Sugo 1.0 is out
Sugo is on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, and in any browser. What version 1.0 does, what it costs, and what it still cannot do.
Sugo 1.0 is out. It is on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, free to download, and the same app runs in any browser at app.sugo.kitchen if you would rather not install anything. There is no waiting list and no invite. Android is submitted and waiting on Google Play review, so a browser tab is the way in on an Android phone for now.
Sugo is a recipe app for people who cook at home. It saves recipes from wherever you found them, works out which of them you could cook tonight with what is already in your kitchen, and then gets you through the cooking without you touching a screen with greasy hands.
Here is what shipped, what it costs, and what it still cannot do.
The problem it was built for
Almost nobody has a recipe problem. What people have is a Wednesday problem.
The recipes are already there: a folder of bookmarks, screenshots in the camera roll, saved reels, a note with your mother's ragù in it, a book on the shelf with a page turned down. Collecting them was never hard. Cooking from them is, because at six in the evening the question is not which recipe do I like, it is what can I make, now, with the things in this fridge, in the time before people get hungry.
Every part of Sugo points at that gap between having recipes and cooking them.
It takes recipes in whatever shape they arrive
A recipe is only useful once it is structured: ingredients with quantities, steps in order, timings the app can read. Getting there is the boring part, so Sugo does it for you.
Share a link from any recipe site and it comes in parsed. Share a TikTok, Instagram reel or YouTube video and Sugo reads the caption and transcribes the spoken steps, which is where most video recipes actually keep their method. Photograph a handwritten card or a cookbook page and it is read into the same structure as everything else. Paprika, AnyList, Crouton and ReciMe libraries import directly, so moving in does not mean re-typing a decade of saves.
One library, one format, every source kept
That is the cookbooks side of the app: one library, one format, searchable, with the original source kept so you can always go back to it.
It knows what is in your kitchen
Tell Sugo what you have and it stops being a filing cabinet.
The pantry is the piece the rest of the app leans on. Saved recipes get ranked by how much of them you can already make, so the home screen answers "what can I cook tonight" instead of showing you the last thing you saved. Missing one ingredient is shown as exactly that: one ingredient, named, so you can decide whether it is worth a shop or a substitution.
Your pantry
From there, a week's plan turns into a single shopping list sorted the way the shop is, with anything already in the pantry struck off before you leave.
It works at the stove
The last three metres of cooking are where recipe apps usually give up. Cook mode is one step at a time, in type you can read from across the counter, with that step's timer attached to it.
Your hands are busy, so the controls are not touch. "Hey Sugo, next step" moves it along. You can ask it how much of something, or what is coming, without losing your place. If the extractor fan is loud enough to make voice useless, wink-to-advance does the same job from the front camera, analysed on the device, off until you turn it on.
You can just ask it
The part that surprised the people testing it is the one that looks least like a recipe app. Ask Sugo is an assistant that can see your library, your pantry and your plan, so the questions it answers are about your kitchen rather than the internet's.
"What can I make with the chicken thighs and the half bag of spinach" gets an answer from recipes you have already saved. "Something for four, under forty minutes, no oven" narrows the same library. It will suggest a side for what you are already cooking, work out a substitution when you are missing something, turn a photo of your shopping into pantry items, and rewrite a recipe to feed six or drop the dairy while keeping the original untouched.
It is deliberately food-only. Asking it to write your emails will get you a polite refusal and a recipe suggestion.
It works with other people
A household in Sugo is up to twenty people sharing one plan, one list and one pantry, all of them able to edit it. That is the boring, useful version of cooking together.
The less boring version is a cook party: two or more people cooking the same recipe at the same time, in different kitchens, sharing the step they are on and the timers, with voice between them and a photo reveal of everyone's plate at the end. Parties work in the app and in the web app, so a friend without an iPhone can still join from a browser.
What it costs
Free
No time limit and no card. Unlimited saved recipes and pantry, 25 link imports plus 2 photo or video imports a month, cook mode with voice steps, one cookbook and one meal plan, and a cook party with one friend.
sugo+ · $7.99 a month
Or $59.99 a year. Higher import limits, unlimited cookbooks and meal plans, the real-time voice sous-chef, recipe remixes, AI cover art and pantry photo scans.
famiglia · $14.99 a month
Or $119.99 a year. Everything above at the highest limits, plus a twenty-person household with a plan, list and pantry everyone can edit, and unlimited link imports and remixes.
Both paid plans start with a seven-day free trial. The full breakdown, including what happens to your recipes if you cancel (nothing: they stay), is on the pricing page.
What 1.0 does not do
A launch post that lists no faults is an advert, so:
No native Android app yet
It is submitted and waiting on Google Play review. Until it lands, Android means the web app in a browser, which works but is not the same as an app on the home screen.No Apple Watch or Vision app
If you want the timer on your wrist, Sugo cannot do that today.Extraction is good, not perfect
Unusual page layouts, recipes buried in a long story, and quantities written only in words all produce imports worth reading before you trust them. Every parsed recipe is editable for exactly this reason.The assistant needs a connection
Saved recipes and cook mode work offline. Anything that answers you in words does not, because the model doing the answering runs on a server.Wink-to-advance needs a recent front camera
It uses the TrueDepth camera, so older iPhones and iPads are voice-only.
The app is in English, French and Spanish, and recipes you save keep their own language rather than being forced into yours.
Where to start
Import ten recipes you have actually cooked before, not the hundred you have been meaning to try. Put fifteen or twenty things in the pantry, roughly, without inventorying the whole kitchen. Then look at the home screen on a weeknight and see whether it is offering you something you could actually make.
That is the whole test, and it takes one evening. If you want the longer argument for why a library filed by what a recipe is beats a folder of bookmarks, we wrote that one up, and if you are weighing Sugo against Paprika, AnyList, Crouton or ReciMe, the comparison is here, faults included.
Sugo is free on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and in any browser at app.sugo.kitchen. If your recipes are currently spread across four apps and a camera roll, download Sugo.