Head to head · Cooking meal plans · October 2026 research run
Eat This Much Partner API vs spoonacular
spoonacular scores 49 (D) on agent readiness against Eat This Much Partner API's 45.7 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Eat This Much Partner API leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do cooking meal plans.
Best recipe, nutrition and meal planning APIs for AI agents · All 28 cooking comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Health, fitness, dietitian and healthcare apps that want generated meal plans and grocery lists under contract.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 75 against 65
- Security & auth, 48 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 58 against 22
Watch for
No self-serve signup. Partners are onboarded after a contract, the API is in early access and prices are tailored per partner
Best for Agents that need recipe search with diet and nutrient filters, ingredient substitutions and nutrition, and meal plans or shopping lists written to a connected user.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 58 against 23
- Agent ergonomics, 68 against 62
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 0
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
One all-powerful key per account, documented in the apiKey query parameter and sent that way by the MCP server
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Payments & pricing spoonacular +40
Eat This Much Partner API 0
Read with the hosted rule. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Pricing is tailored to each partner and not published; the usage schema's price per credit of 0.01 is an example value (0). No free tier or trial for the API; evaluation is by contacting the company (0). Access starts with a contract signed by a person (0). Total 0.
spoonacular 40
No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Plan prices and per-point overage rates ($0.005, $0.004 and $0.002) are public, with the point cost of every endpoint (20). The Free plan gives 50 points a day with no card (20). A person signs up in the console in a browser, and no key API exists (0 of 20). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.
Maintenance & community Eat This Much Partner API +36
Eat This Much Partner API 58
Read as a closed service. Changelog entry 4.2.0 dated 15 October 2026 (30). Four dated entries in the 90 days to 3 November, 5 August, 6 August, 16 September and 15 October 2026 (20). A support address in the OpenAPI contact block and the changelog, no community channel (8 of 15). No official SDK; the docs point to Postman (0). No package to judge (0). Total 58.
spoonacular 22
Read as a closed service. The newest dated change on the updates page is February 2026 (Nutrition by Photo, recipe extraction from video), more than 180 days before 3 November 2026, and the SDK repository's last push is 2 December 2025 (0 of 30). No dated changes in the last 90 days (0 of 20). Updates page, Discord, contact form and paid support from $99 a month; three open issues on the clients repository could not be read (8 of 15). Generated SDKs in 24 languages, last pushed December 2025, and an npm MCP server, but no vendor entry in the official MCP registry, which lists only third-party spoonacular servers (10 of 15). spoonacular-mcp has one release (1.0.0, 4 August 2025), a test script and no CI (4 of 10). 0 + 0 + 8 + 10 + 4 = 22.
Reliability spoonacular +35
Eat This Much Partner API 23
Read with the hosted lines. No status page found on eatthismuch.com, the docs or the partner page, and status.eatthismuch.com does not resolve (0). No readable incident history (5). Concurrency limits published with numbers, 3 week, 10 day and 20 meal generations per API user, but no rate per minute or day (12 of 15). 429 documented on three generate operations without Retry-After or backoff guidance, and no idempotency keys on calls that are charged (6 of 15). No SLA (0). The partner page calls the API early access with a limited number of partners, so not general availability (0). Total 23.
spoonacular 58
Read with the hosted lines. A status page exists at status.spoonacular.com (UptimeRobot), but on 3 November 2026 it rendered 'There was an error while fetching the data' with no components or history, so half credit (10 of 20) and no readable incident record (5). Daily point quotas and requests-per-second limits are published by plan, 60 a minute on Free and 5, 10 and 20 a second on Cook, Culinarian and Chef (15). HTTP 429 and 402 are documented with three quota headers, but there is no Retry-After, backoff guidance or idempotency key for the meal-plan writes (8 of 15). The pricing page states 99 per cent uptime on Cook and Culinarian and 99.9 per cent on Chef, and the FAQ says SLAs are sold above $250 a month (10). The API is generally available (10). 10 + 5 + 15 + 8 + 10 + 10 = 58.
Security & auth Eat This Much Partner API +28
Eat This Much Partner API 48
Per-user API keys, several per user, created and deleted through the API, the raw key shown once, no expiry or scopes; the key endpoints also accept a session cookie (20 of 30). No read-only key; the only destructive call is deleting a key (6 of 20). Responses are the vendor's own recipe and food data, no untrusted content (10 of 15). GET /gapi/usage-history/ gives a paginated request log per key with credits (12 of 15). No security.txt (404), disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found (0 of 20). Total 48.
spoonacular 20
One key per account with no scopes, expiry or rotation procedure, documented first as the apiKey query parameter and also sent in the query string by the MCP server; the x-api-key header is the alternative. One all-powerful key (10) less 10 for the documented query string (0 of 30). The data endpoints are read-only and a user's meal plan is written only with that user's username and hash, but there is no read-only key mode or confirmation step (10 of 20). Recipe text, instructions and extracted pages come from third-party websites and no guidance on treating them as untrusted was found (5 of 15). The console shows quota use and the headers report it per call, but no request log was found (5 of 15). security.txt returns 404 and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 0 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 20.
