If you're looking for a recipe app that can save recipes from websites, social media, screenshots, and even cookbook photos, you've probably come across both Deglaze and ReciMe. Both use AI to offer features that older recipe apps simply can't match. They're well-rated, too — Deglaze holds a 4.9 on the App Store and ReciMe a 4.8.
So how do you choose between them? We're obviously biased (you're reading this on the Deglaze blog), but we'll do our best to give you a fair picture. Where the apps are similar, we'll say so. Where they differ, we'll explain what each offers so you can decide what matters most to you.
This comparison is accurate as of February 2026. Both apps update regularly, so some details may change over time.
At a Glance: Why Cooks Choose Deglaze
Before we get into the details, here's a quick summary of the areas where Deglaze stands out:
- Faster imports — Saving a recipe in Deglaze takes just a second or two — ReciMe imports can leave you staring at a loading spinner for 10 seconds or more. Deglaze processes recipes on our servers in the background, so you're never waiting around.
- Automatic organization — AI-powered smart collections organize recipes for you without any manual work
- More powerful search and filtering — Search by ingredient, author, or source, and combine multiple filters to find exactly what you want
- Household sharing — Share a recipe library, grocery list, and meal plan with your household while keeping individual preferences
- Smarter grocery list — Deglaze learns the items you buy regularly and suggests them, so you're less likely to forget staples
- Better cooking experience — One-tap timers, AI-powered inline ingredients, and multi-recipe cooking sessions
- Accurate recipe scaling — Handles complex ingredient formats that trip up other apps
- Offline access — View recipes and your grocery list without an internet connection
- Dark mode — Deglaze has a dark mode that's easy on your eyes. ReciMe does not.
Now let's look at each area in detail.
Importing Recipes
Both apps support the same core import sources: websites and blogs, photos (including cookbook pages and screenshots), and social media posts from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest. Both use AI to extract structured recipes from whatever you share — including pulling recipes from the audio of social media videos.
The big difference is speed. Saving a recipe in Deglaze takes just a second or two — ReciMe imports can leave you staring at a loading spinner for 10 seconds or more. Deglaze processes recipes on our servers in the background, so you're never waiting around.
This might sound like a small thing, but it adds up. If you're going through a cooking blog and saving multiple recipes, or importing a batch of cookbook pages, the difference in flow is significant.
Deglaze also invests heavily in import quality. We use the latest AI models combined with finely tuned queries to extract recipes as accurately as possible — getting the right ingredients, quantities, and instructions even from tricky sources like handwritten cookbook pages or fast-paced social media videos.
For cookbook lovers, Deglaze also offers first-class cookbook management. When you import a recipe from a cookbook photo, Deglaze often finds the matching book and displays the cover automatically. If it doesn't find a match, you can add the book manually. This makes it easy to browse your imported recipes by the cookbook they came from.
Organizing Your Recipes
This is one of the biggest areas of difference between the two apps, and it's worth understanding in detail if you plan to build a sizable recipe collection.
Both apps let you put recipes into collections (ReciMe calls them "CookBooks"), and a recipe can live in multiple collections in both apps. But that's roughly where the similarity ends.
Automatic vs. Manual Organization
In ReciMe, all organization is manual. Every recipe you save goes into an unsorted library unless you manually add it to a CookBook. If you want to browse your pasta recipes, your vegetarian options, or your desserts, you need to have created those CookBooks yourself and sorted every recipe into them.
Deglaze gives you the best of both worlds. AI-powered smart collections automatically tag your recipes by course (mains, sides, desserts), type (pasta, soup, salad, seafood), and dietary preference (vegetarian, vegan, etc.), so you get useful organization from the moment you start adding recipes — no manual work required. You can also create custom collections on top of this, giving you automatic organization as a foundation with full flexibility to organize things your way.
Search and Filtering
Finding a specific recipe is where Deglaze really pulls ahead as a recipe organizer. ReciMe's search only covers recipe titles, and while they offer an ingredient search, it's limited to a preconfigured list of common ingredients. If you want to find recipes that use a specific ingredient that's not on their list, you're out of luck.
Deglaze search covers titles, any ingredient (not just a preset list), authors, and sources (website name, cookbook title, etc.). So you can search for "chicken thighs" and find every recipe that uses them, or search for "Ottolenghi" and see everything by that author.
The filtering system is where the gap widens further. In ReciMe, you can browse one CookBook at a time, but you can't combine filters. In Deglaze, you can stack multiple filters together: find recipes that are in both your "Quick Weeknight" and "Chicken" collections that you've rated 4 stars or higher.
Grocery List
Both apps offer a grocery list that auto-categorizes items by store section to make shopping faster, and both integrate with Instacart for delivery. You can also add non-recipe items to the list manually in both apps.
