Spoonacular
The only food API you'll ever need
About Spoonacular
Spoonacular is a comprehensive recipe, food, and nutrition API for developers and food apps, built on a detailed food ontology that understands the relationships between ingredients, recipes, nutrition, and allergens. It powers recipe search, nutritional analysis, meal planning, dietary filtering, and shoppable recipes, with automatic detection of allergens and diets like vegan, Paleo, and Whole30.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Extremely broad food data coverage: recipes, ingredients, grocery products, and restaurant menus in one API
- Smart, context-aware diet and allergen classification reduces manual data work
- Generous academic/hackathon pricing ($10/mo for 5,000 daily requests)
- Trusted by 253,000+ developers with strong documentation
- Month-to-month plans, cancelable anytime
Cons
- Point-based quota system can be confusing and unpredictable for cost planning
- Free tier requires a backlink and has very limited daily points
- Overage pricing per point can add up at scale
- No phone support below the $149/mo Chef tier
Key Features
Recipe Search & Analysis
Search 5,000+ recipes with semantic search, nutrition analysis, and cost breakdowns.
Ingredient Database
Access 2,600+ ingredients with nutrition data, pricing, and intelligent substitution suggestions.
Grocery Product Data
Query 600K+ packaged grocery products with nutrition visualization.
Restaurant Menu Items
Pull 115K+ menu items from 800+ American restaurant chains.
Diet & Allergen Detection
Automatically classify recipes for vegan, vegetarian, Paleo, Whole30 and flag allergens with context awareness.
Meal Planning
Generate meal plans and automatic shopping lists from recipes.
Nutritional Analysis
Compute detailed nutrition for recipes and ingredients, including macro and micronutrients.
Wine Pairing
Get wine pairing recommendations for dishes and ingredients.
Pricing
- 50 points/day
- 1 request/second
- 2 concurrent requests
- Forum support
- Backlink required
- 1,500 points/day, then $0.005/point
- 5 requests/second
- 5 concurrent requests
- Email support
- 99% uptime SLA
- No backlink required
- 4,500 points/day, then $0.004/point
- 10 requests/second
- 10 concurrent requests
- Email support
- 99% uptime SLA
- 10,000 points/day, then $0.002/point
- 20 requests/second
- 20 concurrent requests
- Phone support
- Exclusive previews
- 99.9% uptime SLA
- Custom quotas and terms
- Starting at $300/mo
- For specialized high-volume requirements
Best For
Nutrition & Diet Apps
Build calorie tracking and meal-logging apps with accurate nutrition and dietary classification data.
Meal Planning Platforms
Generate personalized meal plans and automatic shopping lists for users.
Food Delivery & E-commerce
Power shoppable recipes that map ingredients to grocery products for online ordering.
Recipe Discovery Apps
Offer semantic recipe search with filtering by diet, allergen, ingredients, and cost.
