Free recipe costing apps: limits, exports and a test recipe

For example, a hypothetical $48 chicken case contains 10 lb purchased. At 75% usable cooked yield, it supplies 120 oz. A 5 oz cooked portion therefore costs $2.00. If an app gives $1.50, it has priced purchased weight without allowing for the cooking loss. That one check tells you more than a long feature list.

This comparison uses vendors’ public pricing and feature pages checked on October 7, 2026. It is a review of published terms, not a hands-on reliability ranking. Marji publishes this guide and is included below with its free-tool and paid-app boundaries. Features that a source does not explain remain unknown.

Which recipe costing tools are actually free?

Read “free signup,” “free trial” and “free account” separately. A trial gives you a period to evaluate paid software. A continuing free account gives you a narrower or broader task you can keep doing. A free spreadsheet gives you a file to maintain yourself. Downloading a mobile app for free does not establish that its web subscription is free.

CookKeepBook: ongoing costing, with paid file features

CookKeepBook’s plan comparison lists unlimited recipes and ingredients, sub-recipes, waste/yield adjustments and measurement converters in Standard. It describes a mobile-accessible website. Plus adds ingredient CSV import, Excel/CSV list export and PDF recipe printouts; its published price is $9 monthly or $69 yearly, with a seven-day Plus trial. Standard is a plausible choice when manual entry works for you. If file transfers are essential, include Plus in your decision.

Dishboard: free costing with imports and exports

Dishboard’s pricing page lists unlimited menu items, ingredients and prep recipes, alongside CSV import/export and costing-sheet export, without a paid tier or card requirement. Its feature documentation describes purchase and usage units, optional yield percentages and batch prep recipes. It is a candidate when retaining a file is part of your free workflow. Check a sample export before committing: a useful transfer must preserve enough detail to reconstruct the recipe, not just its total.

Marji: a free calculation or worksheet, with separate paid software

The free recipe cost calculator accepts pack contents, usable yield and served quantity without signup. You can download the ingredient breakdown as CSV or print it. The recipe costing template provides an XLSX workbook with a blank 20-line worksheet and a separate labeled sample; a CSV version is also available. These suit a first recipe check or a file you maintain yourself. Neither is a promise of an unlimited free automated costing account.

Marji’s ongoing AI and margin-engine work has trial or paid gates. Single is $59 per location per month after a 14-day trial with no card required to start. The hosted QR menu stays free. Check the current plan details if you need recurring invoice-to-recipe review rather than a standalone calculation.

Fillet and Recipe Cost Calculator: inspect the access terms

Fillet’s web pricing gives Individual a seven-day trial without a card, followed by the displayed $29.99 monthly price. The plans include yield, edible-portion costing and sub-recipes. Its homepage separately describes the iOS app as a free basic companion without customer support or feature updates. Keep those products separate when deciding what you can rely on long term.

Recipe Cost Calculator’s pricing page advertises free signup but does not specify a continuing free tier or trial duration. Core is listed at $24.17 per month billed annually, with unlimited recipes and ingredients, Excel import, sub-recipes, waste percentages and print/PDF export. Treat free-account limits as unconfirmed before investing time in setup. An annual billing equivalent is not a month-to-month price.

Give each app the same $2.97 test recipe

Use this hypothetical chicken bowl to evaluate the calculation yourself. These are invented purchase prices and portions, not restaurant results or recommended serving sizes. All ounces are weight. The recipe makes one bowl, with no additional ingredients, allowance or packaging in this exercise. Exclude tax, freight, labor and overhead so every tool receives the same scope.

The rice line uses a measured dry input, so do not reduce it for cooking loss or charge again for its heavier cooked output. The sauce is already a finished batch cost: if you enter it as a sub-recipe, use its ingredients once and confirm that its finished yield is 32 oz. Adding both the sauce subtotal and its raw ingredients to the bowl would double-count it. The recipe costing walkthrough explains these quantity bases in more detail.

Check what happens when an input changes

1. 1.Change only the chicken case price to $54. Keep pack size, yield and portion unchanged. Chicken becomes $2.25; the unrounded bowl total becomes $3.2215625, displayed as $3.22. At $12, food cost becomes 26.85%. Check every recipe that shares that ingredient.
2. 2.Remove the vegetable price. The result should make the missing cost visible. If the app displays a subtotal, record it as incomplete; a zero-priced ingredient is not evidence of a free ingredient or a healthy margin.
3. 3.Change the chicken pack contents. If the replacement $48 case holds two 4 lb packs, the cooked portion costs $2.50 at the same 75% yield. A saved case price alone cannot catch this change.
4. 4.Export, reopen and inspect the file. Look for ingredient quantities, units, yields, pack contents and costs. Retain the source invoice reference and date separately if the export omits them. Confirm whether you can recover a recipe or only read a summary.

An app can pass the first calculation and still be awkward to maintain. After your sample, cost one dish you actually sell using recent supplier evidence. Record where each quantity and yield came from. Then ask the person who will maintain the recipe to update one purchase price and explain the changed result. That is the workflow you are selecting.

Choose around the work you will repeat

For an occasional price check, a calculator plus a saved export may be sufficient. For a menu with shared ingredients and sauces, evaluate reusable ingredients, batch yields and how changes flow into dishes. For a kitchen handing work between people, check who can edit, how corrections are recovered and whether the next person can understand the source of a number. Free access has value only if that recurring task remains workable.

Before migrating, keep your original workbook and trial one complete recipe through entry, change and export. Use the spreadsheet-versus-software decision guide if maintenance, rather than the calculation itself, is the problem. Choose a paid plan when it solves a recurring job you have demonstrated, with terms you understand.