The Pro version originally cost $11.99, but has since been bumped up to $19.99. With the lack of support and little in the way of improvement, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be paying more for the service.
Recipes can be added via bookmarks, share functionality or by copying and pasting a url. It's also good about importing existing bookmarks, text files and URLs from Pinterest.
The app has a good introductory tutorial that explains what's possible with the app and how it should be used. And there are also various explanations throughout the app that help along in using it. There's even a dedicated help section with videos.
Depending on meal plans, Paprika can create a grocery list with all required ingredients. In the grocery list it's possible to view ingredients grouped based on recipes or all together. It can even keep a list of items already available and skip those when creating a grocery list.
Paprika can be used across any of the supported devices - iOS, Android, OSX, web. If a recipe is imported in one device it will show up on all other devices as well.
A lot of time has been spent on making the interface feel as intuitive as possible. Navigation is easy, it's possible to highlight items with taps to track what steps have been taken or tap to cross-out ingredients that have been added as well as adjust the recipe easily without overwriting the original and make notes of changes and preferences.
Paprika covers most of the major websites, including Food & Wine, Food Network and The Girl Who Ate Everything and even a good amount of "unsupported" websites will work.
Paprika has a simple to use meal planner that allows adding recipes along with notes to a calendar. This information can later be used to automatically create a grocery list.
Paprika is an extortionist recipe organizer that charges for apps separately, doesn't let you bookmark from your browser, and doesn't let you search by ingredient. Useless.
BigOven lets users take pictures of handwritten or typed recipes and have them transcribed. The first 3 are free, and then it costs $20.00 per year for up to 25 additional scans.
Has over 350.000 recipes to search through and an advanced search that allows setting dietary restrictions, ingredients to be added or excluded and what categories to search through.
Recipes can be saved to "Try", "Favorites" and "Folder" (creating folders requires a subscription). Additionally there are categories for recipes added and made.
The user interface is non-intuitive. It requires a lot of tapping and swiping to get from one place to another and at the same time there are no explanations for what various icons represent or how things work. The interface takes some getting used to.
The recipe database search allows specifying if certain ingredients should be present or not, if there are any dietary needs and how long should cooking the meal take.
A few recipes have an accompanying video that explains how to prepare and cook the meal. Tapping on directions below the video skips it to the part that explains the step.
Each recipe has prep and cook time listed, so it's possible to take into account how long the process will take. All ingredients can be divided into required servings.
Items to the shopping list can be added from the recipe view by clicking on the ingredients or manually from the shopping list itself. Items are organized in categories such as produce or beverages and there's a reminder at the bottom for what meals are the ingredients for. Bought items can be ticked off by tapping on them or deleted from the list with a long-tap.
Recipes can be organized into menus and categories.
Menus allow grouping recipes and operating with them together. For example, a whole menu can be added to a shopping list or added to the planner without having to add each recipe separately.
Categories are essentially tags. They can be added to recipes and used to search through them in recipe list.
To save a recipe from the web into Pepperplate requires copying the URL, navigating to Pepperplate.com (that has no mobile version), either logging in or clicking view recipes, then navigating to import recipes and pasting the URL in the form field. There's no way to "share" a URL to Pepperplate.
While the experience using the clipper on a mobile device might need some work, the clipper itself is reasonably advanced. It directly supports over 30 recipe sites. It imports images, prep time, ingredients and instructions from those sites.
CookBook can import recipes and has a long list of supported websites. The import feature isn't wonderful though, and even when using the supported sites there is no guarantee that the full recipe is imported.
Built in Cooking mode that reads your recipe to you while you cook. It also lets you mark ingredients and steps as completed so you know where you are in the recipe.
The app links to their website where you can log in to see, edit and import recipes. Personally I found importing through this site works better than using the app.
Partners, roommates and so on can share an account and access the same recipes, shopping list and other functions of the app. The only exception is the "extra items" on shopping lists, which are items that are not a part of a recipe, like bread or milk.
Create a meal plan, print the planner or generate an interactive shopping list for your recipes. The grocery list also notes what recipe the ingredient is used in.
Recipes can be searched for by ingredients, the recipe name or other keywords. You can also filter recipes by ingredients (either included or excluded), time, favourite status and tags, and sort by name or last updated. This is handy if you have a lot of recipes.
Has a surprise me feature which randomly selects a recipe for you. Note that this will show you any recipe, you can't sort it do only show dinners for example.
Importing recipes from websites is inconsistent, it will sometimes work perfectly and sometimes be missing almost all the major parts of the recipe. Even when using the sites listed as supported in the app there is no guarantee that it will work. You can also add recipes from OCR (which seems to work well), from a file (which is limited to certain filetypes), or by copy/pasting blocks of text. The latter gets good results but is fiddly and impractical, especially when adding a larger number of recipes.
You can share an account with others and the shopping list will sync so everyone sees the same, except for "extra items". These are the everyday items you buy that don't go into a recipe, for example bread, milk, cereal, that sort of thing. These won't be synced, so if your partner is out shopping they won't see these on the list, which in my opinion is rather silly as these are the items we buy most often.
The app works solely as a place for you to add and save your own recipes rather than finding inspiration and recipes from others. There are 7 demo recipes when you download the app, but apart from these you'll have to add everything yourself.
Intelligent item system allows you to edit items on your shopping list, combines items from multiple recipes, and organizes items by store location. Forget an item? Hit the “Add Item” button, type in 'oranges', item is immediately added to your list under the “Produce” section.
A meal can be added by one user, and then the recipe can be viewed by another. This way, coordinating meals between multiple people can be very simple - especially for shopping purposes.
The international metric system is supported in most civilized countries from which most recipes are copied from and often cannibalized by the different imprecise Anglo measuring systems thus ruining many recipes.
Recipes you upload yourself, find via the search engine, or add to your recipe boxes using spoonacular's browser extensions will have the nutritional information calculated automatically
With just a few clicks, you can make a meal plan using recipes or store bought products, such as Greek yogurt, protein bars, etc. The daily nutritional information is added up for you as you plan.
URLs can't be "shared" to Evernote Food or even copied from the browser and pasted to the app. The only way to clip a recipe is to open the app's Explore Recipes section, search for a recipe unsuccessfully, open up the app's built in browser that has no address bar and find the desired link through Google Search.
And the web clipper only saves a link to the recipe. It doesn't import it. Same functionality can be achieved with any browser's built-in bookmarking feature.
Evernote Food is a very light wrap around the core Evernote app and as such doesn't add any advanced functionality that would be helpful in managing or preparing meals. There's no information specific to meals, ingredient list is just text that's typed or copied in manually, there's no grocery list, meal planning or tools that would help in cooking.
I like the feeling that whatever smartphone I will have in the future, my recipes will be always accessible. My mother's family recipes will stay in the family forever!