Moving from Paprika

On 6 November 2026 Paprika made Paprika 4 free to download and added an optional premium subscription. Whatever you decide, your recipes are yours: this guide shows how to take them with you.

Written 10 November 2026. Cookfile makes a competing app, so read Paprika's own words below and judge for yourself.

What changed

Paprika announced the change on 6 November 2026 in Paprika 4 is Now Available for All Users. In its words:

Paprika 4 is now free to download on all platforms, and you no longer have to purchase each version separately.

People who bought an earlier version keep what they have:

If you’ve purchased any previous version of Paprika, you will automatically receive a free upgrade to the standard version of Paprika 4

The standard version includes, in Paprika's list, a new interface, cook mode, cookbooks, pantry locations, advanced search and a duplicate finder. Paprika also introduced an optional premium subscription:

For those who want more, we are introducing an optional premium subscription that adds the following features:

Social media importing - Save recipes from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Recipe scanning - Scan a cookbook page or recipe card.
[...]
Clipboard importing - Turn copied text into a recipe.

The page lists other premium features too, including family accounts, barcode scanning and nutritional analysis. On the price:

We are launching Paprika 4 Premium at an introductory price of $14.99/year with a 7-day free trial. Existing users are eligible for a discounted upgrade price of $9.99/year. (Prices are listed in US Dollars and will vary by region if you are not in the US.)

Source: paprikaapp.com, 6 November 2026. Read the full page for the complete lists.

In short: Paprika 4 itself is free, past buyers get the standard version, and some features, including scanning, pasting text and importing from social media, are in the optional subscription. Whether that suits you is your call. Many people will stay with Paprika, and that is a reasonable choice.

Step 1: export your Paprika library

Do this whichever app you end up using. It gives you a copy of every recipe.

Open Paprika.
Go to Settings > Export Recipes, choose All Recipes, then choose Paprika Recipe Format and export.
Save the file somewhere safe, such as Files on your iPhone, or send it to yourself by email.

Menu names can differ by version. If you cannot find the option, check Paprika's own help.

Step 2: open it in Cookfile

Save the file to Files. Then, in Cookfile, go to Settings > Import from another app > Choose file.
Cookfile reads the whole file and tells you what it found before it adds anything: how many recipes, how many are already in Cookfile, and any it could not read.
Tap Import. Recipes keep their ingredient groups and steps, and the recipe's photo from the file is kept.

The free limit. Cookfile is free for up to 30 recipes. If your library is bigger, Cookfile adds as many as fit and tells you how many it left out. Cookfile Pro, a one-time purchase, lets you bring in all of them. Choose the same file again after buying and the rest are added; recipes already in Cookfile are skipped.

Importing does not change anything in Paprika. Your original file and your Paprika library stay as they are.

Taking your recipes elsewhere

Cookfile writes your whole library in Paprika's file format (.paprikarecipes) and Mela's (.melarecipes), free, from Settings > Export all recipes. Cookfile cannot promise that every app accepts a file it did not write, so keep your original export too.

What Cookfile does not do

Cookfile does not import recipes from videos on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. It reads text: take a screenshot of the caption and add it as a screenshot.
Cookfile has no account and no sync between devices. Recipes live on your iPhone.
Cookfile has no meal planner or pantry.

Questions? Support, or email recipes@greyledger.co.uk.