Prepbook vs. Notion
Notion will hold recipes in a database you build and maintain yourself. Prepbook already knows what a recipe is.
Plenty of people who like tidy systems have built a recipe database in Notion, and the template usually looks fantastic.
Prepbook is the version of that idea where the cooking parts are already built. A recipe is a living thing: it picks up swaps, corrections and notes every time you cook it, until it reads the way you actually make it. Prepbook treats it as a document you keep writing, and it understands what is inside it.
Which one suits you comes down to how much of the work you want to do yourself. Notion gives you a blank canvas and the upkeep that comes with it. Prepbook gives you a cookbook that already knows an ingredient from a sentence.
Side by side
| Feature | Prepbook | Notion |
|---|---|---|
| Setting it up | Sign in and add a recipe | Build or install a template, then maintain it |
| Writing a recipe | A free-form document that Prepbook reads as a recipe, with nothing to tag | A page and whatever properties you define |
| Saving a recipe from the web | Paste the link and get a clean, structured recipe | A clipped page, usually needing a tidy up |
| Import from a video | YouTube, TikTok and Instagram | Not supported |
| Import from a photo | Photograph a cookbook page or a handwritten card | Not supported |
| Scaling ingredients | Scale to any amount, with the numbers rewritten in place, including the ones buried mid-sentence | Mental arithmetic |
| Cooking mode | Step-by-step view with the ingredients kept in reach, a screen lock and timers | Scrolling with a knuckle |
| Ingredients linked inside the steps | Tap an ingredient in a step to see how much goes in | Not supported |
| Cooking history | Tap “Made this” each time you cook it, and every try lands in the recipe's log with your notes | A property you maintain by hand |
| Version history | Every earlier version of a recipe is kept, so you can always look back | Page history |
| Search | Associative search: “something with lentils for a cold night” finds the stew | Keyword and property search |
| In the kitchen, offline | Yes | Patchy on mobile |
| Sharing a single recipe | Every recipe gets a link that opens in any browser, no app or account needed | A shared page, with your workspace furniture around it |
| What it is for | Recipes, and everything that goes with cooking them | Anything you care to model |
Knows it is a recipe > holds the text
A general-purpose tool has no idea what a recipe is. It cannot tell an ingredient from a sentence, so every cooking convenience has to be replaced by you doing it by hand, every single time.
Prepbook reads the recipe. Paste a link or write it out however it comes, and the ingredients land in the ingredients, the steps land in the directions, and nothing needs tagging. From there the useful parts follow: scaling rewrites every amount in place, including the ones buried mid-sentence, tapping an ingredient inside a step tells you how much goes in, and cooking mode shows one step at a time with the ingredients in reach, timers running and the screen awake.
In a Notion database, a recipe halved for two people is a recipe you halve in your head, at the stove, at the moment you are least equipped to do arithmetic.
The upkeep is the real cost
A Notion recipe database is free in money and expensive in attention. Someone has to decide the properties, keep the tags consistent, clean up whatever the clipper dumped in, and reshape each recipe into the form the template expects.
Prepbook does the shaping. There is no template to maintain and no schema to agree on, so the only thing left to do with a recipe is cook it.
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. In Notion this is a property you remember to update, or more often do not.
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.
Sharing what you cook
Prepbook gives every recipe a public link that opens as a recipe, not as a page from somebody's workspace. Your sister opens it on whatever phone she has, reads it, scales it to four people, and never installs anything.
Recipes come back out just as easily. Export the lot as Markdown, PDF, HTML or plain text whenever you want, so nothing you write here is locked in.
When Notion suits you better
If your recipes live inside a workspace you are in every day, or you want to model something unusual like a fermentation log or a cost-per-portion sheet, Notion is built for that. Prepbook is built for the cooking itself.
Moving your recipes out of Notion
- Most Notion recipes came from a web page, and the original link gives the cleanest result. Paste it into Prepbook and the recipe comes back properly structured, with its photo.
- For recipes you typed yourself, export the page as Markdown or Word and import the file, or paste the text straight into a new Prepbook recipe.
- The same routes work for Evernote, Obsidian and Apple Notes.
Common questions
Can I import a Notion export into Prepbook?
Yes. Prepbook reads Markdown, JSON, .docx and .rtf files, which covers what Notion exports. You can also paste a recipe's original link and have it rebuilt from scratch.
Why not just use a Notion recipe template?
You can, and it works until the upkeep stops being fun. A recipe app knows which line is an ingredient, which is a step and which number is a quantity, and everything from scaling to cooking mode follows from that.
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 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.