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Pestle: Recipe Manager

Product rot Self-contained

Will Bishop · Food & Drink · Free · v4.0.1

View on the App Store (iPhone) ↗
Review-rating drop
0.33

2025-Q3 4.81 → last 90 days 4.48, text reviews

Peak quarter
4.81

2025-Q3, text reviews

Last 90 days
4.48

text reviews

Store rating
4.73

all 1826 ratings, incl. star-only

Store gap
0.25

store minus reviews

Est. MRR
$131k

#83 top-grossing, Food & Drink

store 4.73 · reviews 4.81 → 4.48 · gap 0.25 store 4.73 reviews 4.48

Store ratings include star-only taps from in-app prompts, which skew high. The peak and recent figures come only from people who wrote a review, which skews low. Compare each against itself: the drop is the signal, and a big gap between the two usually means heavy rating prompting is masking unhappy users.

Average rating by quarter from 293 text reviews

2★3★4★5★ 1★ 2022-Q1: 4.12★ from 26 reviews 4.12 2022-Q1 2022-Q2: 4.50★ from 18 reviews 2022-Q3: 4.61★ from 23 reviews 2022-Q4: 4.75★ from 20 reviews 2023-Q1: 3.69★ from 13 reviews 2023-Q2: 4.40★ from 5 reviews (small sample) 2023-Q3: 4.29★ from 7 reviews (small sample) 2023-Q4: 4.00★ from 10 reviews 2024-Q1: 4.75★ from 16 reviews 2024-Q2: 4.58★ from 24 reviews 2024-Q3: 4.35★ from 17 reviews 2024-Q4: 3.87★ from 15 reviews 2025-Q1: 4.00★ from 17 reviews 2025-Q2: 3.88★ from 8 reviews 2025-Q3: 4.81★ from 16 reviews 4.81 2025-Q3 2025-Q4: 4.18★ from 17 reviews 2026-Q1: 4.57★ from 14 reviews 2026-Q2: 3.00★ from 5 reviews (small sample) 2026-Q3: 4.22★ from 9 reviews 2026-Q4: 4.69★ from 13 reviews 4.69 2026-Q4
Faint bars have fewer than 8 reviews. Text reviews skew negative versus star-only ratings; read the direction, not the level.
Show as table
QuarterAvg stars Reviews
2022-Q14.12 26
2022-Q24.50 18
2022-Q34.61 23
2022-Q44.75 20
2023-Q13.69 13
2023-Q24.40 5
2023-Q34.29 7
2023-Q44.00 10
2024-Q14.75 16
2024-Q24.58 24
2024-Q34.35 17
2024-Q43.87 15
2025-Q14.00 17
2025-Q23.88 8
2025-Q34.81 16
2025-Q44.18 17
2026-Q14.57 14
2026-Q23.00 5
2026-Q34.22 9
2026-Q44.69 13

Recent 1–2 star reviews

Crashes

★ · v4.0.1 · Oct 13, 2026

Tried to load recipes by entering url and it crashes.

not bad but doesn't live up to other apps

★★ · v3.0.14 · Sep 2, 2026

good app but other apps do it better even after paying for lifetime

Doesn't always save

★ · v3.0.11 · Jun 12, 2026

1 out of 10 uploads not worth it

Not user friendly

★ · v3.0.11 · Apr 22, 2026

No easy way to cancel

Lifetime purchase not applied

★ · v3.0.9 · Jan 17, 2026

I purchased the lifetime subscription last year and I see now it’s about to review for a annual subscription. I reached out twice and no response.

Terrible App

★ · v3.0.2 · Oct 3, 2025

For the life of me - I can’t import a recipe from TikTok to this app. It will work if I open the app and drop the link to the video. But makes it inconvenient. Not worth $2.99 a month.

So Cool! … if it would stop crashing.

★ · v3.0.2 · Oct 1, 2025

I actually really like the concept and the UI. But it’s unusable. I was playing with this app on one of those Apple store demo iPads, and the app kept crashing every 30 seconds. I figured maybe it was a problem with the iPad, but when I tried using the app on my phone, it still kept crashing every 30 seconds! What a shame.

Needs Pestle Pro

★★ · v2.1.6 · Jun 14, 2025

I purchased a new IPad and transferred all my apps and data from the old IPad to the new one. Now when I access my recipes it tells me I need Pestle Pro because I saved the recipe on a different device. I’m not spending money simply because I transferred IPads. This is crazy!

Pro?

★★ · v2.1.6 · Jun 11, 2025

I have a pro account. I loaded the app on my wife’s phone and logged in with my login and my recipes are not appearing on her phone. It’s asking me to pay again.

