Prepbook vs. Mela
Mela is a beautifully made recipe app for Apple devices. Prepbook brings the same care to every device, and to whoever you send the recipe to.
Mela is one of the best-looking recipe apps on the App Store, and its cooking view is a small masterpiece.
Prepbook is chasing a similar feeling: a calm page, no clutter, a recipe that reads like something a person wrote. It starts from the idea that a recipe is a living thing, picking up swaps, corrections and notes every time you cook it, until it reads the way you actually make it.
Which one suits you comes down to who else opens the recipe. Mela is at its best inside a household where every screen has an Apple logo on it. Prepbook is at its best when the recipe travels.
Side by side
| Feature | Prepbook | Mela |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Web, iOS, Android, installable as an app on any desktop | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro |
| Works on Android | Yes | No |
| Works in a browser | Yes, the full app | No |
| What you pay | Free up to 30 recipes, then one subscription that covers every device | One-time purchase |
| Writing a recipe | A free-form document with headings, notes, photos, tables, whatever the recipe needs | Structured fields for ingredients, directions and notes |
| Cooking history | Tap “Made this” each time you cook it, and every try lands in the recipe's log with your notes | A notes field |
| Version history | Every earlier version of a recipe is kept, so you can always look back | Not supported |
| Sharing a single recipe | Every recipe gets a link that opens in any browser, no app or account needed | Send a file or an image to another Apple device |
| Import from a web page | Paste the link | Paste the link |
| Import from a video | YouTube, TikTok and Instagram | Not supported |
| Import from a photo | Photograph a cookbook page or a handwritten card | Not supported |
| Search | Associative search: “something with lentils for a cold night” finds the stew | Keyword search |
| Cooking mode | Step-by-step view with the ingredients kept in reach, a screen lock and timers | A full-screen cooking view |
| Following recipe blogs | Not built in | Yes |
| Connect an AI assistant | Connect Claude or ChatGPT and ask what is in your cookbook | Not supported |
Recipes that travel > recipes that stay
Building only for Apple is a real design choice and it buys Mela a lot: native speed, sync with no account to think about, and an app that fits the system it lives on.
It also decides who can open your recipes. A friend on Android, a partner who lives in Chrome, a parent who wants the link read to them from a message. Prepbook runs on the web first, with apps on both stores, so the recipe goes wherever it needs to.
Every Prepbook recipe has a link. Send it in any message app, open it on any phone, scale it to six people in the browser, print it. If the person on the other end also uses Prepbook, one tap saves it to their own cookbook.
Living document > filling a form
In Prepbook a recipe is a rich text document. Headings, lists, images, tables and notes go wherever the recipe needs them, and there is not a single field to fill in.
Write it however it comes out, or paste it from anywhere, and Prepbook works out the rest on its own: which lines are ingredients, how much of each, and which step uses what. Scaling, cooking mode and timers just work, without you tagging anything.
Every time you make it
Tap Made this when you cook something and that try goes into the recipe's log with the date and whatever you want to say about it: what you swapped, what went wrong, who asked for seconds.
Over a few months the log becomes the recipe's history, and the recipe itself settles into the version you actually make. And when you rewrite it, nothing is lost. Version history keeps every earlier version, so you can always look back at how it read before you halved the sugar.
Getting recipes in
Both apps turn a recipe web page into a clean recipe from a pasted link.
The gap is everything that is not a web page. A lot of cooking now lives in short video, and Prepbook will turn a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram post into a proper recipe. It will also take a photograph of a cookbook page or a handwritten card, and read exports from other apps: .paprikarecipes, Cooklang, JSON-LD, YAML, .docx and .rtf.
When Mela suits you better
If every screen in the house has an Apple logo on it and the recipe never needs to leave, Mela is built for that. Prepbook is built for recipes that travel.
Moving your recipes over from Mela
- Most Mela recipes started as a link, and the original link gives the cleanest result. Paste it into Prepbook and you get a fresh, fully structured recipe with its photo.
- For your own recipes, export them from Mela and import the files into Prepbook, or paste the text into a new recipe.
- Mela stays installed and untouched while you try it, so nothing is at risk.
Common questions
Is Prepbook available on Android?
Yes, on Google Play and the App Store, and the full app runs in any browser. That is the main practical difference: a Prepbook recipe opens on whatever device the other person has.
Does Prepbook work offline?
Yes. Install it on your phone, tablet or desktop and your cookbook is there without a connection, cooking mode included. Anything you change syncs the next time you are online.
Can Prepbook save a recipe from a video?
Yes. Paste a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram link and Prepbook turns it into a recipe you can read, scale and cook from, with the ingredients and the steps laid out properly. It will do the same with a photograph of a page from a cookbook.
Can I get my recipes back out of Prepbook?
Always. You can export your whole collection as PDF, Markdown, HTML or plain text at any time.