What TheMealDB is
TheMealDB is a community-built recipe database with a free JSON API. It is a common first recipe API: there is a test key, no sign-up, and a handful of simple endpoints.
At a glance
| Feature | Tiny Plates | TheMealDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Tiny Plates: Free. No credit card and no paid plan yet. | TheMealDB: Free test key for development and teaching. A $10 one-off supporter payment to release an app publicly. |
| Allowance | Tiny Plates: 50 requests a day and 300 a week per account, raised on request. | TheMealDB: No stated quota. |
| Recipes | Tiny Plates: Thousands, gathered from public recipe pages. | TheMealDB: 793 meals when we checked. |
| Ingredients | Tiny Plates: Quantity, unit, name and preparation in separate fields, with canonical ingredient ids shared across languages. | TheMealDB: Up to 20 ingredient names per meal, each with a free-text measure. |
| Cooking instructions | Tiny Plates: Numbered steps in the response. | TheMealDB: One block of text. |
| Search | Tiny Plates: By meaning as well as wording. | TheMealDB: By name, first letter, main ingredient, category or area. Filtering on several ingredients is for supporters. |
| Allergens | Tiny Plates: True or false for each of the EU’s 14 regulated allergens, plus the US definitions of wheat and tree nuts. Informational only. | TheMealDB: None. |
What is different
Ingredients as text or as data
TheMealDB lists up to 20 ingredient names per meal, each with a measure written as text. To scale a recipe or add up a shopping list you parse those yourself. Tiny Plates returns quantity, unit, name and preparation as separate fields, and scales the recipe or builds the shopping list for you.
Finding a recipe
TheMealDB searches by meal name or first letter, and filters by one ingredient, category or area. Tiny Plates searches by meaning, so “quick vegetarian dinner” works, and filters by cuisine, course, diet, ingredients and time.
Size and going public
TheMealDB had 793 meals when we checked. Its test key is for development and education, and releasing an app publicly needs the $10 supporter upgrade. Tiny Plates has thousands of recipes, and a free account covers a public app within the daily allowance.
Moving from TheMealDB
The same tasks as requests to each API. The documentation has every parameter.
| Task | TheMealDB | Tiny Plates |
|---|---|---|
| Search by name | TheMealDB: GET …/search.php?s=Arrabiata | Tiny Plates: GET /search?query=arrabiata |
| Get one recipe | TheMealDB: GET …/lookup.php?i=52772 | Tiny Plates: GET /recipes/{id} |
| Filter by ingredient | TheMealDB: GET …/filter.php?i=chicken_breast | Tiny Plates: GET /recipes?ingredients=chicken |
| Filter by cuisine | TheMealDB: GET …/filter.php?a=Italian | Tiny Plates: GET /recipes?cuisine=italian |
| Match several ingredients (supporters only on TheMealDB) | TheMealDB: GET …/filter.php?i=chicken,rice | Tiny Plates: GET /pantry?ingredients=chicken,rice |
Pick TheMealDB when
- You are learning, teaching or building a demo.
- You want no sign-up and no daily allowance.
- A few hundred recipes are enough.
Pick Tiny Plates when
- You need quantities and units as data, to scale a recipe or build a shopping list.
- You need allergen and diet filters.
- You need search that understands “quick vegetarian dinner”, not only a dish name.
- You need recipes in Spanish or Swedish.
Questions
Is TheMealDB free for commercial use?
The test key is for development and education. Releasing an app publicly needs the supporter upgrade, a one-off $10.
How many recipes does TheMealDB have?
793 meals when we checked in September 2026.
Do I need an API key for Tiny Plates?
Yes. Create a free account, make a key in the dashboard and send it as a bearer token.
Try it
Create a free account and follow the quickstart to get a response in a couple of minutes. The terms say what you may cache and how to credit a recipe, and the overview lists the other recipe APIs.