Buggy and punishes you if you miss a paymeny

★★ · v2.1.5 · Apr 27, 2025

I've used this for years and the bugs have been more consistent then anything. Will misread recipies, forget what day it is, and on several occasions: forget I paid my subscription and downgrade my account. Finally got tired of it and moved on

Used to be good

★ · v2.1.5 · Mar 9, 2025

I have deleted my account and will never return. I joined on 3/2022 a lifetime account for $25. Clearly this was a lie. Now I’m supposed to buy in each year for the same service, no thanks.

Disappointed

★ · v2.1.1 · Jan 25, 2025

This app is such a scam. They gave me a two week trial and charged me for the year even before my trail ended. They didn’t even warn me that my trial was ending. I’m so upset.

Conflicted

★★ · v2.1 · Jan 20, 2025

Relatively great app and easy to access the recipes for future reference. However I can’t use the recipes half the time because the app disconnects me from the household but when I try to “re join” it says you are already a part of this household. But none of the recipes show up when I open the app and neither does the household. So it becomes this cyclical maddening game

Don’t waste your time

★ · v2.0.2 · Jan 1, 2025

Does not auto-populate TikTok recipes as it claims to do. Every recipe I tried to imported stated “not in system, unable to load”

How to save recipes

★ · v2.0.2 · Dec 26, 2024

How do I save recipes from Pinterest

Deleted all my Recipes

★★ · v2.0.2 · Dec 15, 2024

A year or two ago I decided to by the a lifetime license for pestle pro, I’ve not used it too much since then since I usually just throw some food together, but every once in a while its nice to do things by the book, especially for baking. It has some pretty neat scanning features for turning website recipes into a readable format and the app is fairly easy to use. That being said, today it randomly decided to delete all of my recipes. I don’t know if it logged me out, or something, but now I need to add all of them again. Very frustrating to have that happen in an otherwise great app.

Improvements Needed

★★ · v2.0.2 · Nov 30, 2024

It’s alright. The importing tools are similar and better than others since you can import from social platforms. The phrasing and recipe/ingredient hierarchy need serious attention. Merging marinating, dry, and garnishing ingredients is not helpful. Other apps like ReciMe do this well. In addition: The grocery shopping list. When shopping for items, the measurements are important but not as important as the actual ingredient name. Pestle does 1/2 ounces turkey thighs, whereas ReciMe does turkey thighs (1/2 ounces). At a glance, I know I need turkey legs. It’s frustratingly ugly and friction-rich. The recipe lists garlic three times. Transferring it over to the grocery list results in three separate shopping items instead of compiling the total amount and listing it once.

Unusable

★★ · v2.0.1 · Nov 23, 2024

The app is basically unusable without premium membership.

Bug limiting usage. Stopped using the app. No dev support after 1 year

★ · v1.9.2 · Sep 23, 2024

I had high expectations of pestle and was very excited when I first learned about it. I ended up buying lifetime of pestle pro! After setting up family account immediately with my spouse, I started noticing an issue where my recipes got duplicated, and can’t be deleted. Also my recipes aren’t listed in all recipes! Even after reaching out to developer and getting an acknowledgment of the bug, I never heard back, and even with latest iOS pestle 1.9, the issue wasn’t resolved. At this point, me and my spouse have almost stopped using it. Might not have been the best AppStore purchase I guess! You live and you learn!

Not compatible with youtube?

★★ · v1.8 · Aug 29, 2024

Is this app not compatible with Youtube recipes? Disappointing as I thought it was. The recipe was very clearly included and formatted in the video description but the recipe would not import.

App developer strives to make this app work for you

★ · v1.7 · May 18, 2024

Will Bishop this app developer reached out to me because of the poor rating I gave this app. He asked me for more details of what I was experiencing. I just received a reply that he is work on a fix at my suggestion. I’m looking into his other apps now and would buy from him again.

No longer opens on MacOS

★★ · v1.7 · May 3, 2024

I know it's made for iPad, but something in the last update made it so that it doesn't even open on macbook anymore

So many bugs

★★ · v1.6.7 · Apr 27, 2024

Used to be obsessed with this app, but it doesn’t function like it used to.

Not recommended for scanning physical recipes

★★ · v1.5.5 · Dec 2, 2023

Unforgiving scanner. Cycles screens incessantly and unresponsively if you try to scan ingredients again. Wanted to like this but won’t be renewing my subscription

No support available for this expensive recipe app

★ · v1.5.2 · Nov 2, 2023

Can’t log in on another device from the one I signed up with; contacted Pestle’s support weeks ago and no reply yet! No surprise here but still annoying considering the cost. Save your money and choose another app!

The opportunity

What would it take to build a viable competitor, what would it cost to run every month, and a prompt to get started. Generated from the reviews on file; one LLM call per brief. Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY for a real brief; the stub only fills in a template.