Cookpad, Tasty, Kitchen Stories and Recetas de Cocina Gratis compared — a huge home-cooking community, beginner videos and technique lessons.
It is half past seven, the fridge holds eggs, half a pepper and some tired spinach, and the question is whether that is dinner or a takeaway. A good recipe app answers that in seconds, but the three leaders solve different problems: an enormous pool of ordinary home cooks, hand-held video reassurance for nervous beginners, and actual technique for people who want to get better rather than just follow steps. The three apps reviewed in depth below were chosen for those distinct jobs; a fourth, Recetas de Cocina Gratis, comes up in the questions for Spanish-only cooking.
Cookpad is a social network of home cooking, with close to 6 million user-shared recipes for anyone who wants real dishes made by real people.
The catalogue — close to 6 million recipes uploaded by users — dwarfs anything editorial, and the app behaves like a social network: you follow cooks whose taste you trust, save favourites and pick up household tricks you never see in professionally produced recipes. That makes it the best place to find ordinary, tested home food rather than restaurant-style dishes. The trade-off with user-generated content is uneven quality: some recipes lack a decent photo or video, results depend entirely on whoever wrote them, and the free version includes ads.
Tasty is the easiest entry into cooking: BuzzFeed's overhead videos, zero cost and zero ads, with recipes sorted by occasion and effort.
It is the most visual of the three, built around the famous BuzzFeed overhead videos that make even an unfamiliar dish feel approachable. Every recipe is organised by occasion, difficulty and prep time, and the steps are deliberately clear, which makes it the one to hand to a complete beginner or to use when you want dinner without decisions. The whole app is free with no advertising. Its limits are catalogue size — fewer recipes than Cookpad — an internationally slanted selection with less Spanish home cooking, and no serious weekly meal planner.
Kitchen Stories teaches cooking rather than just listing ingredients, with high-quality videos that explain technique from an editorial team that tests every dish.
Its videos show how to chop, saute and plate, not merely what the finished dish looks like, which is the difference between copying one recipe and learning to cook. Recipes are tested by the in-house editorial team, the interface is carefully designed, and the core of the app is free. It suits cooks who already have the basics and want to improve. Against Cookpad the catalogue is smaller, some premium features require payment, and the selection leans international with fewer specifically Spanish recipes.
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Questions & answers
Which recipe app is completely free?
Tasty is the cleanest answer: the entire app is free with no advertising, and its videos are among the clearest for beginners. Cookpad is also free and has far more recipes thanks to its community of home cooks, though the free experience includes some advertising.
Which app has the most home-style local cooking?
Usually Cookpad, because its recipes are written by ordinary users: the more active the community in your country, the more everyday home cooking you find. Tasty and Kitchen Stories take a more international line, even when they cover the classics. Recetas de Cocina Gratis is Spanish-language only, so it only earns a place if you cook specifically from Spanish recipes.
Which app is best for learning to cook from scratch?
Kitchen Stories, because its videos explain the techniques — chopping, sauteing, plating — instead of only showing the finished dish. Tasty is the better confidence-builder for someone who is simply afraid of cooking, thanks to unusually clear steps. Cookpad becomes most useful once you have some basics, when its range of home recipes opens up.
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