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Coming soon to iPhone

You save the recipe.
You never cook it.

FasterChef is an iPhone app that turns the cooking videos you already save on Instagram and TikTok into proper recipes — then plans your week from them and writes one shopping list, merged and sorted by aisle.

One email when it's ready. Places go in the order people joined. No spam, and you can leave any time.

You have 200 saved reels and no idea what's for dinner

Saved isn't cooked

The recipe is in a caption, halfway through a video, or in a pinned comment. By Tuesday it's forty posts down.

Planning is a chore you skip

Other apps hand you an empty calendar and ask you to drag recipes onto it. So you don't, and you order in.

The list is always wrong

“Garlic” and “2 cloves garlic” as separate lines. Herbs filed under frozen. Half of it bought twice.

From a reel on Sunday to dinner on Tuesday

Four steps. You do the first one.

12.4k 318 Share

@pastagrannies

Nonna's rigatoni all'amatriciana 🍝 Sunday lunch, every Sunday, for about sixty years now. She has never written a word of it down, so last week I stood in her kitchen with a notebook, and this is what I got. Put 400g rigatoni on. Render 150g guanciale slowly until the fat runs clear — don't rush that part, it is the whole dish. Splash of wine, then a tin of plum tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic and a good pinch of chilli. Simmer while the pasta cooks. Pecorino off the heat with a ladle of pasta water — never on the flame or it splits. 25 min, feeds 4. Bucatini if you can find it, but rigatoni is what she uses. Salt the water like the sea, and keep a mugful back before you drain — that water is what makes the sauce cling. And don't add cream. I know people do. Nonna would like a word. #pasta #amatriciana #sundaylunch #rome #nonna

6 ingredients 3 steps 25 min · for 4

One extraction, then it's cached. The next 5,000 people who share this reel cost nothing.

From @pastagrannies

Rigatoni all'Amatriciana

25 min · 4 servings · Italian

  • 400 grigatoni
  • 150 gguanciale
  • 400 gplum tomatoes
  • 2garlic cloves
  • 60 gpecorino
  • 1 tspchilli flakes
  1. Render the guanciale until the fat runs clear.8 min
  2. Add the tomatoes, simmer while the pasta cooks.12 min
  3. Toss off the heat with pecorino and pasta water.

Open the original reel

This week

No peanuts 30 min on weeknights For 2
  • MonRigatoni all'Amatriciana
  • TueGreen shakshuka
  • WedMiso salmon, rice
  • ThuCharred broccoli orzo
  • FriBlack bean tacos
  • SatRoast chicken
  • SunLeftover chicken hash

Reuses 18 ingredients to keep your shop small.

Shopping

Produce

10garlic cloves3
300 gonions2
fresh basil

Pantry

400 grigatoni
2 tbspolive oil4
2 tinschopped tomatoes3

Amatriciana · Green shakshuka · Black bean tacos

Dairy

60 gpecorino2

Butcher

120 gguanciale

5 dinners · 32 lines, not 50

  1. 1

    Share the reel

    Tap share on Instagram, TikTok or a YouTube Short and pick FasterChef. That is the entire gesture, and it is the only thing you have to do.

    The share sheet closes in under a second. Nothing is read while you wait — the job is queued and you carry on scrolling.

  2. 2

    It reads the caption

    Ingredients, quantities and steps, pulled out of the post in a few seconds. When a creator hides the recipe in the comments, you paste it instead — about five seconds.

    A reel is read once, not once per person. Five thousand people saving the same video is one reading, which is why this can stay cheap.

  3. 3

    You get a real recipe

    Editable, searchable, readable without a signal, and always credited and linked back to the person who made it.

    Fix a quantity, swap an ingredient, add the note you always forget. It is your copy, and it stays on your phone.

  4. 4

    The week plans itself

    We build the week out of what you have already saved, then write the shopping list from that plan — merged, converted and sorted by aisle.

    Three, four or seven days. Lock the nights you have already decided, regenerate the rest, and the list follows the change.

Your library

Two hundred saved, and you can still find the one you meant

Every reel you share lands here as a real recipe, with a title, a time and a cuisine attached to it. Which is what makes it findable — a saved post is a position in a list you have to scroll, and a recipe is something you can go and look for.

It forgives a typo

You saved it four months ago and you half remember what it was called. That is the normal case, so the search matches on how a word looks rather than on you spelling it right.

