Does Mealie require a custom domain?

No. Mealie works on a plain IP address. A custom domain is recommended for internet access with a valid TLS certificate, but not required for local or VPN-only use.

Does it support multiple users?

Yes. Each household member can have their own account. Administrators can invite users, assign roles (admin, user, viewer) and manage permissions from the Administration panel.

Where is the data stored?

Mealie stores recipes, images and settings in the /app/data volume mapped to your VPS. Back up this directory to keep your recipe library safe.

Can I import from any recipe site?

Mealie uses JSON-LD Recipe schema and a scraping fallback, so it works with most popular recipe sites. Some sites block scrapers — use the manual editor to enter those recipes directly.

Share information and collaborate.

Mealie

Self-host your recipe manager — import from any URL, plan meals and generate shopping lists.

512 MB RAM 1 vCPU Port 9000 Available

Tech stack

DockerPythonFastAPIVue.js

Minimum RAM512 MB

Minimum CPU1 vCPU

Default port9000

Compatible OSChoice of Linux distributions

Mealie is a recipe manager and meal planner designed to run on your own server. Import recipes automatically from any URL — Mealie parses the page and extracts ingredients, steps and metadata. Store your own family recipes through the web editor. Build weekly meal plans and generate consolidated shopping lists from your planned meals. Share your instance with your household: each member gets their own account, and you control who can edit or just view. The codebase (AGPL-3.0, 13 k+ stars) uses FastAPI for the backend and Vue.js for the frontend, deployed as a single container with SQLite. No cloud subscription, no tracking, no ads.

Key features

Import recipes automatically from any URL: ingredients, steps and images extracted in seconds.

Meal planner to schedule your weekly dinners and lunches, with a calendar view.

Automatic shopping list generated from planned meals, with ingredient consolidation.

Multi-user support with household accounts, roles (admin, user, viewer) and sharing.

Recipe editor for your own family recipes, with photos and custom fields.

REST API to automate or integrate Mealie with your other self-hosted tools.

When to use this solution?

1

Centralize all your recipes

Stop bookmarking cooking blogs. Paste a URL and Mealie extracts the full recipe — ingredients, steps, photos — into your private library.

2

Plan your meals for the week

Drag your saved recipes onto the weekly planner. Mealie generates the shopping list automatically, consolidating ingredients across all planned meals.

3

Share with your household

Invite family members with their own accounts. Each person can add recipes, comment or mark meals as favourites, while you keep control of who can edit the library.

Deploy Mealie on your VPS

Guide optimized for ServOrbit Cloud VPS.

01

Log in with the default credentials

After installation, open the URL provided in your space and log in with the default account: [email protected] / MyPassword. Change both immediately after your first login in Administration.

02

Import your first recipe

On the dashboard, click New Recipe → Import from URL, paste any recipe page URL and Mealie will extract the title, ingredients, steps and main photo in a few seconds.

03

Plan the week

Open the Meal Planner section, click a day slot and assign a recipe. Repeat for the week, then click Generate Shopping List — Mealie consolidates all ingredients into a single sorted list.

04

Invite your household

Go to Administration → Users and create accounts for your family members. Assign the user role to allow recipe browsing and additions, or viewer for read-only access.

Frequently asked questions

The default login is [email protected] with password MyPassword. Change both immediately after your first login in Administration → Your Profile.

Embed the deploy button

Maintaining a project that uses Mealie? This button lets your readers deploy it on a VPS in one click, without reading Docker documentation.

Markdown

[![Deploy Mealie on ServOrbit](https://servorbit.com/brand/deploy/button.svg)](https://servorbit.com/vps-cloud?template=mealie&utm_source=deploy-badge&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mealie)

HTML

<a href="https://servorbit.com/vps-cloud?template=mealie&utm_source=deploy-badge&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mealie"><img src="https://servorbit.com/brand/deploy/button.svg" alt="Deploy Mealie on ServOrbit" height="40"></a>

The button points to a VPS order with the template preselected. The image is served from servorbit.com — nothing to host on your side.

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