Food & coffee September 2026

5 apps for the trip to the supermarket

The supermarket trip goes wrong before you leave: no list, no idea what is already in the cupboard, no idea what anything costs elsewhere. These five each fix one of those, from the weekly circular to the barcode.

The apps for the trip to the supermarket are Flipp, Dish Pal, Cooklist, Yuka and America's Test Kitchen. I built Dish Pal; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published September 2026 · apps and prices last checked 13 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   Flipp

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Shopping · App Store 4.8 (533,202)

   Flipp puts weekly circulars from over 2,000 stores in one place, so "is this cheaper somewhere else" has an answer before you leave the house.

   Skip it if you rely on the list staying as you left it: items appearing that nobody added is the complaint that repeats, and features have gone away over time.

   Official site ↗More lists with Flipp

   
2. 

   Dish Pal Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Food & Drink · App Store 5.0 (7)

   Dish Pal takes "chicken curry for dinner", or a whole recipe pasted in, and comes back with a grocery list already grouped by aisle.

   App Store ↗More lists with Dish Pal

   
3. 

   Cooklist

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Food & Drink · App Store 4.7 (11,338)

   Cooklist connects your store loyalty cards, builds a pantry out of what you actually bought, then matches recipes to what's in it.

   Skip it if you want the price before you connect your loyalty cards — the annual fee turns up after sign-up, which is what reviewers repeat most.

   Official site ↗More lists with Cooklist

   
4. 

   Yuka

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Health & Fitness · App Store 4.8 (100,726)

   Yuka grades the product from a barcode scan, and suggests a similar one when the grade comes back bad.

   Skip it if you want nuance rather than a verdict — the grade ignores how much of a thing you actually eat, and reviewers find the substitutes it suggests thin.

   Official site ↗More lists with Yuka

   
5. 

   America's Test Kitchen

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Food & Drink · App Store 4.9 (18,089)

   America's Test Kitchen tests recipes until they work, and reviews equipment too — for when the question is which pan rather than which recipe.

   Skip it if you thought it was free — nearly everything needs an All Access subscription, and being asked to sign in again is the second complaint.

   Official site ↗More lists with America's Test Kitchen

   

Dish Pal is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.