Try:

The middle one is spelled wrong on purpose.

Then narrow it the way you'd say it

Under thirty minutes. Italian. The ones you keep coming back to. The filters stack, and the line above the list always says how much of your library is left after them.

It counts what you actually cook

Mark something cooked and it goes on the recipe. Sort by that and the handful of dinners you genuinely make rise to the top — which is never quite the list you thought you had.

And not all of it has to come from a reel

Type one in from a book, a card, or the back of an envelope. It sits in the library on exactly the same terms as the rest: planned into a week, added to the shopping list, yours to edit.

Library

12 recipes
  • Rigatoni all'Amatriciana 25 min · Italian · cooked 3 times
  • Green shakshuka 20 min · Middle Eastern · cooked once
  • Miso salmon, rice 25 min · Japanese
  • Charred broccoli orzo 30 min · Italian · cooked twice
  • Black bean tacos 20 min · Mexican · cooked twice
  • Lemon chicken traybake 55 min · Greek · cooked 4 times
  • Peanut noodle salad 15 min · Thai
  • Chickpea curry 35 min · Indian · cooked 5 times
  • Mushroom ragù 40 min · Italian · cooked once
  • Roast tomato soup 45 min · British · cooked once
  • Satay chicken skewers 30 min · Malaysian
  • Cacio e pepe 15 min · Italian · cooked 7 times

Four months of tapping share, and not one of them typed in by hand.

The difference

Two things nothing else does properly: a week that plans itself, and a shopping list that's correct

A shopping list that's actually correct

Every competitor has public complaints about this. Garlic from three recipes arriving as three lines. Grams and cups listed twice. Herbs filed under frozen.

We merge on the ingredient, not the wording. Units convert inside their own dimension. Every line says which recipes it came from — and if you move something to a different aisle, it stays there forever. Why that's harder than it sounds.

Three recipes, one line
2 cloves garlic garlic, minced 1 bulb of garlic

Produce

10garlic cloves3

The week plans itself

Other apps hand you an empty calendar. We generate the week from the recipes you have saved — avoiding what you don't eat, respecting how long you actually have on a Tuesday, and never repeating something you cooked last week. What automatic planning has to get right.

It also quietly prefers meals that share ingredients, which is why the shop comes out smaller. Lock the nights you want to keep and regenerate the rest.

Tap a night to lock it, then regenerate

    Reuses 18 ingredients to keep your shop small.

    Set it once

    It plans around what you don't eat

    Diets, allergens, the ingredients you simply don't like, how long you actually have on a Tuesday, and how many people you're feeding. Set them once. Every week after that respects them without asking again.

    12 of 12 saved recipes still fit — nothing ruled out yet.

    • Rigatoni all'Amatriciana25 min · Italian
    • Green shakshuka20 min · Middle Eastern
    • Miso salmon, rice25 min · Japanese
    • Charred broccoli orzo30 min · Italian
    • Black bean tacos20 min · Mexican
    • Lemon chicken traybake55 min · Greek
    • Peanut noodle salad15 min · Thai
    • Chickpea curry35 min · Indian
    • Mushroom ragù40 min · Italian
    • Roast tomato soup45 min · British
    • Satay chicken skewers30 min · Malaysian
    • Cacio e pepe15 min · Italian

    And this is the week we'd build from what's left

    1. MonRigatoni all'Amatriciana
    2. TueGreen shakshuka
    3. WedMiso salmon, rice
    4. ThuCharred broccoli orzo
    5. FriBlack bean tacos

    Five nights, no repeats, drawn from the twelve recipes you have saved.

    Nothing is deleted and nothing is hidden. A recipe that doesn't fit this week is still in your library for the week it does.

    The creator keeps the credit

    Every imported recipe shows the handle it came from and links back to the original post. That is not a setting you can turn off. Those videos are the reason there is anything worth saving, and sending people back to them is the least the app can do.

    You never connect your Instagram or TikTok account, and we never ask for your password. FasterChef only reads the public post you hand it.

    Built around what goes wrong elsewhere

    Your recipes open without a signal

    The library, every recipe, and the shopping list are stored on your phone. On the tube, in a basement shop, on a plane — they are simply there.

    Nothing gets lost

    Change phone, reinstall, sign in again: your library comes back. Losing someone's saved recipes is the one failure we treat as unacceptable.

