# Edamam (slim)

> Edamam sells nutrition REST APIs. Recipe Search covers about 2 million web recipes with diet and allergen filters, the Food Database adds barcode lookup and a Vision model, and Nutrition Analysis parses recipe text, with a hosted Food MCP server.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/edamam.md (~7,300 tokens) · this version ~1,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/edamam.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/edamam
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04 · pricing https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/edamam#pricing · reviews https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/edamam#reviews
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

**E · 42.2/100 · rank #1187 of 1349 · #5 in Cooking, recipes & meal planning · not agent-ready · confidence low**


Assessment: Recipe search with 36 health labels, nutrient range filters and field selection, documented in a public OpenAPI file, with a two-tool hosted MCP server for food nutrition and images. Web recipes carry no instructions, every plan is prepaid with human-only requests and tight caching rules, and the terms, privacy policy and any status page could not be read.

## Facts

- Kind: HTTP API · vendor: Edamam · category: Cooking, recipes & meal planning · legal entity: not named · provenance 47/100
- Endpoint: `https://mcp.edamam.com/mcp/food` (Streamable HTTP)
- Auth: API key · pricing: Paid · x402: no · licence: unknown
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- Surface listed: The Recipe Search API v2 at api.edamam.com, read from developer.edamam.com (Recipe Search, Food Database and Nutrition Analysis plan pages, the recipe docs, the attribution page and the Food MCP page) and the two OpenAPI documents on 3 November 2026, with the hosted Food MCP server noted. No account was made and no call or MCP session was opened
- Recipe Search endpoints: GET /api/recipes/v2 (search), GET /api/recipes/v2/by-uri (1 to 20 uris), GET /api/recipes/v2/{id}, POST /api/shopping-list/v2 (aggregates ingredient quantities for recipe entries, with a beta shopping-cart link)
- Other APIs: Food Database v2 (parser, nutrients, UPC lookup, autocomplete, Vision image analysis; OpenAPI at api.edamam.com/doc/open-api/food-db-v2.yaml) and Nutrition Analysis (recipe and text analysis, Site Parser for schema.org recipe pages). A Recipe Content Management API feeds the Plus plan's owned recipes
- Food MCP: https://mcp.edamam.com/mcp/food, Streamable HTTP; tools get_food_nutrition (queries, a list of phrases or UPC codes) and analyze_food_image (a public image url or data uri). Autocomplete and browse filters are out of scope. Stdio clients bridge through mcp-remote pinned at 0.14.3
- Filters: diet (6 values), health (36, from alcohol-free and celery-free to vegan and wheat-free), cuisineType (20), mealType (5), dishType (16), imageSize (4), co2EmissionsClass (A+ to G, beta), ingredient count, time, calories, glycaemic and inflammatory index ranges, and about 40 nutrient ranges
- Plan limits: Recipe Search Basic 10,000 calls a month at 10 a minute with 100 results a call; Core 500,000 at 100 a minute with 1,000 results; Plus 1,000,000 at 300 a minute. Food Database Basic 100,000 calls at 50 a minute, Core 750,000 at 100, Plus 5,000,000 at 300
- Caching: Basic may cache recipe id and name; Core and Plus add protein, net carbs, total fat and kcal; only inside an end user's password-protected account and only while a plan is active. Full caching is an add-on by contact
- Attribution: The 'Powered by Edamam' badge (four colour versions) placed where the data appears, through a script tag and an edamam-badge div, or an image in mobile apps. Not providing attribution is called a breach of contract
- Retired versions: The Diet API and Nutrition v1 docs pages are marked '(Version Retired)'. The recipe docs say Shopping List V1 support ends on June 30 without naming the year
- Legal entity: Not established. The terms and privacy pages could not be read and the plan pages name only Edamam
- Prices: Recipe Search Basic $9 per month (plan); Recipe Search Core $99 per month (plan); Recipe Search Plus $399 per month (plan); Food Database Basic $14 per month (plan); Food Database Core $69 per month (plan); Vision image analysis $0.015 per call; Nutrition Analysis Basic $29 per month (plan)

- Scores: Reliability 30, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 66, Agent ergonomics 71, Security & auth 30, Payments & pricing 25, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 33, Transparency & trust 31 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, Read with the hosted lines. · Schema & documentation, Public OpenAPI 3.0.3 documents for Recipe Search v2 (four operations) and the Food Database, and the Food MCP's two tools take typed argumen… · Agent ergonomics, `field` selects any of 31 response fields, results a call are capped by plan at 100 or 1,000, and the MCP server lists two compact tools (22… · Security & auth, One `app_id` and `app_key` pair per application, documented as query parameters first and HTTP Basic second, with no scopes, expiry or rotat… · Payments & pricing, No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). · Maintenance & community, Read as a closed service. · Transparency & trust, Closed service whose API terms of use could not be read (the page is a script shell).
- Sources: 17, open questions: 7, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: cooking.recipes, cooking.nutrition, cooking.food-recognition, cooking.grocery
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/edamam.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/edamam.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/edamam from a page on edamam.com or one of its subdomains, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.
- Support: https://developer.edamam.com/edamam-recipe-api; https://developer.edamam.com/mcp-edamam-food; more in the full twin

## Before you call it

1. Send `app_id` and `app_key` as HTTP Basic or, for the MCP server, as `Authorization: Bearer <app_id>:<app_key>`, rather than in the query string
2. Expect no instructions on web recipes; return the `url` of the source to the person, and ask for the Plus plan's Edamam-owned set when steps are needed
3. Pass `field` to pick the response fields you need and follow `_links.next.href` for the next page; `type=public` is required on every search
4. Keep each call tied to a person's request and cache only the fields the plan allows, since the plan pages forbid automated collection and end access without refund
5. Show the 'Powered by Edamam' attribution with every result, as every plan requires

## Connect

```bash
curl -u "$EDAMAM_APP_ID:$EDAMAM_APP_KEY" "https://api.edamam.com/api/recipes/v2?type=public&q=chicken&health=gluten-free&field=label&field=url"
```

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http edamam-food https://mcp.edamam.com/mcp/food --header "Authorization: Bearer <app_id>:<app_key>"
```
Full config and headless snippets are in the full page. Through letme (picks today, calling later): https://letme.dev/edamam

## Similar tools

| Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| LogMeal | D | 49.1 | cooking.food-recognition, cooking.nutrition, cooking.recipes, cooking.grocery | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/logmeal.min.md |
| spoonacular | D | 49 | cooking.recipes, cooking.nutrition, cooking.grocery, cooking.food-recognition | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spoonacular.min.md |
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| Eat This Much Partner API | E | 45.7 | cooking.grocery, cooking.nutrition, cooking.recipes | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/eat-this-much.min.md |
| Nutritionix API | F | 33.6 | cooking.nutrition, cooking.grocery | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nutritionix.min.md |


## Panel reviews (0, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)