Is there a version of Mela for Android?

No. Mela runs on iOS and macOS and syncs through iCloud, which is the whole point of how it's built. If you need Android, you need something else.

Is Mela a better looking app?

Honestly, probably. It's one of the nicest looking recipe managers there is and it's been polished for years. If that's what you're optimising for, go and look at it.

Can I move my recipes from Mela?

Mela can export, so nothing's trapped. Fork & Spoon has no bulk importer for that export yet, so moving a big collection means re-importing from the original links, which is fine for tens of recipes and painful for hundreds.

Which one handles a recipe from a video?

Fork & Spoon reads YouTube transcripts and Instagram and TikTok captions as a normal way in. Mela's import is built around web pages and its in-app browser.

Fork & Spoon as a Mela alternative

Mela is genuinely lovely. It's fast, it's quiet, the cook mode is well thought out, and the in-app browser that spots a recipe while you're reading a blog is a nicer idea than most of what's in this category. If you've landed here because you're looking for something better looking, you probably won't find it.

So this page is mostly about one thing that has nothing to do with quality.

Features below were checked on 2 September 2026 against Mela's own site, which doesn't publish prices. Check the App Store for what it costs today.

The short version

Stay with Mela if everyone who touches your recipes is on an iPhone or a Mac, you like having a real desktop app, and you'd rather pay once.

Look at Fork & Spoon if someone in your household is on Android, if you want the same account in a browser, or if the recipes you keep losing are inside videos rather than on web pages.

Where they differ

	Fork & Spoon	Mela
Platforms	iPhone, Android, any browser	iOS and macOS
Sync	Own account, works across phone kinds	iCloud
Two people sharing a collection	Shared cookbooks, live	Built around one person's iCloud
Import from a web page	Yes	Yes, plus an in-app browser that detects recipes
Import from a YouTube video	Yes, reads the transcript	Not a supported path
Import from an Instagram or TikTok post	Yes, reads the caption	Not a supported path
Scan a printed page	Yes, up to four pages merged into one recipe	Yes, text recognition
Shopping list	Built in, offline first, grouped by aisle	Hands off to Apple's Reminders
Follow recipe blogs	No	Yes, via RSS
Send a recipe to a non-user	A link that opens in any browser	Export or share sheet

The Apple thing

Mela is built on iCloud, and that isn't a shortcut, it's a design decision that gives the app its speed and its lack of an account system. It also means the app can only ever exist where iCloud does.

For a lot of people that's completely fine. If your whole house is on iPhones, iCloud sync is invisible and excellent and you never think about it.

It stops being fine the moment two people need the same recipes and one of them switched to a Pixel. There's no version of Mela that solves that, and there won't be. Fork & Spoon uses its own accounts instead, which is more machinery, but it means an iPhone and an Android phone can share the same cookbook, the same week menu and the same shopping list at once. There's also a browser version, so someone can join in without installing anything at all.

Where Mela is better

The desktop app. A real Mac app beats a web page for sitting down and sorting out a week of cooking.
RSS. Following recipe blogs inside the app is a genuinely good feature and Fork & Spoon has nothing like it.
Paying once. Fork & Spoon is a subscription. Over several years that's a real difference and no feature list changes the arithmetic.
Polish. Years of it.

Where Fork & Spoon is better

Recipes that arrive as video. Reading a YouTube transcript or an Instagram caption is a first class path, not a workaround. That's where a lot of recipes live now, and it's the main reason to look past a nicer looking app.
Two people, two ecosystems. Covered above, and it's the reason most people end up here.
The shopping list is part of the app. Mela hands off to Reminders, which works, but you lose the aisle grouping and the merging of the same ingredient across recipes.
Sending a recipe out. A link that opens as a normal web page for someone with no app and no account.

Which to pick

If your kitchen is entirely Apple and your recipes come from blogs, Mela is a lovely thing and you should buy it.

Come here when the answer to "can you add that to the list" is "I can't, you're on Android", or when the recipe you want is forty seconds long and has a trending sound over it.