5 Recipe APIs Every Food App Developer Should Know

Building a recipe app means deciding where the data comes from. The right API determines your coverage, response speed, pricing, and how much time you spend wrestling with rate limits. Here are five solid options, from established platforms to newer scraper-based services.

1. Spoonacular

The most well-known recipe API in the game. Spoonacular offers recipe search, nutrition data, meal planning, and even wine pairing. It's mature, well-documented, and has SDKs for most languages.

Pros: Rich nutrition data, good cuisine/category filtering, auto-generated menu items. Cons: Pricing adds up quickly at scale. The free tier is just 150 calls/day. Pricing: Free tier (150/day), paid from $15/month.

curl "https://api.spoonacular.com/recipes/complexSearch?query=pasta&apiKey=YOUR_KEY"

2. Edamam Recipe API

Edamam started as a nutrition database and grew into a full recipe API. It's especially strong for dietary filtering (vegan, gluten-free, paleo, etc.) and allergen data.

Pros: Excellent dietary and health labels, strong nutrition breakdown, generous free tier. Cons: Smaller recipe database than Spoonacular or RecipeScrape. Pricing: 5,000 calls/month free, paid from $12/month.

curl "https://api.edamam.com/api/recipes/v2?type=public&q=chicken&app_id=YOUR_ID&app_key=YOUR_KEY"

3. RecipeScrape API

Built from the ground up as a unified API for 7,000+ recipes scraped from top sites like RecipeTin Eats, Allrecipes, Food Network, and Simply Recipes. Every response includes structured ingredients, step-by-step instructions, and full nutritional data. The data is refreshed daily.

Pros: Generous rate limits, clean JSON, no per-request pricing, all endpoints documented with examples. Accessible via <a href="https://rapidapi.com/amediazsoufian/api/recipescrape-api">RapidAPI</a>. Cons: Requires RapidAPI subscription (free tier available). Younger platform, smaller ecosystem. Pricing: Free tier available on <a href="https://rapidapi.com/amediazsoufian/api/recipescrape-api">RapidAPI</a>. Paid plans scale with usage.

const res = await fetch(
  "https://recipescrape-api.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/recipes?q=pasta&limit=5",
  {
    headers: {
      "X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_KEY",
      "X-RapidAPI-Host": "recipescrape-api.p.rapidapi.com",
    },
  }
);
const data = await res.json();

Try the <a href="https://rapidapi.com/amediazsoufian/api/recipescrape-api/playground/apiendpoint_6c724624-10c7-45b9-bcc1-65397941008c">live playground</a> or browse the full <a href="https://recipescrape.vercel.app/api-docs">API docs</a>.

4. TheMealDB

A community-driven, open-source recipe database. Every recipe includes a thumbnail, ingredients, and a YouTube video link. The API is completely free and requires no authentication for basic access.

Pros: Completely free, no auth needed for reads, open-source (data is on GitHub), great for MVPs and hackathons. Cons: Limited coverage (~300 recipes in the main list), less structured data (no nutrition, no cook times in many entries), not regularly updated. Pricing: Free.

curl "https://www.themealdb.com/api/json/v1/1/search.php?s=chicken"

5. Tasty API

From BuzzFeed's Tasty — the API powers the same recipe collection used by their app and website. Recipes include video URLs, tips, and structured ingredient lists.

Pros: Video content included, well-curated recipes, good for social/card-style UIs. Cons: Limited query parameters (no proper search by cuisine or max time), API access requires a partnership request — not self-serve. Pricing: Requires partnership approval.

curl "https://tasty.p.rapidapi.com/recipes/list?from=0&size=10&tags=italian" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: tasty.p.rapidapi.com"

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Which One Should You Pick?

For most apps, a combination works well — Spoonacular or Edamam for nutrition data, and RecipeScrape for broad recipe discovery and daily-refreshed content.