Crouton vs AnyList: the cook's app or the household list?

Crouton and AnyList both hold recipes and both make shopping lists, but they were built from opposite ends. Crouton starts at the stove: it wants the recipe to be pleasant to cook from, with timers inside the steps and a hands-free mode you control by winking. AnyList starts at the shop: it wants two people in two aisles to be holding the same, correct list. The choice usually comes down to which of those two moments goes wrong more often in your house, and whether everyone in it owns an iPhone.

We make a competing app and have written importers for both. Prices and features below were checked in October 2026.

The short version

What you pay

Crouton is free for up to 20 recipes. Crouton Plus is a one-time $24.99 that unlocks the core app. Crouton Discover is a separate subscription at $1.99/month or $14.99/year, and it covers the blog RSS feed and AI import from photos and PDFs.

AnyList is free for the list itself. AnyList Complete is $9.99/year for one person and $14.99/year for a household, and it unlocks recipe import from cooking sites, the meal-planning calendar, recipe scaling, photos, the web and Mac apps, and Apple Watch.

So a household that wants recipes in AnyList pays $14.99 every year. An Apple household that only imports from links pays Crouton $24.99 once. Add Crouton's photo scanning and the two cost about the same each year after the first.

Where Crouton wins

Crouton is the better app to cook from.

It puts timers inside the steps: tap a time and it starts, and several can run at once. Its hands-free mode uses the iPhone's front camera, so you wink right for the next step, wink left to go back, and open your mouth to see the ingredients. It scales recipes, converts units, generates meal plans, imports from Paprika, and even connects to Bluetooth kitchen scales and Combustion thermometers.

Your library lives in your own iCloud account instead of on a company's server. If privacy is the first thing you check, that counts for a lot, and if Crouton ever disappeared, your recipes would still be in an account you control.

It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro.

Where AnyList wins

AnyList wins on the list itself, and for anyone who isn't on an iPhone.

It has spent about a decade on one problem: a shared list that is right on two phones at the same moment. Items sync in real time, sort themselves by aisle, and can be added by voice through Siri. It runs on iPhone and Android, with web and Mac apps and browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge. In a household where one person has a Pixel, Crouton is not an option and AnyList is.

It is also the easiest of the two to hand to someone who doesn't care about recipe apps. They install it, accept your invite, and the shared list works without them paying anything.

Where both stop

Neither reads a video. Crouton imports from web pages, and from photos and PDFs on its subscription. AnyList Complete imports from cooking sites. A recipe that exists only as a TikTok, with the quantities spoken out loud, has to be typed into either one.

Neither keeps track of what is already in your kitchen. AnyList has no pantry, and Crouton has no way to rank your recipes by what you could make tonight without shopping.

The third option

Sugo covers the ground between them.

It imports from links, from videos with spoken steps, from screenshots and from photos of book pages. It tracks your pantry and ranks saved recipes by what you can cook right now. In cook mode it reads steps aloud, takes voice commands and supports the same wink gestures Crouton introduced. With Famiglia, the shopping list, meal plan and pantry are shared by up to 20 people in a household, and it runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and the web. It imports from Crouton and AnyList directly.

The free plan includes cook mode, the pantry, a meal plan and the shopping list, with 25 link imports and 5 photo or video imports a month. Paid plans have no import limit: Sugo+ is $59.99/year, and Famiglia, which adds the shared household, is $79.99/year.

Where AnyList has the edge: its list is still the better tool for two people shopping at the same time.

All three side by side

✅ works on the free tier · ⚠️ limited or partial · 💰 needs a paid plan · ❌ not available

Questions people ask

Is Crouton available on Android?

No. Crouton runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro only, and it syncs through iCloud. If anyone you cook or shop with uses Android, they can't share your Crouton library.

How much does Crouton cost?

It is free for up to 20 recipes. Crouton Plus is a one-time $24.99. Crouton Discover, which adds AI import from photos and PDFs and the blog RSS feed, is $1.99 a month or $14.99 a year on top.

Does AnyList work on Windows?

There is no Windows app, but AnyList for the Web runs in any modern browser on a Windows PC, and there are browser extensions for saving recipes. The web app is part of AnyList Complete.

Can AnyList and Crouton share a list?

No. They don't sync with each other. Sugo imports from both, so you can bring the recipes together in one app the whole household can use.

So which one

Pick Crouton if everyone in the house is on Apple devices, you care most about cooking from the recipe, and you like the idea of your library sitting in your own iCloud.

Pick AnyList if the shopping list is what keeps going wrong, someone in the house uses Android, and $9.99 or $14.99 a year is what you want to spend.

Pick Sugo if you want recipes from videos and screenshots, a household list that works on every platform, and an app that tells you what you can cook tonight.

The five-app comparison adds Paprika and ReciMe. There are also direct comparisons of Crouton and Paprika, Crouton and ReciMe, and Sugo and AnyList.