What is Popotam?

What is Popotam?

Popotam is a free web app for planning your meals, made in France. It builds a meal plan, lunch and dinner, for one week or up to four weeks ahead, then turns it into a grocery list sorted by aisle.

The meals are generated by Popotam itself, in about thirty seconds, or by your own ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini account. The meal plan adapts to how many people are eating, your budget, dietary restrictions, cooking time, the equipment you have and nearly thirty other preferences.

Popotam works with no account: a meal plan opens with a secret link, which acts as the key. You can share that link with other people, and whatever one person changes shows up for everyone else within seconds. Next week can generate itself, on the day you pick. No subscription, no ads, no selling your data.

Popotam at a glance

The rows below come straight from the comparison, where the same criteria are applied to every service, Popotam included.

Type

Meal planning web app

Language

French (English version available)

Country

France: French publisher, data hosted in France

Publisher

Jérémy Pierre (Youmax)

Hosting

Scaleway, France

Price

Free, no subscription and no credit card.

Installation

None required: works in the browser. Android app on Google Play; on iPhone and computer, add it to your home screen

Plan your meals

Yes, 14 meals a week, lunch and dinner, up to four weeks

Grocery list

Yes, sorted by aisle, with checkboxes

Shop wherever you want

Yes, no partner store chain

Ingredients delivered

No

Usable without a subscription

Yes

Order from the tool

No

AI generation

Yes, instant generation

Use your own AI

Yes, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini from your own account

Fine-tuned customization

Yes, time, equipment, cuisines, spice, goal, pantry, time slots…

Cookbook

Yes, a cookbook that outlives the week

Automatic week

Yes, Popotam generates it on its own, on the day you pick

Estimated budget

Yes, estimated ingredient by ingredient

No account

Yes, no account, a secret link

What Popotam does

The full list of features that actually exist in the app, as of October 8, 2026.

