How to move your recipes out of another recipe app

Switching recipe apps usually means re-saving everything by hand. Here is how to bring an existing library across, and what to check before you commit to any app.

Updated 2026-08-05

The reason people stay in a recipe app they have stopped liking is never the app. It is the two hundred recipes inside it.

That is worth naming plainly, because it is the single biggest hidden cost in this category: most recipe apps are very good at getting recipes in from the internet, and quietly bad at getting your own library out — or into a different app.

First, get your recipes out of where they are

Before anything else, check what your current app will give you.

• Paprika keeps your recipes on your own devices and can export them.
• ReciMe offers export and print, though on its paid plan rather than its

free tier.

• Some apps offer nothing at all, in which case your library exists only

inside that company's product.

That last case is worth taking seriously when you choose an app, not when you try to leave one. An app with no export is an app you cannot leave. It is a reasonable question to ask before you spend a year saving recipes into something.

Then, get them into the new one

This is where most apps stop being helpful. Recipe importers are built around a URL box: they expect a link to a public web page. Hand them a file — a PDF, a document, an export from a competitor — and there is usually nowhere to put it.

A La Carte imports files directly. Plus → Import/Create → Document takes a file from your device or your cloud storage:

• a PDF someone emailed you, or one you made years ago
• a document or scan sitting in your files
• an export from another recipe app

A file with several recipes in it comes in as several recipes, rather than one enormous entry you then have to split by hand.

This is faster and considerably more accurate than the alternative everyone falls back on, which is photographing a screen.

What to do if your old app gives you nothing

If there is genuinely no export, you have three options, in descending order of how much of your evening they cost.

1. Re-import from the original sources. If your recipes came from links,

the links are usually still in the app. Re-importing from the URL gets you a clean copy, and it is faster than typing.

1. Screenshot and import as photos. A La Carte reads a screenshot of a

recipe as well as it reads a cookbook page. Tedious, but it works, and you can select several at once.

1. Prioritise ruthlessly. Almost nobody cooks two hundred recipes. Move

the twenty you actually make. The rest were aspirational, and they will stay aspirational in the new app too.

Option three is the honest answer for most people, and it takes about fifteen minutes.

Check the import, once

Whichever route you take, read one or two imported recipes against the original before you trust the batch. The things worth checking:

• Amounts and fractions. ¼ and ½ are the characters most often misread

from a printed page.

• Oven temperature, and whether the source meant Celsius or Fahrenheit.
• Anything the original implied but never wrote down. A La Carte proposes

a sensible value rather than leaving a blank, which is useful but is an estimate.

Before you commit to any recipe app, ask these

Learned the hard way, by people who have already migrated once:

• Can I export everything, and on which plan? If export is paywalled, your

exit costs money.

• Can it import a file, or only a link? This determines whether your next

migration is an afternoon or a weekend.

• What happens to my recipes if I stop paying? Some apps restrict access

to content you saved. Users have reported losing access to recipes after subscription changes, so it is a fair question to ask up front.

• Does it work where I actually find recipes? If that is Instagram and

TikTok, an app built around a web browser will frustrate you.

Getting out of A La Carte, too

Applying the same standard to ourselves: Profile → Export Recipes produces a file of your saved recipes, and it is not on a higher tier. You can also share any single recipe as a link that works for anyone, app or no app.

We would rather you stayed because the app is good than because leaving is painful.

Try it

A La Carte is on iPhone and Android, with a 7-day trial that unlocks everything. If you have a library stuck somewhere else, the Document import is the thing to test first — it is the part other apps do not have.

Details about other apps were checked against their own published pages on 5 August 2026. Products change — if you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.