Carby vs Plan to Eat: who picks the dinners?
Plan to Eat is a recipe organizer with a calendar and an automatic list. Carby generates a week from its catalog around your store and budget. Keep Plan to Eat if your bookmarks are the product. Use Carby if you want dinners chosen for you under a cap.
Side by side
| Criterion | Carby | Plan to Eat |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Save your own recipes, put them on a calendar, and get an automatic grocery list. |
| Starter price | $39.99/year after a 3-day trial on web yearly checkout | $5.95/month or $49/year after a 14-day trial with no card |
| Cost if you stay a year | $39.99 if you stay on the web yearly plan after the 3-day trial | $49 if you pick yearly. $71.40 if you stay on monthly at $5.95 for 12 months. |
| 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 days, no credit card. Their pricing page says there is nothing to cancel if you stop. |
| 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. | 60-day money-back guarantee, no-questions-asked, on plantoeat.com purchases. Yearly does not auto-renew unless you turn auto-renew on. |
| Grocery list | One shopping list for the week, grouped by aisle. You shop it yourself. | Built from the calendar, organized by store and aisle, with grocery delivery listed as a feature. |
| Store cost estimates | Yes | No |
| Retailer cart | No. Carby does not send items to Walmart, Instacart or another retailer cart. | Grocery delivery is listed on the pricing page. This page does not name the retailers, because the public pricing page does not. |
| App Store rating | 4.0 from 29 ratings | 4.8 from 6,114 ratings |
Cost if you actually stay
Carby: $39.99 if you stay on the web yearly plan after the 3-day trial
Plan to Eat: $49 if you pick yearly. $71.40 if you stay on monthly at $5.95 for 12 months.
Plan to Eat yearly is $49 and does not auto-bill at year end unless you opt in. Their trial needs no card. Their refund window (60 days) is longer than Carby’s 30-day web guarantee. Carby’s yearly web price is lower ($39.99) if you stay a year on that plan. Plan to Eat survey stats are first-party and are not ranking inputs here.
Where they win
- You clip recipes from the web, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.
- 14-day trial with no card, and a 60-day refund.
- Yearly does not auto-renew unless you turn it on. Nutrition and macros on the planner.
Where we win
- The app proposes the week from a store catalog and a budget you type.
- Public estimated costs for a named US store.
- You do not need a recipe collection to start.
Choose us if / pick them if
Choose Carby if: Choose Carby if you do not want to assemble the week from bookmarks, and a grocery cap is the constraint.
Pick Plan to Eat if: Pick Plan to Eat if you already cook from saved recipes and need the calendar and list, not a generated budget catalog.
See the grocery-list meal planner shortlistSources checked October 20, 2026: App Store listing · iTunes Lookup id 6779585429 · Carby billing policy · Carby refund help · Plan to Eat homepage · Plan to Eat pricing · App Store listing · iTunes Lookup id 1215348056. Competitor facts come from those public pages and US iTunes Lookup. Missing cells were omitted, not guessed.