• Weekly meal plan, lunch and dinner
• Grocery list sorted by aisle
• One-click menu generation, no account or API key needed
• Browse freely while your week is being made: it cooks on the meal plan, and a banner follows you everywhere else
• "My AI" mode: the prompt copies into ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude
• Swap a dish on demand
• A craving written in your own words for a swap, which can even allow an excluded food
• Swap for a version of the same dish: veggie, lighter, higher-protein, quicker or cheaper, with the numbers to prove it on every idea
• Diets, excluded foods and max cooking time double-checked in every suggested dish, before you see it
• Regenerate the whole week
• Clear a week or fully reset, knowing exactly what's kept
• Start how you like: the rest of the current week, or the full week from Monday
• Automatic generation of next week, ready by Monday
• Monthly automatic generation: each week that goes by brings a new one at the end
• Next week adjustable ahead of time: change a dish, cancel it, write its recipe
• Monthly planning, four weeks ahead, for a single grocery run
• Switch from one week to another, in the meal plan and in the grocery list
• "Whole month" grocery list: the weeks combined into a single list, with shared items listed only once
• Step-by-step recipe written on demand: measured ingredients, equipment, steps, tips
• Cooking mode: one step at a time, ingredients to check off, timers that ring even with the recipe closed
• Calories, protein, carbs and fat for every dish, calculated from the ANSES Ciqual table
• Daily calorie totals and the week's average, lunch and dinner, with a day-by-day chart
• Personal cookbook, kept from one week to the next
• Share a recipe as a square card in Popotam colors, ready to post
• Cookbook filters: to write, quick, budget, vegetarian, and search
• Cookbook sorting: newest, quickest, cheapest, or alphabetical
• A saved recipe's ingredients go onto the grocery list without touching the meal plan
• A saved recipe can go back on any slot you choose, and the groceries follow
• Your own recipes, written in the cookbook: ingredients, quantities, steps, and the estimated price worked out automatically
• Import a recipe from its link (Marmiton, 750g, Mealime, a blog…): quantities converted to grams and milliliters, translated into French if needed, and the recipe card in your cookbook
• One-click import of your Mealime account from a computer: recipes, diet, allergies and disliked foods land in Popotam before the service shuts down
• Import your Mealime PDFs (recipe or plan) from your phone: the text is read without AI, and a plan's titles are matched to public pages
• "Send my list" grocery list: share to Google Keep, WhatsApp or your notes, one line per item
• Items to check off while you shop, week by week
• "I already have it": what you've got at home drops off the list and the budget
• Cancel a meal: it drops off the groceries and the budget
• History of dishes you've made, to avoid repeats
• Estimated budget, ingredient by ingredient, based on average in-store prices (Open Prices), clearly labeled as an estimate
• Settings prefilled when you arrive from a sample menu on the site
• Cart optimization of your choice: maximum, moderate or none
• Adjustable number of people, from a solo meal to a full table
• Dietary restrictions and preferences taken into account
• Foods you don't like, strictly excluded from generated menus
• Choose which meals to plan, slot by slot (weekday lunches can be unchecked)
• Fine-tuning filters: favorite cuisines, spice level, adventurousness, foods to favor
• Max cooking time, quick dinners, skill level and available equipment
• Nutrition goal of your choice: balanced, high-protein, light or comfort food
• Fine-tuned anti-waste: seasonal produce, meal prep, pantry items to use up
• Homegrown food (hens, veggie garden, orchard) set from the home screen: your produce gets priority in menus and comes off the grocery list and the budget
• Adjustable number of treat meals, adjustable anti-repeat memory
• Grocery reminder in your calendar: Google Calendar, Outlook or .ics
• Optional email reminder, no newsletter or marketing
• Optional notification on your phone when the prepared week is ready, or when the one you asked for arrives after you've left the app
• Add to home screen: an icon, no browser bar, and offline access
• Unlink a device without deleting anything online: the link still opens the meal plan elsewhere
• Several meal plans on one device, named and switchable in a tap
• Start a blank meal plan without leaving the others: they stay in the device's list
• On phones, secondary options fit in a single button: the meal plan's name gets its space back
• Phone-first interface: a strip of days, one visible action per item, the rest in a bottom sheet
• Jump straight to the aisle you're in, with aisle headers that stay on screen while you shop
• Join a meal plan by scanning its QR code, without leaving the app
• One email address can recover all its meal plans, up to five
• Share a meal plan with others: the link can be sent, copied or scanned, and everyone manages it from their own phone, with no limit on people
• Live meal plan for everyone: what one person changes shows up for the others within seconds, and two changes made at the same time are both kept
• Sync between devices through a private link, no account
• Pick up your meal plan on a new device: paste the link, or get it resent by email
• Installable on phone and computer, like an app
• Meal plan, grocery list and recipes available offline
• Meal prep mode: choose dishes to make ahead, spread them over the week, and get a timed plan for a cooking session with storage times for every container, adapted to your kitchen (burners, oven, a multicooker like a Cookeo or a Thermomix)
• Reminder the day before to soak tomorrow's dried legumes (chickpeas, beans)
• Print a recipe: ingredients to check off, numbered steps, on one page
• Printable document built on demand: choose weeks, recipes, grocery list, with a live preview
• Download the document as a PDF, named after the meal plan and its week
• Export and import your data in a file
• Turn off online backup in one click, your data stays on the device
• Discovery feed: one recipe per screen, filtered by your diets and tastes, to save in your cookbook or drop on your meal plan, with a break every ten recipes
• Fridge raid: say what you've got on hand, Popotam suggests dishes that use it and tells you what's missing
• Ready-to-follow meal prep plans on the site, added to your week in a tap
• Add a dish from a recipe page on the site to your meal plan: pick the day, and the week builds around it
• "Edit my week" page: swap two meals, move a dish to another day or from lunch to dinner, ask for another idea, remove or add a dish, then confirm everything at once
• A meal idea for tonight or tomorrow, no account: ingredients and quantities for your table, price per serving, vegetarian, 20-minute and budget filters, a grocery list to copy
• Works with every store, no partner retailer or commission
• No account, no ads, no tracking cookies
• Free Android app on Google Play, with the same meal plan as on the site
• Popotam in English, in the app and on the site, with US or metric units, your pick on each device

What Popotam doesn't do

These limits are real, and written in the same place as those of the other tools in the comparison.

• No ingredient delivery: it's a planner, not a grocery service.
• You can't order your groceries from Popotam, no store chain is a partner.
• The prices shown are estimates, based on average in-store prices (Open Prices), not the actual prices of a given store.
• No iPhone app: on iOS, Popotam runs in the browser and can be added to your home screen (the Android app is on Google Play).
• With no account, access depends on a secret link: lose it without having left an email address, and you lose your meal plan.

Who it's for

Taken from Popotam's sheet in the comparison, where every tool answers the same question.

• You shop wherever you want and refuse to be tied to a store chain.
• You want to fine-tune your menus: time, equipment, diet, tastes.
• You want no subscription, no account and no ads.

If that's not you, the comparison lists the other tools out there, with their prices and the date they were last checked.

Who publishes it, and where the data goes

Free. Popotam covers the generation, with no subscription for users, and sells nothing: no ads, no data resale, no commission on your groceries.

Popotam is published by Jérémy Pierre (Youmax), in France. The database is hosted by Scaleway, in France, and emails go through the same provider. The only other recipients are OpenAI (GPT-6 Luna, which builds the weeks) and Mistral AI, a French company (everything else), and only if you use instant generation. Donations go through Stripe, which handles the payment: Popotam only keeps the amount and the date, never the name or address of the person giving.

What gets sent to the model: the number of people, the budget, dietary restrictions, cooking preferences and the dishes not to repeat. Never an email address, never a meal plan's ID, never anything that could identify someone. The details are in the privacy policy.