Cestio vs Potto: which AI meal planner is right for your week?
An honest, feature-by-feature comparison of Cestio and Potto in 2026: pricing, countries, supermarkets, household sharing, Fridge Chef and calorie tracking — and which one fits which kind of household.
The short version
- Potto is free and needs no account, and covers 70+ supermarkets across the US, UK, Canada and Australia. If you cook for yourself in one of those countries and want zero commitment, it is the easier place to start.
- Cestio is a paid subscription (3-day free trial, then $6.99/week or $39.99/year) built for households: one plan and one shopping list shared live between partners or family, with items you can assign to a specific person.
- Cestio is fully localised in 7 languages — English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian and Greek — with supermarkets for Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece as well as the anglosphere. Potto is English-only.
- Both apps plan a full week around your budget, diet and supermarket, both do photo-based fridge recipes, and both estimate calories from a photo of your plate. The real decision is: do you shop alone or as a household, and do you need your own language and supermarket?
Cestio and Potto are solving the same annoying problem: it is Sunday, nobody wants to decide what to eat for the next seven days, and the shopping list is going to end up as a photo of a scribbled envelope. Both apps let AI plan the week, both turn that week into a supermarket list, and both let you point a camera at your fridge or at your dinner.
So the interesting question is not which one is “better”. It is which one is built for the way you shop. This page lays out the differences without pretending Cestio wins everything — it does not.
The short answer
Side by side
| Cestio | Potto | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 3-day free trial, then $6.99/week or $39.99/year | Free |
| Account required | Yes (email or Google) | No |
| Weekly plan | 21 meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7 days | Full week of recipes |
| Regenerate one meal | Yes, without touching the rest of the week | Yes |
| Shopping list | Aisle-sorted, with a running estimated total | Aisle-sorted, matched to your store, with cost estimates |
| Shared with your household | Yes — live, with items assignable to a person plus a push notification | No — the app has no account, so no sync between people |
| Fridge photo → recipes | Yes (Fridge Chef) | Yes (Fridge Chef) |
| Plate photo → calories | Yes (Calorie Snap), with a daily goal and history | Yes (Calorie Snap) |
| Budget | Set a weekly spend; the plan is built inside it | Set a weekly spend; the plan is built inside it |
| Languages | 7 — EN, ES, FR, PT, DE, IT, EL | English |
| Countries with built-in supermarkets | Spain, UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Canada, Australia, Greece | US, UK, Canada, Australia (70+ stores) |
| Platforms | iPhone and iPad | iPhone |
Where Potto is genuinely better
It is free, and there is no sign-up wall. You download it, answer a few questions and you have a week. No email, no password, no trial countdown. That is a real advantage and it is worth saying plainly: if the only thing you want is a plan and a list, and you are in one of Potto's four countries, you can have that today for nothing.
Nothing to cancel. With no account and no subscription, there is nothing to remember to turn off. For a lot of people that removes the main reason they never try a meal planner in the first place.
The flip side of no account is that nothing follows you. There is no household to invite anyone into, and no plan waiting for you on a second device.
Where Cestio is genuinely better
1. It is built for two or more people
This is the biggest single difference. In Cestio, one person creates a household and shares a link; from then on everyone sees the same plan and the same shopping list, updating live. You can assign a specific item to a specific person and they get a notification — “Can you buy the eggs?”. When one of you ticks off the milk, it goes grey on everyone's phone.
If your household's actual problem is not “what do we eat” but “who is buying what, and did you already get the bread”, that changes the maths on a subscription pretty quickly.
2. It speaks your language, and knows your supermarket
Cestio is translated into seven languages, and that includes the parts that matter: the meal names, the recipes and the shopping list, not just the buttons. Onboarding offers the chains that actually exist where you live — Mercadona, Dia and Eroski in Spain; Rewe, Edeka and Penny in Germany; Continente and Pingo Doce in Portugal; Esselunga and Conad in Italy; Sklavenitis in Greece — and the estimated prices come back in your currency.
If your shop is not on the list, you type it in and the plan is built around it anyway. Potto, as of September 2026, is English-only and its store coverage is the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
3. It plans around what you refuse to eat
Both apps take diets and allergies. Cestio adds a separate step for taste: the foods you love, and the foods you never want to see in a plan. Aubergine, coriander, blue cheese, whatever it is — it stays out of all 21 meals, permanently, not just this week.
Where they are basically the same
Be suspicious of any comparison page that claims a clean sweep. On these, honestly, there is not much in it:
- Fridge photo to recipes. Both apps let you photograph a shelf and get things you can cook right now with what is there. Both call it Fridge Chef.
- Photo calorie logging. Both estimate calories and macros from a picture of your plate, in seconds, with no weighing and no barcode scanning. Both call it Calorie Snap.
- A photo for every dish. Both show an image with each planned meal rather than a wall of text.
- Budget-first planning. Both ask what you want to spend for the week and build inside that number.
- Estimates, not receipts. Neither app is connected to live supermarket pricing. Treat the totals as a guide.
Is Cestio worth paying for when Potto is free?
Only in specific cases, and it is fair to name them. It is worth it if (a) more than one person in your home does the shopping, (b) you need the app in a language other than English, or (c) your supermarket is European and you want the plan priced and built around it. If none of those three is true and you are happy in English in the US, UK, Canada or Australia, Potto's free tier is a perfectly sensible answer and you should use it.
What the subscription buys, concretely, is that every plan, every recipe and every photo you analyse is an AI request that costs money to run. Cestio charges for that directly instead of paying for it with ads, affiliate links or sponsored ingredients quietly steering what lands in your trolley.
How to test either one properly
- Set your real budget, not an aspirational one. A plan built for €70 and shopped at €95 tells you nothing.
- Enter your actual dislikes at set-up. Most disappointment with meal planners comes from a plan full of food you were never going to cook.
- Take the generated list to one shop and buy only what is on it. That is the whole point — one trip.
- At the end of the week, count how many of the 21 meals you actually cooked. Anything above 12 or 13 is a planner that fits you.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Cestio or Potto cheaper?
- Potto is free. Cestio has a 3-day free trial and then costs $6.99 per week or $39.99 per year. If price is the deciding factor, Potto wins outright.
- Can Potto share a shopping list with my partner?
- No. Potto deliberately works without an account, which means there is nothing to sync between two phones. Cestio's household feature is built for exactly that: one shared plan and list, with items assignable to a specific person who then gets a push notification.
- Does Potto work in Spain or Germany?
- Potto's built-in supermarket coverage is the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and the app is in English. Cestio ships supermarkets for Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece as well, and is translated into seven languages.
- Do both apps count calories from a photo?
- Yes. Both Cestio and Potto let you photograph a meal and get an estimated calorie and macro breakdown in seconds. Cestio also tracks the day against a goal and keeps an editable history.
- Are Cestio and Potto available on Android?
- As of September 2026 both are iPhone apps on the App Store — Cestio also supports iPad. Neither has a public Android release yet.