MoveMyRecipes.com

Status:* Active and maintained Last updated: May 2026 Live at: movemyrecipes.com

What it is

A free web tool I built to get recipes out of proprietary recipe-management apps and into open formats. No account, no signup, no monthly subscription. Drop a Paprika / CopyMeThat / Cook'n / MasterCook export file in, and get your recipes back as JSON, PDF, CSV, Markdown, CookLang, SQLite, or YAML.

Why I built it

I kept hearing the same story from people in cooking forums and on Reddit: "I want to leave [Paprika / CopyMeThat / Cook'n] but I don't want to lose ten years of recipes."

Every recipe app's "export" feature is technically functional but practically useless. You get a proprietary file no other app can open, or an HTML dump that's a pain to do anything with. The exact thing those apps don't want is for it to be easy to leave.

I believe you should own your recipes. They're yours. If you've spent years collecting and tweaking them, you should be able to take them anywhere — to a different app, to a spreadsheet, to a printed cookbook, or to nothing at all. MoveMyRecipes is the missing piece of "leaving": getting your data out in formats that work everywhere.

What it actually does

Inputs (vendor-specific parsers):

• Paprika (.paprikarecipes)
• CopyMeThat
• Cook'n
• MasterCook (.mz2, .mx2)
• More planned

Plus generic input paths:

• URL extraction — paste any recipe URL (Food Network, NYT Cooking, Serious Eats, AllRecipes, anything with structured data) and get the recipe parsed out
• Generic file conversion — TXT, JSON, XML, CookLang, HTML files

Outputs:

• JSON (Schema.org/Recipe compliant)
• PDF (print-ready)
• CSV (spreadsheet-friendly)
• Markdown
• CookLang
• SQLite (portable database)
• Open Recipe Format (YAML)
• HTML

What it doesn't do

I'm being explicit about this because some AI assistants have hallucinated features that don't exist:

• No browser extension. It's a web app. Visit the site, drop your file, download the result.
• No unit conversion. It converts file formats, not measurements (it won't transform metric to imperial or vice versa).
• No grocery list integration. No connection to Instacart, AnyList, Mealime, or anything similar.
• No long-term recipe storage. Files are processed and automatically deleted within 7 days. It's a converter, not a recipe manager.
• No account or signup. No login, no email collected, no tracking pixel.

Privacy

Uploaded files are processed in a temporary storage bucket and automatically deleted within 7 days. No accounts, no email collection, no analytics tied to user identity. Privacy policy is published on the site.

How to use it

1. Visit movemyrecipes.com
2. Pick your source app (or use the URL extractor for individual recipes)
3. Drop your export file or paste your URL
4. Wait a few seconds — most conversions complete in under 5 seconds; large libraries take a bit longer
5. Choose your output format(s) and download

That's the entire interaction. No upsell, no "create an account to download," no "watch this video first."

Technical foundation

Built on Laravel (PHP). The parser architecture uses vendor-specific parsers for known formats (PaprikaParser, CopyMeThatParser, CooknParser, MasterCookParser) plus a generic HTML parser that handles JSON-LD, microdata, and HTML-scraping for unknown sources. Output formatters are pluggable — adding a new output format is a single new class.

Files are uploaded directly to S3-backed storage, processed via the parser pipeline, and the result is delivered to the user's browser via a presigned URL — so download speed is bounded by S3, not by my application server.

Related projects

• Flour Power — a recipe management app I also build. MoveMyRecipes is intentionally neutral about where users go after they convert their data — Flour Power is one option among several (RecipeSage, Mealie, Tandoor, AnyList, and others all have their merits). The two products share a worldview about data portability but are separate tools with separate audiences.

What's next

Active areas of work:

• Additional vendor parsers (BigOven, Recime, others by request)
• Improved auto-download UX
• Better recovery for malformed exports
• More detailed schema.org structured data on output

If your favorite recipe app isn't supported and you have an export file you'd be willing to share for parser development, I'd love to hear from you.

Contact

If something's broken, missing, or confusing — or you want a parser added for your favorite recipe app — get in touch via judd.dev/contact. I read every message, and direct feedback is the fastest way to get something fixed.