Mealie

TAS Score: S3/3 — D5/5 — A3 / T2

Brief Description

Self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner. Import recipes from any URL with automatic ingredient parsing, plan weekly meals, generate shopping lists, and manage a family cookbook — all without ads or subscriptions.

Architectural Role

Household layer: replaces recipe apps (Paprika, Whisk, Yummly) and bookmarked recipe websites. Centralizes family cooking knowledge in a searchable, shareable, self-hosted application.

Technical Autonomy

• ✅ Works without internet (all recipes stored locally)
• ✅ Stores all data locally (SQLite or PostgreSQL)
• ✅ Does not require external accounts
• ✅ Full data export (JSON, ZIP backup with images)
• ✅ Recipe import from URLs via scraping

Philosophical Assessment (whose.world criteria)

Criterion	Status	Comments
Pause	✅	Stop container, all recipes stay. Resume anytime.
Exit	✅	Full JSON export with images. Portable data.
Recoverability	✅	Built-in backup/restore. SQLite file or PostgreSQL dump.
Visibility	✅	AGPL-3.0, fully auditable.
External Dependencies	✅	Fully self-hosted. URL import scrapes directly, no API dependency.

Configuration (Minimal)

services:
  mealie:
    image: ghcr.io/mealie-recipes/mealie:latest
    container_name: mealie
    ports:
      - "9925:9000"
    volumes:
      - ./data/mealie:/app/data
    environment:
      - TZ=UTC
      - BASE_URL=https://meals.example.com
    restart: unless-stopped

Related Recipes

• Family Cloud — add Mealie for family meal planning

Alternatives

Alternative	Autonomy	Notes
Tandoor Recipes	A3 / T2	More complex, more features. Django-based. PostgreSQL required.
Grocy	A3 / T2	Broader scope — grocery management, not just recipes.
Paprika	A1 / T0	Paid app, cloud sync, proprietary. Good UI but no self-hosting.

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Trajectory

Direction: opening.

Mealie v1 was a complete rewrite from v0, showing active development and architectural investment. Growing community, regular releases, expanding feature set without feature gating.

Signal assessment:

Signal	Status	Evidence
License	✅	AGPL-3.0, unchanged.
Feature gating	✅	No paid tier. Everything is free.
Self-hosting	✅	Docker-first, good documentation, active Docker Hub presence.
Governance	✅	Multiple contributors. Healthy issue/PR activity.

Signal key: ✅ opening · ➖ neutral · ⚠️ closing

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Sources

• Website: mealie.io
• Repository: github.com/mealie-recipes/mealie
• Docker image: ghcr.io/mealie-recipes/mealie