Recipe & Meal Intelligence — Recipe Database API

Search and extract recipes from a database of 300+ meals — ingredients, cooking instructions, nutritional categories, and meal photos. Filter by cuisine, category, or ingredient.

Built for recipe apps, meal-planning tools, food bloggers, nutrition platforms, and AI cooking assistants.

What you get

• Complete recipe data — name, ingredients with measures, step-by-step instructions, category, cuisine, photo, source, tags
• Multiple search modes — by name, ingredient, category, cuisine, or random
• Cuisine filters — Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, and more
• Category filters — beef, chicken, dessert, lamb, vegetarian, etc.
• Pre-built dataset Overview in Apify Console for instant inspection

Why this actor (vs. alternatives)

	Paid recipe API	Build your own	This actor
Cost	Monthly subscription	Free but you maintain it	Pay-per-result
Search modes	Limited tiers	Manual	5 modes built-in
Structured ingredients	Sometimes	Manual parsing	Clean ingredient+measure pairs
Photos	Premium tier	Manual	Included

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchType	enum	name, ingredient, category, area, random
searchQuery	string	Search term (e.g., "chicken", "pasta")
category	enum	Filter: Beef, Chicken, Dessert, Lamb, Miscellaneous, etc.
area	enum	Cuisine: American, British, Chinese, Italian, etc.
maxResults	int	Maximum recipes to return (default 50)

Example Input

{
  "searchType": "category",
  "category": "Dessert",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output (sample)

{
  "meal_id": "52772",
  "name": "Teriyaki Chicken Casserole",
  "category": "Chicken",
  "area": "Japanese",
  "instructions": "Preheat oven to 350°F. In a small bowl...",
  "ingredients": [
    {"ingredient": "soy sauce", "measure": "3/4 cup"},
    {"ingredient": "water", "measure": "1/2 cup"}
  ],
  "thumbnail": "https://www.themealdb.com/images/media/meals/...",
  "tags": ["Meat", "Casserole"],
  "youtube_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...",
  "source_url": "https://...",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-28T14:00:00+00:00"
}

Use cases

• Recipe / cooking apps — populate your catalog with structured recipes
• Meal-planning tools — generate weekly menus by cuisine + category
• AI cooking assistants — ground LLM responses in real recipe data
• Food bloggers — source recipe ideas and structured ingredient lists
• Nutrition platforms — feed meal data into diet-tracking tools
• Grocery / shopping apps — auto-build shopping lists from recipe ingredients

Pricing

Pay-Per-Event:

• $0.005 per recipe
• $0.00005 actor-start fee

Example runs

Use case	Recipes	Cost
Single category fetch	50	$0.25
Multi-cuisine catalog	200	$1.00
Full recipe dataset	300	$1.50

Tips

• Use searchType: "ingredient" to find recipes built around a specific ingredient
• Use searchType: "random" for inspiration / discovery features
• Combine category + area to narrow to a specific cuisine + dish type
• The structured ingredients array (ingredient + measure) is ideal for shopping-list generation

FAQ

Q: How many recipes are in the database?
A: 300+ curated meals with full ingredients, instructions, and photos.

Q: Are ingredients structured or just plain text?
A: Structured — each ingredient is paired with its measure for easy parsing.

Q: Is there a video link?
A: Many recipes include a YouTube tutorial URL.

Q: Can I search by cuisine?
A: Yes — set searchType: "area" or use the area filter (Italian, Chinese, etc.).

Related actors

• cocktail-intelligence — 600+ cocktail recipes
• openlibrary-book-intelligence — 20M+ books
• open-food-facts-product-intelligence — food product + nutrition data

Legal & compliance

This actor retrieves recipe data from publicly available recipe databases. You remain responsible for compliant downstream use and respecting source attribution where required.

Support & feature requests

Open an issue on the Actor page or contact via Apify Console messaging. Custom features welcome.