Paprika alternative: a free app that saves TikTok recipes

Tapas is a free recipe app for iPhone and the web. It saves recipes from TikTok, Instagram and any website, plans your week around them, and gives everyone at home one grocery list. Paprika is an established recipe manager, sold separately for each platform, and it's the one to look at if you need an app on a Mac, a Windows PC or an Android phone.

We make Tapas, so read this knowing that. Every Paprika fact below comes from Paprika's own website, help pages or App Store listing, checked on 4 November 2026, and each one is linked so you can check it too.

The short version

If most of the recipes you want to keep turn up in TikToks and Instagram reels, Tapas will write them out for you, even when the recipe is only spoken in the video, and it costs nothing. If you plan and shop with someone else, you each keep your own account and share one cookbook, plan and list. Paprika suits you better if you want an app on a Mac, Windows or Android, or a pantry that tracks expiration dates.

Side by side

Paprika sources: paprikaapp.com, Paprika for Windows, Paprika's iOS help, the iPhone and iPad App Store listing and the Mac App Store listing. Checked 4 November 2026.

Where Tapas is ahead

The biggest difference is saving from social video. Share a TikTok or an Instagram reel to Tapas and it reads the caption, listens to the video on your iPhone and writes out the recipe with amounts and steps. Paprika's help pages describe saving from web pages, so when a video's caption links to a recipe on a website, you can follow the link and save that page in Paprika. When the recipe is only in the video, Tapas can still write it out. We've written up how to save a TikTok recipe and how to save recipes from Instagram in full, including how to do it without any app.

Tapas is free on every device you use it on, with no paid tier. Paprika's website says each version is sold separately, so a phone and a Mac means two purchases, and the App Store listings also offer an in-app purchase called Paprika 4 Premium for $14.99. We couldn't find a description of what it adds on Paprika's site, so check the listing before you buy.

In Paprika, one Cloud Sync account holds one recipe collection, so to share it everyone signs in to that same account. In Tapas each person keeps their own account and joins the household, and you all share one cookbook, meal plan and grocery list, so nobody has to hand over a password.

Both apps add up the same ingredient from different recipes into one line, and Paprika's help says you can tap a combined line to see the items that went into it. Tapas shows each recipe's share of a combined line too, and it also leaves off the spices, sauces and staples you've said you keep at home. There's more on that in how to turn your recipes into a grocery list.

ReciMe vs Paprika vs Tapas: what each costs and does

ReciMe is the app people most often weigh against Paprika, so here are all three side by side. ReciMe's details are from its website, checked 5 November 2026, and Paprika's from the sources above.

If you're choosing between ReciMe and Paprika, the split is mostly about where your recipes come from. ReciMe is built around saving from social media, and its free version stops at 5 imports a week. Paprika is built around recipe websites and native apps you buy once per platform. Tapas saves from TikTok and Instagram the way ReciMe does, without a paid tier, and in our own test of 156 real TikTok and Instagram recipe posts it imported them more accurately than ReciMe, 67% to 62%.

When Paprika fits better

Paprika has native apps for iPad, Android, Mac and Windows, and Paprika Cloud Sync keeps your recipes, grocery lists and meal plans the same on all of them, with sync included in the purchase. Tapas is an iPhone app, and on a computer, an iPad or an Android phone you'd use it in a browser at tapas.cooking.

If you keep a close eye on your cupboards, Paprika's pantry records when you bought each thing and when it expires. Tapas keeps a list of what you have at home, so those things stay off your grocery list, but it doesn't track dates.

Moving your recipes from Paprika to Tapas

If you want to try Tapas with the recipes you already have, you don't need to give up Paprika to do it.

1. In Paprika on your iPhone, open Settings and go to Export Recipes. Leave All Recipes selected, choose Paprika Recipe Format and tap Export. (Paprika's export steps)
2. In Tapas, open Settings and choose Bring your recipes, then Choose export file and pick the file you just made.

Each recipe's title, photo, ingredients, steps, servings, times, notes and source link come across, and a recipe gets any of your Tapas tags that match its Paprika categories. Ratings, meal plans, grocery lists and your pantry stay in Paprika. If you run the import again later, Tapas only adds the recipes that are new.

If you'd like to try it with one recipe before moving anything, paste a link from any recipe site into Tapas and see what you get. One of our own recipes, like the chicken tikka masala, works too.