rule applies to all of them: no app can guarantee a recipe is free of an allergen. Apps can miss an ingredient, misread a label, or suggest a substitute that contains the thing you’re avoiding. For a real allergy, use an app to save time, then check every packaged ingredient’s label yourself.

Three kinds of “diet” app

Diet features fall into three groups that solve different problems:

1. Filter apps start from a recipe catalog and hide what doesn’t match your settings. Good for “show me vegan dinners.” No help with the lasagna recipe your family already loves.
2. Adapt apps take a recipe you bring and change it. Good for “make Grandma’s lasagna gluten-free.” A good adaptation changes the steps too: a gluten-free flour roux behaves differently from a wheat one, and a vegan swap can change cooking times.
3. Product checkers scan packaged foods against your restrictions. Good at the store, not in the kitchen.

Diet and allergy apps compared

Claims below come from each app’s US App Store listing (including release notes) or the company’s own site, checked October 10, 2026.

Mealime, long a popular pick for diet-based meal plans (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and more, per its listing), is left out of the recommendations: its site said the app would be discontinued as of October 21, 2026 (checked October 26, 2026).

Finding recipes that already fit

Samsung Food: the widest free filter

Samsung Food’s free tier lets you filter a large public recipe catalog by diet, plus meal type, cook time, and cuisine. Its listing doesn’t name the 14 diets. If you follow a less common diet, open the filter screen before you commit. Ingredient swaps and nutrition tweaks on a recipe are Samsung Food+ features. The listing doesn’t say whether the method is updated when an ingredient is swapped, so read the steps after any swap.

Tasty and NYT Cooking: curated libraries with diet settings

Tasty’s release notes describe a preferences screen for diets, allergies, and ingredients you want to avoid, which then hides non-matching recipes in Discover and search. NYT Cooking lets you search its database by diet. Both are good for discovery, because their recipes were written for the diet rather than converted afterward. Neither changes a recipe from somewhere else.

Adapting a recipe you already have

This is the harder problem, and the one most people actually have. You don’t want a new vegan curry. You want your curry, without the cream.

Crouton: substitutions that reach the instructions

Crouton’s newest release adds ingredient substitutions that apply “to ingredient quantities and cooking instructions without changing your saved recipe.” That’s a real adapt feature, and the description says it updates the steps as well as the ingredient line. It works one ingredient at a time and requires the Discover subscription. If you already use Crouton as your recipe organizer, try this first.

Sous Chef: one request for the whole recipe

Sous Chef takes any free-form request, not just a single ingredient swap. Type or say “make it dairy-free” and the model returns a set of typed edits: replace the butter, replace the cream, rewrite the step that says “melt the butter until foaming,” add a note where a substitute behaves differently. The server checks every edit against the recipe before applying it, and rejects invalid ones instead of silently applying them. Every changed line is marked Edited, there’s an edits log you can undo from, and the original recipe is never overwritten. That’s useful when you want to compare against the original or undo a swap that didn’t work.

Sous Chef works best for diets defined by ingredients: vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, “no mushrooms.” It doesn’t track nutrition, so it’s no help with a calorie target or a macro-based diet. For the cooking logic behind a good conversion, see how to make a recipe vegetarian and our test of whether ChatGPT can make a recipe dairy-free.

A chatbot, if you don’t need to keep the result

ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini will rewrite a recipe for a diet in a chat thread. The rewrite can be good, but nothing tracks what changed, and the result is a block of text. We tested how reliable those swaps are in can ChatGPT substitute ingredients?.

Allergies: what no app can promise

A diet preference and a medical allergy are different problems, and app copy often blurs them. Keep these limits in mind with any app on this page, Sous Chef included:

• An AI edit can miss a hidden ingredient. Soy sauce is commonly brewed with wheat. Worcestershire sauce often contains anchovies. Pesto usually contains nuts and cheese. A recipe line that says “1 tbsp soy sauce” doesn’t say “wheat,” and an app working from the recipe text can miss that.
• Brands differ. “Use vegan butter” is only dairy-free if the product you buy is. Read the label every time, because formulas change.
• Cross-contact isn’t in the recipe. Shared fryers, cutting boards, and bulk bins can carry allergens no recipe mentions.
• Know the labeled allergens. The FDA lists nine major food allergens that must be declared on US labels: milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame (FDA). “Gluten-free” labeling has its own FDA rules (FDA gluten-free labeling).

Use an app to do the rewriting and to flag the obvious swaps. Then do the label check yourself. For a severe allergy, follow your allergist’s guidance over any app’s suggestion.

Which should you use?

• “I want new recipes that already fit my diet.” Samsung Food (free filters) or Tasty (diet and allergy preferences).
• “I want to convert one ingredient in a recipe I’ve saved.” Crouton with Discover, if you’re already a Crouton user.
• “I want my whole recipe converted, with the steps fixed and the original kept.” Sous Chef.
• “I want to know if this jar at the store is safe for me.” Fig.
• “I need to hit calorie or macro targets.” None of the recipe editors above track nutrition. Use a nutrition-focused app instead.

Common questions

Is there an app that makes any recipe vegan?

Sous Chef rewrites a recipe you bring from a request like “make it vegan,” editing ingredients and the steps that reference them, and Crouton’s Discover subscription adds per-ingredient substitutions that update instructions. Some dishes don’t convert cleanly, and a meat-centered dish can become a different dish, so read the result before cooking.

Can a recipe app guarantee a recipe is allergen-free?

No. Apps work from recipe text and their own data, and they can miss hidden allergens, like wheat in soy sauce, or a product whose formula changed. Use apps to save time, then check every packaged ingredient’s label yourself and follow your allergist’s advice.

Which recipe app filters by diet for free?

Samsung Food’s free tier filters public recipes by 14 diets, per its App Store listing as of Oct 2026. Tasty is also free and lets you set diets, allergies, and ingredients to avoid so only matching recipes appear.

What’s the difference between filtering and adapting a recipe?

Filtering hides recipes that don’t fit your diet, so you only see ones written for it. Adapting changes a recipe you already have, swapping ingredients and ideally rewriting the steps that depended on them. Most diet apps filter. Only a few, like Crouton (Discover) and Sous Chef, adapt.

Does Sous Chef track nutrition for my diet?

No. Sous Chef doesn’t track nutrition, calories, or macros, and it has no meal planner or grocery list. It edits a recipe’s ingredients and steps for ingredient-based diets like vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, or gluten-free, and keeps the original recipe underneath.

Is Mealime still available for dietary meal plans?

No. Mealime’s site says the app was to be discontinued as of October 21, 2026, with its recipes moving to Meals Hub in Albertsons Companies grocery apps. Choose a different app if you’re starting fresh.