WFD vs Samsung Food: what happened to Whisk

Disclosure first: we make What's For Dinner?! (WFD). Samsung Food used to be Whisk, an independent recipe saver with a genuinely loyal following. Samsung acquired it in 2019 and rebranded it in August 2023, and it now ships across Galaxy devices in over a hundred countries. Of all the big meal apps, it looks the most household ready on paper: recipe sharing, shared shopping lists, a meal planner.

Then you read the reviews. Everything quoted below is public and dated, we re-checked Samsung's own UK listing and help centre on 11 October 2026, and the pattern we see across it is our opinion.

Users say the household features went backwards

The sharpest complaints are from families who had a workflow and lost it. A Google Play reviewer wrote in May 2026 that their family "used to be able to sign in on multiple devices, so whichever family member was cooking for the night, all had the same meal plan, but now you all have to have separate accounts." A US App Store reviewer planning meals with their boyfriend wrote in August 2024 that they could share recipes and shopping lists, but "we can't share our weekly meal plans."

Samsung's help centre now says the plan can be shared. Its sharing guide, updated in March 2026, says you can share a meal plan with family and friends, "allowing multiple people to add, move or remove recipes from each day of the week." Its meal planner guide, updated in September 2026, adds who's expected to run it: "If someone else in your household manages the meal plan, they should be the one to share it." In our reading, the week can be shared, and it still has a manager.

Sign in draws its own complaints: a thread on Samsung's own community forum describes the app refusing to create an account unless the poster entered their Samsung login. And Android Authority's January 2025 review described "strange food- and diet-related ads" promoting eating plans from other services, with removal needing the premium subscription. Its Google Play listing on 11 October 2026 carried no "Contains ads" label, so that may have changed.

Longtime users also describe a trust problem with the data itself, in reviews dating back to the app's Whisk days. One found that changing the servings on a recipe does not carry the adjusted amounts into the shopping list, "so shopping off that list will get you the wrong ingredient amounts." Another watched the app silently rewrite a saved pie crust recipe, turning a range of six to eight tablespoons of cold water into a flat six. Coconut milk gets filed under dairy and eggs. And the browser extension for clipping recipes, a core Whisk feature, has reviews describing it as broken since the 2023 rebrand, a spinning wheel that never resolves, with fresh one star reports as recently as April 2026.

What changed underneath

Whisk's customer was the person using it. After the acquisition it sat inside a very large company's ecosystem strategy, and to us the reviews above read like the consequences: accounts that serve the ecosystem, ads that serve the revenue line, bugs that reviewers say sat unfixed through multiple updates. This is a pattern with a track record. Yummly, another big name planner, was owned by Whirlpool; it was shut down entirely at the end of 2024.

None of the people in those reviews did anything wrong. They picked a good app, and then its owner's priorities moved.

WFD is built the other way up

WFD is made by a couple, in the UK, and the household is the entire product rather than a feature on a list. There is nothing to bolt on because sharing is the mechanic itself: everyone swipes on meals on their own phone, with their own account, and a mutual match decides dinner. Matches build one weekly plan that everyone in the household sees, and the plan builds one shared shopping list that updates when the week changes. In Samsung Food, by its own guide, someone manages the plan and shares it. In WFD nobody has to, because the plan comes from everyone's swipes.

And nobody in the house waits on anyone else. The plan builds from whoever has swiped, so a partner who never opens the app blocks nothing, and their matches take priority once they do (how that works). What comes after the match is a full planner rather than a saved-recipe view: swap, move and lock meals, skip nights you won't cook, scale servings, shop by UK aisle, cook step by step (a week inside it).

The money side is deliberately boring. Free to download and free to use: swiping, matching, the weekly plan and cook mode cost nothing, with no time limit. Full Access, one subscription for the whole household, adds the shopping list and the tools to change the week, £2.99 a month or £24.99 a year for up to six people after a 3-day free trial. That's the whole business model, and there are no ads.

For a UK family on iPhone

Samsung Food is free to download, and its UK listing says its planner, smart shopping lists and sharing are "available for free". Its help centre says the tailored weekly plan "is part of our premium Food+ subscription", and Food+ costs £6.99 a month or £59.99 a year on the UK App Store. WFD's deciding is free too: swiping, matching and the weekly plan cost nothing, with no time limit, and Full Access, for the shopping list and the tools to change the week, is £2.99 a month or £24.99 a year for up to six people, after a 3-day free trial.

If the children will plan on their own iPhones, the age rating matters, because Apple's parental controls can block apps above a chosen rating. On 11 October 2026 the UK App Store showed Samsung Food at 18+, though it's PEGI 3 on Google Play, and WFD at 4+. Our comparison of seven apps for a UK family on iPhone sets out what each one gives a family for free, and what the rest costs.

If you're a couple or a family who mainly needs the week decided together and visible to everyone, that's the exact problem WFD exists for. Here's how it works for two, and here's the version for families.

What's For Dinner?! is free to download on the App Store for iPhone and on Google Play for Android.

If anything above is out of date or we've got something wrong, tell us and we'll correct it.