Looking for an Osta Alternative? An Honest Comparison

I make AnyRecipe, so weigh this accordingly.

Osta is the newest app in this comparison series. It arrived on the App Store in April 2025, and in about seventeen months it has collected more than 6,700 ratings, which is a quick start for a recipe app. It is also doing almost exactly the job AnyRecipe does, which makes this one of the more direct comparisons here.

Figures were checked in September 2026 against Apple’s App Store listings, including my own.

The numbers, mine included

Osta: 4.77 stars from around 6,700 ratings. Shipping since April 2025. iPhone and iPad. Requires iOS 16.4.

AnyRecipe: 4.5 stars from 2 ratings. Shipping since 2024. iPhone and iPad. Requires iOS 26.

Two ratings against nearly seven thousand, gathered in less time. There is no clever way to read that, so I will not try. And iOS 16.4 against iOS 26 means Osta installs on a lot of phones AnyRecipe cannot.

What Osta does

The listing is short and focused, which I mean as a compliment.

Imports from Instagram, TikTok and websites. The first line of its listing, and the same promise AnyRecipe makes.

A clean cooking view. Recipes are shown without clutter or ads while you cook.

Shared folders. Organize recipes into folders you share with other people.

Shared grocery lists. Build a list and share it, which makes Osta useful for a household that shops together.

What is free, and what Premium adds

Osta is generous here. Its listing says the free version on mobile covers importing, saving, cooking and organizing, plus shared folders and shared grocery lists.

Osta Premium adds ad-free smart imports, nutrition shown when available, and scanning recipes from a photo. Its App Store page lists Premium at $7.99 a month or $49.99 a year.

Two things follow. Premium removing ads from smart imports suggests the free version shows them. And photographing a cookbook page or a handwritten card is a Premium feature in Osta.

Where we actually differ

Sharing, built in or borrowed. Osta has shared folders and shared grocery lists inside the app, for free. AnyRecipe does not have a live shared list. It syncs the shopping list two ways with Apple Reminders, and a Reminders list can be shared with family, so shopping together works through Apple’s app rather than mine. That is fine if everyone is on Apple devices, and clumsier than Osta’s approach.

Their service against your iCloud. Sharing folders and lists between people needs a service in the middle, and Osta runs its own. AnyRecipe has no sign up at all and syncs through your own private iCloud, so there is nothing to lose access to and nothing for me to read.

Shopping list arithmetic. AnyRecipe merges quantities across a planned week and rounds them up to the packet sizes shops sell, so the list asks for the 500g bag rather than 340g of something. Merging is common now; the rounding is the narrow part.

Meal planning. AnyRecipe can fill a week from recipes you already saved. Osta’s listing does not describe a meal planner.

Nutrition. Osta Premium shows nutrition when it is available. AnyRecipe does not calculate nutrition at all.

Where Osta is straightforwardly ahead

Sharing, for a start. Free shared folders and shared grocery lists are more useful to a household than a Reminders workaround.

The pace. Nearly seven thousand ratings in seventeen months says a lot of people found it and liked it quickly.

Nutrition on Premium, iOS 16.4 support, and 6,700 ratings against my 2.

Who should pick which

Pick Osta if you save recipes from social media and want to share them, and a shopping list, with the people you cook with. Also if your phone cannot run iOS 26.

Pick AnyRecipe if you would rather have no account, want your recipes in your own iCloud, want a week planned from your own collection, or want to scan cookbook pages and handwritten cards as easily as saving a reel.

Try both if you are starting from nothing. Both are free to download, and importing the same five recipes into each is the fastest way to find out which one you keep opening.

All twenty-two are side by side, with ratings and iOS requirements, in the best recipe apps for iPhone.

Other comparisons: ReciMe is the largest by ratings, Pestle is another close match on social import, Pepper is the most social, and AnyList is the one to read if shopping together is the real problem.

Newest in the series: Recipe Gallery, a searchable photo archive that syncs through iCloud, Deglaze, with a full free version, MealBoard, which plans around your pantry for $12.99 once, and Flavorish, which runs on Android and the web too.

AnyRecipe is free on the App Store, for iPhone and iPad running iOS 26 or later. Osta is on the App Store and at ostarecipes.com, and is the newest app in this series.