Plate Notes

Pricing

Free if you cook for one or two.
Pro if you cook for the table.

Plate Notes is built so the weekly plan, every recipe, and the basic shopping list are free, forever. Pro adds the features a busy household actually pays for — scaling, leftovers, dietary profiles, and the small conveniences that turn the week from a project into a habit.

For most readers

Free

$0 / forever

The published weekly plan, the full recipe library, and a shopping list that scales to one or two people. The plan we use ourselves until the household grows past two.

  • A new six-day plan every Sunday, free to read and cook
  • Every recipe in the library, never behind a paywall
  • Auto-generated shopping list, sorted by aisle, scaled to 1 or 2 people
  • Up to three meal swaps per week, twelve saved recipes
  • Read-only sharing with a partner or roommate
Open this week's plan
For households

For three plates and up

Pro

$6 / month

or $54 / year — two months free, billed annually

Everything in Free, plus the household-shaped features: scaling up to six, per-person dietary profiles, leftover-aware planning, and the integrations that keep the week running when it gets busy.

  • Scale any week to a household of 3, 4, 5, or 6 — automatically
  • Per-person dietary profiles (vegetarian, allergy, macro targets)
  • Leftover-aware planning that uses Tuesday's lentils on Wednesday
  • Send the shopping list to AnyList, Reminders, or email
  • Pantry-aware list (subtract what you already have on hand)
  • Unlimited saved recipes, unlimited swaps, printable PDFs
  • Two-way editing with one household member
Start a 14-day Pro trial

No card required for trial. Cancel in one click.

Side by side

Every difference, line by line

We are bad at hiding features behind euphemisms. Here is the full comparison. If a feature is in Free, it is the same feature you would pay for in Pro — not a stripped-down version pretending to be the real one.

Weekly plan

  • A new six-day plan, every Sunday

    Published at 6am Pacific. Read it in five minutes.

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Auto-generated shopping list

    Sorted by aisle, scaled to your household.

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Swap any meal for another from the library

    Free plan resets the swap count on Sunday.

    Free

    3 per week

    Pro

    Unlimited

  • Skip a day (rollover ingredients)

    Pro auto-shifts the rest of the week and re-totals the list.

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

  • Save the week as a printable PDF

    One-page card for the fridge, full version for the cookbook.

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

Recipes & nutrition

  • Full recipe library, no paywall on individual pages

    Every recipe always free to read, cook, and screenshot.

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Macros and calorie totals per recipe

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Macros and calorie totals per day & week

    Rolled up automatically as your plan changes.

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

  • Filter library by ingredient, time, or dietary tag

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Personal cookbook (save recipes for later)

    Free

    Up to 12 saved

    Pro

    Unlimited

  • Notes and ratings on saved recipes

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

Household & scaling

  • Scale a week to your household size

    Free

    1–2 people

    Pro

    1–6 people

  • Per-person dietary profiles

    One vegetarian, one nut-allergic, one trying to hit 130g protein — the plan respects all three.

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

  • Leftover-aware planning

    Pro turns Tuesday's lentils into Wednesday's lunch automatically.

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

Shopping list

  • Web version of the shopping list

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Send the list to AnyList, Reminders, or email

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

  • Check off items as you shop

    Syncs across devices in real time on both plans.

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Pantry-aware list (subtract what you already have)

    A simple checklist of what's in your kitchen, deducted before the list is built.

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

Account & support

  • Read-only sharing with a partner

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

  • Two-way editing with a partner or roommate

    Free

    —

    Pro

    Included

  • Customer support response time

    Free

    5 business days

    Pro

    1 business day

  • Cancel anytime, no haggling

    One click in your account page. No retention emails.

    Free

    Included

    Pro

    Included

Why the line is where it is

A short note from the team

We wrestled with this. Plate Notes started as a free site and almost stayed that way. The reason we landed on a paid tier — and the reason Pro is priced at six dollars rather than fifteen — is that the work we needed to add to make the app useful for households of four or five is fundamentally more expensive to build and to maintain than the work we did for households of one or two.

Scaling a recipe from two servings to five sounds trivial. It is not. A pot of rice that took twenty minutes for two people now takes thirty for five. A roast chicken that fed two as the centerpiece now needs a second one or a side that stretches the protein. Leftover planning is a graph problem with a deadline. Per-person dietary profiles compound combinatorially when one of the people in the household is vegetarian, one is nut-allergic, and one is trying to land on a macro target. We built those features because they are the ones a household asked us for, and the price of Pro is what it takes to keep building them.

The Free tier is not a trial. It is a complete, useful product that the two of us use most weeks. The Pro tier is an honest upgrade for people whose week is bigger than ours. The line between the two is supposed to be obvious — if you find yourself working around a free-tier limit twice a month, Pro will save you the hour and earn the six dollars. If you don't, please stay on Free with our blessing.

Questions before you upgrade

A few common ones

Can I downgrade from Pro back to Free?
Yes, any time, no questions. Your saved recipes stay; if you have more than twelve saved, they are preserved but read-only until you trim the list to the free limit or upgrade again. Your dietary profiles and household size revert to the free defaults — you can set them again the next time you upgrade.
Do you have a student or non-profit discount?
Yes — Pro is free for full-time students with a verified .edu address, and free for non-profit dietitians, school food services, and community kitchens. Email us with proof and we'll set it up by hand. No web form, no automated approvals.
Is there a family plan?
One Pro subscription covers one household, no matter how many devices or how many adults are editing the plan. We do not sell per-seat. If your household has more than two adults editing the plan, write us and we'll set up shared access.
What happens to my data if I cancel?
It stays in your account on the Free tier. If you delete the account entirely, we purge everything within 30 days — no resurrection emails, no shadow profile. You can export a JSON of everything you have ever saved before you delete.
Why no AI meal planner?
Because the plan is good when it's edited by a person who cooks for a living, and mediocre when it's generated by a model that has eaten paragraphs of recipe text rather than dinner. Our weekly plan is hand-built; Pro features automate the mechanical parts (scaling, leftovers, lists) around it. If that ever stops being the right call, we'll tell you and reverse course — not slide it in under a new name.

Try Pro for two weeks. Cook through them. Decide.

Fourteen days, no card. If the household features change how Sundays feel, you'll know by week two — and if they don't, the free plan you came in on is still here waiting.

Start the trial Read the recipes first