Deglaze's grocery list app goes a step further by learning the items you add manually over time. The next time you open the add screen, Deglaze suggests your frequently purchased items — things like milk, eggs, bread, or whatever staples you buy regularly. Restocking your essentials becomes as simple as tapping the items you need. It's a small feature, but it saves time every week and makes it less likely you'll forget something at the store.
Meal Planning
Both apps offer a calendar-based meal planner where you can assign recipes to specific days with labels like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Deglaze adds a few touches that make the meal planning experience more complete. You can add notes directly on the calendar — things like "leftovers" or "eating out" — so your plan reflects your entire week, not just the nights you're cooking from a recipe. Deglaze also shows grocery status for each planned meal, both on the calendar and within the recipe itself, so you can see at a glance which meals are ready to go and which still need shopping. Planned recipes are automatically surfaced at the top of your recipe library for the week, keeping everything connected.
For a deeper look at how Deglaze approaches meal planning (including a more flexible option for people who don't want to plan every meal), check out our guide to meal planning in Deglaze.
Household Sharing
This is an area where Deglaze offers something ReciMe currently doesn't support at all. ReciMe has no multi-user household functionality — if you want to share an account with a partner or family member, you need to share a login.
Deglaze's household feature lets multiple people share a recipe library, grocery list, and meal planning calendar while each having their own account and preferences. You can filter your recipe library to see just the recipes you added versus ones your partner saved. On the grocery list, you can see who added each item. Everyone stays on the same page without having to compromise on how they use the app.
For families or couples who cook together, this is a meaningful difference — especially when it comes to meal planning and grocery shopping coordination.
Recipe Discovery
Deglaze includes two features for finding new recipes that ReciMe doesn't currently offer. The first is a social feed where you can follow friends to see what they're cooking (a post is optionally created each time someone cooks a recipe) and follow your favorite recipe creators for new inspiration. The second is a personalized recipe search that pulls from trusted food sites, so you can discover and save new recipes without leaving the app.
Cooking Mode
Both apps offer a cooking experience that keeps your screen on so you don't have to keep tapping your phone with messy hands. But Deglaze's cooking mode goes further in a few important ways.
One-tap timers let you start a countdown directly from a recipe instruction — and you can have multiple timers running at once, so you're never losing track of what's on the stove. If you're cooking multiple dishes at once (say, for a dinner party), you can have multiple recipes open and switch between them with a single tap. And our AI-powered inline ingredients feature shows you the exact quantities you need directly within each instruction, so you never have to scroll back to the ingredients list mid-step.
Deglaze also keeps a cooking history for each recipe, including any notes and photos you take along the way. It's a nice way to track what you've made and remember any adjustments for next time.
Recipe Scaling
Both apps offer recipe scaling, but the accuracy differs significantly. Deglaze handles complex real-world ingredient formats — alternate measurements in parentheses, additive quantities like "¼ cup + 2 tbsp," and multi-part descriptions — that ReciMe struggles with. In a head-to-head test of 15 real-world ingredient phrases, Deglaze scaled all 15 correctly while ReciMe got 5 right. You can see the full comparison in our recipe scaling deep dive.
Navigation and Usability
A few other differences worth noting for day-to-day use:
Navigation: In ReciMe, the bottom navigation bar disappears when you're viewing a recipe. Want to check your grocery list while looking at a recipe? You have to close it and navigate back. Deglaze keeps the bottom nav always visible, so you can switch between your recipe library, grocery list, and calendar at any time.
Offline access: ReciMe requires an internet connection to use. Deglaze offers basic offline functionality for viewing recipes and your grocery list — helpful when you're at a grocery store with spotty connectivity or cooking somewhere without reliable Wi-Fi.
Dark mode: Deglaze supports dark mode. ReciMe does not.
Where ReciMe Has the Edge
In the interest of fairness, there are a couple of features ReciMe offers that Deglaze doesn't have yet. ReciMe supports shared collections, so you can share a curated set of recipes with a friend (not just your household). ReciMe also displays AI-generated nutrition information on recipe detail pages. Both of these features are on our roadmap for 2026.
Pricing
Both apps offer a free plan that includes a limited number of imports (currently 5 per week for both), with unlimited imports and full feature access available through a paid subscription. Deglaze also lets you save unlimited recipes from its built-in search and social feed on the free plan.
Deglaze Pro is $49.99/year in the US. ReciMe's premium plan is $59.99/year in the US. Both offer a free trial for new users.
Try Deglaze for Yourself
The best way to see the difference is to try both apps and decide which one fits your cooking style. We're confident that once you experience Deglaze's speed, organization, and cooking features, you'll see why we built things the way we did.
Download Deglaze for iPhone, iPad, or Android. New users get a free trial of Deglaze Pro to try everything — including meal planning, smart grocery lists, recipe scaling, and inline ingredients.
Have questions or feedback? We'd love to hear from you at help@deglaze.app.
