Carby vs The Dinner Daily: your dollar cap or their sales flyer?
The Dinner Daily plans five dinners from a supported store’s weekly specials. Carby plans five dinners from a budget you type and catalog estimates for that store. Both aim at cheaper home dinners. They use different inputs.
Side by side
| Criterion | Carby | The Dinner Daily |
|---|---|---|
| What it plans | Weekly dinners built around a named US grocery store and a budget you type first, with estimated ingredient costs and one aisle-grouped list. | A pre-built five-dinner menu and shopping list, matched to a supported store’s weekly sales when a flyer exists. |
| Starter price | $39.99/year after a 3-day trial on web yearly checkout | $24 for three months or $58 for a year |
| Cost if you stay a year | $39.99 if you stay on the web yearly plan after the 3-day trial | $58 on the annual plan. Repeating the $24 three-month plan four times is $96. Grocery is extra. |
| Trial | 3-day trial on the web yearly offer visitors actually see. Monthly ($9.99) and weekly ($4.99) plans also exist. Read the checkout. | 14-day trial. FAQ: a credit card is required; no charge until day 15; cancel during the trial and you are not charged. |
| Refunds | Web Stripe charges: email within 30 days of the charge for a refund. App Store charges go through Apple. Cancel during the trial and you are not charged. | Terms (updated 1-1-2020): no charge if you cancel in the first 14 days. After that, no refund; access continues until the end of the paid term. Subscriptions auto-renew unless you cancel in Account Settings. |
| Grocery list | One shopping list for the week, grouped by aisle. You shop it yourself. | Weekly shopping list that updates when you swap meals. You shop it. Add-to-home-screen web app, not a separate iPhone App Store listing in this snapshot. |
| Store cost estimates | Yes | No |
| Sales flyer matching | No. Catalog estimates with a store price adjustment, not that week’s ad. | Yes, for over 16,000 stores in all 50 states per their FAQ. Any Store skips the flyer. |
| iPhone App Store listing | Carby: Budget Meal Planner, 4.0 from 29 ratings | No matching iPhone app in the iTunes lookup used for this page. They document an add-to-home-screen web app. |
Cost if you actually stay
Carby: $39.99 if you stay on the web yearly plan after the 3-day trial
The Dinner Daily: $58 on the annual plan. Repeating the $24 three-month plan four times is $96. Grocery is extra.
The Dinner Daily requires a card for the 14-day trial and issues no refund after day 14; you keep access until the term ends. Their $1,200-a-year savings figure is their research statement and is not repeated as a proven result here. Carby’s 3-day web trial and 30-day refund after a Stripe charge are the opposite shape: shorter trial, refund after you pay. Carby yearly web ($39.99) is less than Dinner Daily yearly ($58) if both advertised prices hold.
Where they win
- Menus built from a supported store’s weekly sales.
- A pre-planned five-dinner menu with mains and sides already paired.
- You can add personal recipes and swap into the list.
Where we win
- You set the dollar cap. The plan shows estimated ingredient costs.
- A native iPhone app with a public App Store listing.
- 30-day web refund after a charge, versus no refund after their trial.
Choose us if / pick them if
Choose Carby if: Choose Carby if you shop a named store, think in a weekly dinner budget, and want estimates on the plan even when there is no flyer.
Pick The Dinner Daily if: Pick The Dinner Daily if matching this week’s ad is how you save, and you want a done-for-you menu emailed to a dashboard.
How to turn a weekly grocery budget into dinnersSources checked October 20, 2026: App Store listing · iTunes Lookup id 6779585429 · Carby billing policy · Carby refund help · The Dinner Daily FAQ · The Dinner Daily pricing · The Dinner Daily terms. Competitor facts come from those public pages and US iTunes Lookup. Missing cells were omitted, not guessed.