Schema & documentation Eat This Much Partner API +10
Eat This Much Partner API 75
Public OpenAPI 3.0.3, version 4.2.0, at /g/openapi.yaml with 14 operations and named schemas (25). No llms.txt or Markdown docs; the docs page is the OpenAPI document and a Postman guide (0 of 10). Every operation states its purpose, its credit cost and its concurrency limit, and the week endpoint says when to use render separately; little on when not to use a call (14 of 20). Enums on preset_diet, output, format, generator_focus, num_foods and food_output, but the generate request schemas list no required properties, with the required inputs stated in prose (10 of 15). curl samples on six operations, error responses 400, 401, 404, 429 and 500 with an IssueMap of field messages (12 of 15). The version is in info only, paths carry no version, but the changelog dates each change and labels breaking ones (14 of 15). Total 75.
spoonacular 65
Public OpenAPI 3.0.0 document (info version 2.0.2, 97 paths, 99 operations) in the vendor's spoonacular-api-clients repository, linked from the SDK page, and the MCP server's six tools carry JSON Schema inputs (25). No llms.txt (404) and no Markdown docs (0 of 10). Each endpoint states its purpose and point cost, with little on when not to use it (12 of 20). Parameters are typed with required flags, number is bounded, but diet, cuisine, intolerance and meal-type values sit in prose lists rather than enums (9 of 15). Request and response examples on every endpoint, 402 and 429 documented in the quota text, but the OpenAPI document lists only 200, 401, 403 and 404 and no error body shape (9 of 15). No version in the path; a dated updates page by month back to February 2020 records field removals with notice, the last in December 2022 for 30 June 2023 (10 of 15). 25 + 0 + 12 + 9 + 9 + 10 = 65.
Agent ergonomics spoonacular +6
Eat This Much Partner API 62
food_output simple or expanded, include_groceries on or off, and JSON, HTML or PDF output size responses (20 of 25). Food search has filters and pagination and usage history pages at 100; generation takes exclusions and per-meal settings (16 of 20). IssueMap errors name the field, 429 means a concurrency limit, 404 on food and key ids (14 of 20). No idempotency keys; generation is randomised and charged per call, so a retry costs again (4 of 20). Three required inputs with defaults for the rest, no official SDK (8 of 15). Total 62.
spoonacular 68
number caps results on every search (1 to 100), addRecipeInformation, fillIngredients and includeNutrition switch sections on, and the MCP server lists six compact tools, but there is no field selection and full recipe objects are large (15 of 25). Offset and number pagination with filters by cuisine, diet, intolerances, nutrient ranges, equipment, time and sort keys (18 of 20). 402 and 429 are documented with quota headers, other errors are not, and no error body is shown (10 of 20). Reads are GET and safe to repeat, writes to meal plans and custom foods have no idempotency key, and the MCP tools carry no annotations (10 of 20). No required parameter on complexSearch and generated SDKs in 24 languages (15 of 15). 15 + 18 + 10 + 10 + 15 = 68.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Eat This Much Partner API | spoonacular | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 23 | 58 | spoonacular +35 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 75 | 65 | Eat This Much Partner API +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 62 | 68 | spoonacular +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 48 | 20 | Eat This Much Partner API +28 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 40 | spoonacular +40 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 58 | 22 | Eat This Much Partner API +36 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 61 | 61 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | E 45.7/100 | D 49/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Eat This Much Partner API | spoonacular |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Eat This Much, Inc. | skycraft GmbH |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | stdio | |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under a partner contract; the website terms cover the consumer service | none |
| Tools exposed | 0 | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-02-01 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-04-16 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2020-12-03 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 6 stars |
Verdicts
Eat This Much Partner API
A public OpenAPI 3.0.3 document with credits and concurrency limits per operation, enum diet presets and a dated changelog describes a meal plan generator an agent can read well. Access needs a partner contract with no self-serve signup, no published price and no status page, and the API is in early access.
spoonacular
A broad recipe, ingredient, product and meal-plan API with a public OpenAPI document, 24 generated SDKs and a free 50-point day with no card. One key per account travels in the query string by default, the status page showed no data to our reader, and the terms allow caching for an hour at most.
Before you call either
Eat This Much Partner API
- Access needs a contract with Eat This Much first; ask the person to contact support@eatthismuch.com before planning calls
- Send the key as X-API-Key. Each generate call needs calories, number of meals and preset_diet; keep macro percentages summing to 100 or use gram ranges, not both
- Stay under 3 concurrent week, 10 day and 20 meal generations per API user, and treat 429 as a concurrency limit to wait out, not a quota
- Request food_output=simple unless expanded nutrition is needed, and set include_groceries=false when the list is not wanted; each call costs credits
- Read the changelog before upgrading, since 3.0.0 moved preferred_food_type into meal_settings and 4.0.0 renamed amount to servings
spoonacular
- Send the key as the
x-api-keyheader rather thanapiKey=in the URL, and keepnumbersmall, since every result adds 0.01 points to the call's cost - Read
X-API-Quota-Lefton each response; a 402 means the day's points are gone until midnight UTC and a 429 means the plan's requests-per-second limit, with no Retry-After to wait on - Use
/recipes/complexSearchwithaddRecipeInformation=truefor one call instead of a search followed by one information call per recipe - Do not store ingredients, instructions or nutrition between sessions; the terms allow only recipe ids, titles and image urls to be kept
- Show the original recipe source and a link to it with every recipe, as the terms require
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Eat This Much Partner API or spoonacular?
spoonacular scores 49 (D) on agent readiness against Eat This Much Partner API's 45.7 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Eat This Much Partner API leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and maintenance & community.
Do Eat This Much Partner API and spoonacular need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call Eat This Much Partner API and spoonacular without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Eat This Much Partner API. spoonacular runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.
Other comparisons with Eat This Much Partner API or spoonacular
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/eat-this-much-vs-spoonacular.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/eat-this-much.json·/api/v1/tools/spoonacular.json - From a terminal
anchor compare eat-this-much spoonacular(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "eat-this-much", "b": "spoonacular"}at/mcp, no key