    No tracking, no ads, no feed

    No third-party scripts, no advertising identifiers, no social layer to farm your attention. It is a kitchen tool, not a place to spend the evening.

    Corrections stick

    Move sesame oil out of spices once and it stays in oils for you, permanently. The app should learn your shop, not argue with it.

    The same week, minus the admin

    Six things that go wrong in this category, and what we do about each one.

    Six steps of the week, compared between most recipe apps and FasterChef.
    Most recipe apps FasterChef
    Getting a reel in Copy the caption, paste it somewhere, type it up Share, and it is in the library
    This week's meals An empty calendar you fill in by hand Built from the recipes you already saved
    The same ingredient twice Two lines on the list, and you spot it in the shop One line, naming both recipes it came from
    Grams against cups Listed separately, and you do the maths Converted, then added up
    An ingredient in the wrong aisle Wrong again next week, and the week after Corrected once, and it stays corrected
    Changing your mind about a night The list quietly goes stale The list changes with it

    What FasterChef costs

    Prices at launch. Waitlist members get in first, at these rates.

    Free

    Free, forever forever, and no card to give us

    • 10 video imports a month
    • Unlimited recipes you type yourself
    • Three days of your week, planned for you
    • A shopping list of everything the week needs
    • Recipes written from an idea or your leftovers, free for three days

    Most people want this

    Plus

    $6.99 a month a month, cancel any time

    • 60 video imports a month, or unlimited on the yearly plan
    • The full merged, aisle-sorted shopping list
    • Recipes written from an idea or your leftovers, whenever you want one
    • The whole week, planned for you
    • Diets, allergens and disliked ingredients
    • Lock the meals you want, regenerate the rest

    Yearly is $59.99 for Plus, which works out at $5 a month, and comes with a 3-day free trial. Cancel in two taps, from iOS settings.

    What it can't do yet

    Some creators deliberately keep the recipe out of the caption — “comment RECIPE and I'll DM you” is a growth tactic, and a good one. FasterChef reads captions, so those posts will not import on their own. The workaround, and why TikTok hits this most.

    When that happens the app says so and gives you a box to paste into. It takes about five seconds, and reading the audio is the next thing we are building. There is also no Android version, and there won't be one for a while — iPhone first, done properly.

    You do the copying; the app does the reading. And what it reads out of a pasted comment is the same as what it reads out of a caption — so the recipe lands in your library on the same terms as the rest, editable, plannable, and on the shopping list.

    The other honest limit is that we can only ever be as right as the post was. If a creator writes “a splash of soy”, that is what you get, because inventing a number would be worse than repeating a vague one. Every recipe is editable for exactly that reason, and it is worth a glance before you shop.

    The buttons on that screen work. Try them.

    Import

    @thewokdiary 15-minute chilli garlic noodles that ruined takeaway for me 🍜 Full recipe is in the comments — comment NOODLES and I'll send it over 💌
    No recipe in this caption. The creator kept it in the comments. Copy it across and we'll read that instead.
    Paste the recipe here

    Reasonable questions

    When can I actually use it?

    We're finishing the iPhone app now. Everyone on the waitlist gets in before it's public, in the order you joined.

    Does it work with any Instagram or TikTok account?

    It reads public posts you share into it. You don't connect your Instagram or TikTok account, and we never ask for your password.

    What if the recipe isn't in the caption?

    Plenty of creators put it in a pinned comment. When we can't find it, you paste the text and we read that instead — about five seconds.

    I have an allergy. Can I trust the plan?

    Allergens are a filter, not a preference. A recipe that contains something you've excluded is never scored, never ranked and never put into a week because the week was short — it is removed before the planner starts. The planner will leave a night empty first, and say so. Read the ingredients anyway: we can only see what the caption said.

    Can I edit what it pulls out?

    Every extracted recipe is fully editable — ingredients, quantities, steps, servings, the lot. You can also type in your own recipes, and those are free and unlimited on both plans.

    What happens if I don't have many recipes saved yet?

    The planner fills what it can and tells you the truth: “We planned 4 of 7 dinners. Save a few more recipes and we'll fill the rest.” It will never pad the week by repeating a meal.

    Is there an Android version?

    Not yet. iPhone first, properly, then we'll see. Join the list and we'll tell you if that changes.

    Get in before everyone else

    Places go in the order people joined, and launch pricing is held for whoever is on the list when it opens.

    One email when it's ready. Free to join, free to leave.