What is the best pantry inventory app? An honest answer

Pick by the job you need done

You share the kitchen with someone

Pantry Check lists "real-time syncing and family sharing" and lets you track up to 200 items for free. KitchenPal shares lists and the kitchen with family, and says family members are upgraded for free when you buy Premium. Cooklist shares the shopping list, pantry and recipes with the household. Cupboard keeps everything on one phone and has no sharing, so it's the wrong pick for a two-person household that both shop.

You buy a lot of packaged food

Barcode scanning is fastest for packaged goods. KitchenPal says its barcode library holds 4 million+ products; Pantry Check uses a crowd-sourced product database; NoWaste scans barcodes, receipts or photos. Cupboard has no barcode scanner. It adds items from a receipt photo or a photo of the product instead (both part of the paid Pro upgrade), or you type them.

You want a reminder before food goes off

NoWaste, Pantry Check, KitchenPal and Cooklist all describe expiry reminders or alerts in their listings. Cupboard shows a "use soon" list when you open it but does not send notifications. More on this in which app tracks food expiry dates.

You mostly want to know what to cook

SuperCook is free, has no in-app purchases listed, and only shows recipes that use ingredients you've told it you have. It's a recipe finder rather than an inventory: you tick ingredients, not quantities or dates. Cooklist connects to grocery loyalty cards at Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Wegmans "and 75 more" and imports your purchases into a pantry automatically, which removes most of the typing if you shop at a supported store.

You want it private and quick to fill

Cupboard: Grocery Tracker needs no account, and your groceries, notes and photos stay on your phone. Snap a receipt and the run becomes a list of editable items you check before saving. You can sort food by home (apartment, cabin) and storage place (fridge, freezer, pantry). The free version tracks up to 30 items. Cupboard Pro, an optional subscription, adds receipt scanning, photo autofill, recipe ideas and chat, and unlimited items. It's iPhone only. App Store listing.

Why it's worth the effort

The EPA estimates that 66.2 million tons of food was wasted in U.S. food retail, food service and homes in 2019, and that 40% of it came from households (EPA 2019 Wasted Food Report). The EPA also puts the cost at almost $3,000 a year in food that a family of four buys and doesn't eat (EPA, Preventing Wasted Food at Home).

The honest catch: an inventory only helps if it's current. Choose the app by the way you'll actually add food: barcodes if you buy packaged goods, loyalty-card import if your store is supported, receipt photos if you do one big shop, typing if you buy little. An out-of-date list is worse than none, because you'll trust it.

Side by side

For a table of prices, ratings and features from each app's own listing, see pantry and expiry apps compared.

Written by Vilde Vevatne, who makes Cupboard. Nobody paid to be mentioned here. Other apps' features and prices come from their own US App Store listings and can change; food-safety guidance comes from the agencies linked. Cupboard's recipe ideas and dates are a helper, not a food-safety authority.