BigOven isn’t strictly a grocery list app. Instead, it’s an app that integrates recipes, menu planning, grocery lists, and meal suggestions. The app offers over 350,000 recipes for all sorts of occasions and from all kinds of cuisines. You can save a recipe and, with one touch, add all the ingredients from it to your shopping list, sorted alphabetically and by a section of the supermarket. A $20 per year pro membership lets you upload unlimited recipes, store recipes in custom folders, remove ads, and more. Buy Me a Pie! focuses on letting you simply and efficiently create shopping lists. Pick from its built-in database or add your own items and then group similar items with color-coding for easy shopping. The app makes it easy to create multiple lists and to share lists via email or text message. If you sign up for an account, you can share lists with other users and automatically see changes to lists from all users. In-app purchases (monthly, annual, or lifetime options) let you have up to 20 lists, share with up to 20 people, and remove ads from the app. Another app that’s not solely focused on grocery lists, Cozi Family Organizer is designed to be a single hub around which you can organize your family’s life. It offers a shared family calendar to keep everyone on the same schedule, to-do lists in which tasks can be assigned to different people, and a recipe box. It’s easy to add items to the shopping list and a paid upgrade feature provides an easy-to-use checklist for when you’re at the store. The $30/year Cozi Gold subscription removes ads and lets you track contacts and birthdays, among other features. Like BigOven, Epicurious is primarily a recipe app, but one that adds integrated grocery list features to make your meal planning and shopping simpler. Packed with over 30,000 recipes from magazines such as Gourmet and Bon Appetit, and publishers like Random House, the app updates its recipes with the change of the seasons and to prepare you for holidays. A hands-free mode lets you focus on cooking while still getting directions, and a cook timer for the iPhone makes sure you don’t leave that casserole in the oven for too long. Forget clipping coupons. Flipp can aggregate flyers from over 800 retail stores, associate coupons with the items you add to your grocery list, and help you save money on the things you need to buy. Use the app to view the latest flyers from stores near you, find coupons to either print or use digitally, and create a shopping list. Tapping each item in your shopping list brings up coupons and offers from stores near you to help you save the most. Flipp can even notify you when the coupons you’ve saved are going to expire soon and when you’re near a store whose coupons you’ve saved. Free Shopping List Ease lets you create two kinds of lists: what you need to buy at the store and what you have in your cabinets. That’s pretty handy if you buy the same thing two shopping trips in a row because you forgot you bought the item last week (hi, black peppercorns). You can add items to your list by typing them in or by scanning barcodes. Sharing lists with family members allow you to see when they’re buying items so you don’t buy them, too. The app also lets you browse and print coupons. A $30/year subscription removes ads, gives you unlimited lists and custom categories, and upgrades the app for everyone in your household. Grocery Gadget aims to help you create lists for more than just groceries: the pharmacy, office supply store, errands, and recipes. You can add items to your list by typing or by scanning barcodes and then sync that list with friends or family members to share the shopping. Save money with coupons and by comparing the price of an item on your list at multiple nearby stores. You can also edit your list online using Grocery Gadget’s online portal. Shopping List isn’t as feature-rich as some other grocery apps, but it covers all the basics. You can create multiple lists, sort items into categories for easier in-store shopping, calculate the projected total cost of a list, and more. You can’t share your lists with other users from within the app, but lists can be emailed and lists can sync to the same app on other iOS devices. If you know Trello — a task-management tool often used in web development or programming — it may be a surprise addition to this list. But with its very simple interface and terrific collaboration features, it will be just the thing for some users. With Trello, you make boards that contain lists, and lists contain items. A single board could contain shopping lists for different stores, for instance. You then invite people to collaborate on your boards, assign items and dates to them, and more. With its drag-and-drop interface and versions for mobile devices and the web, Trello can make organizing your shopping easy.
