What to Look for in a Recipe Migration Tool

You have decided to export your recipes. Maybe you are leaving an app, maybe you just want a backup, maybe you are consolidating recipes from multiple sources. Either way, you need a tool that can take proprietary recipe data and turn it into something portable.

Not all conversion tools are the same. Some handle a handful of formats. Some lose half your data in the process. Some charge you for the privilege. Here is what actually matters when you are evaluating your options.

Format Support: Input and Output

The most basic question is whether the tool can read your files and write the formats you need.

On the input side, recipe data comes in wildly different shapes. Paprika uses .paprikarecipes files (gzip-compressed JSON inside a ZIP archive). Cook'n uses .ckn files (an HSQLDB database inside a ZIP). CopyMeThat exports HTML and plain text. Some recipes live on websites as JSON-LD structured data. Others are photos of recipe cards that need OCR to extract the text.

A good migration tool handles all of these, not just one or two. If you are migrating from a single app today, you might think you only need support for that one format. But six months from now you might want to import from a different source, or process recipes you clipped from the web. Broad input format support means you do not need a different tool for every source.

On the output side, you want options. Different destinations need different formats:

• JSON (Schema.org compliant) is the most structured and widely interoperable option. Self-hosted tools like Mealie and Tandoor Recipes can import Schema.org JSON.
• CSV works for spreadsheets and databases. If you want to browse your recipes in Excel or Google Sheets, this is the format.
• Markdown fits knowledge management tools like Obsidian, Notion, or plain-text file systems.
• CookLang is a plain-text format designed specifically for recipes, popular with developers who want to manage recipes in Git.
• PDF gives you printable recipe cards.
• HTML gives you standalone web pages you can open in any browser.
• Open Recipe Format (YAML) is a structured, human-readable standard designed for recipe interchange.

The more output formats available, the more flexibility you have. Converting once and downloading in multiple formats is much easier than running the same recipes through different tools for different destinations.

Data Preservation

This is where tools differ the most, and where the differences matter the most.

A recipe is not just a title and a list of ingredients. It includes prep time, cook time, total time, servings, categories, ratings, personal notes, source URLs, photos, and sometimes nutritional information. A good converter preserves as many of these fields as the source and destination formats support.

Ask these questions about any tool you are considering:

Does it preserve structured fields? A tool that dumps everything into a single text blob is not a converter -- it is a text extractor. Real conversion maps ingredient lists to ingredient arrays, instructions to step sequences, and metadata to named fields.

Does it handle images? Some source formats embed photos (Paprika includes them in the archive, CopyMeThat ZIP exports can include image files). A converter that silently drops all images is losing part of your collection.

Does it preserve categories and notes? These are the personal layer of your recipe collection. Ingredients and instructions can often be re-found online, but your organizational structure and personal annotations are unique to you. If a converter strips them, you lose the curation work that makes your collection yours.

Is it honest about limitations? No converter preserves everything perfectly. Format differences mean some data loss is inherent -- CookLang has no built-in field for nutritional information, CSV flattens nested data, PDF is not machine-readable. A trustworthy tool tells you what does and does not transfer, rather than silently losing data.

Privacy and Data Handling

You are uploading your personal recipe collection to a tool. That collection may include family recipes, personal notes, dietary information, and browsing history (via source URLs). It is worth knowing what happens to that data.

Questions to ask:

• Is an account required? Account creation means your data is tied to an identity. For a one-time conversion, that is unnecessary.
• How long are files stored? Indefinite storage means your data sits on someone else's server with no clear expiration. A defined retention period with automatic deletion is better.
• Is the tool free, or does it monetize your data? A paid tool has a clear business model. A free tool with no ads or data collection has no obvious revenue, which is the cleanest option for your privacy. A free tool that also collects analytics, displays ads, or requires account creation may be monetizing your data in other ways.

Batch Processing

If you have a handful of recipes, any tool will do. If you have hundreds, batch processing matters.

Can the tool handle a large collection in a single upload? Does it provide progress feedback so you know it is working? Can it process a ZIP archive containing hundreds of individual recipe files without timing out?

For large collections from apps like Cook'n (which can hold thousands of recipes accumulated over decades), a tool that processes files one at a time is impractical.

Cost

Recipe migration is something most people do rarely -- maybe a few times in their life. Paying a monthly subscription for a tool you will use once or twice is a hard sell.

Free tools exist. Use them. The conversion itself is a commodity operation: read a file in one format, write it in another. There is no reason this should cost money for end users.

What MoveMyRecipes Offers

For transparency, here is how MoveMyRecipes stacks up against these criteria:

Input formats: Paprika (.paprikarecipes), Cook'n (.ckn), CopyMeThat (ZIP/HTML/TXT), JSON-LD, XML, CookLang, Open Recipe Format (YAML), plain text, ZIP archives, images via OCR (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP, TIFF), and URL scraping for any website with structured recipe data.

Output formats: Seven -- JSON (Schema.org), CSV, Markdown, CookLang, PDF, HTML, and Open Recipe Format.

Data preservation: Structured field mapping with metadata preservation. Honest about what each format supports and what gets lost in translation.

Privacy: No account required. Files auto-deleted after 7 days. No ads, no tracking profiles.

Batch processing: Handles large collections with progress tracking.

Cost: Free.

You can start at movemyrecipes.com. The dedicated pages for Paprika, Cook'n, and CopyMeThat handle format-specific imports. The general converter handles everything else, including images. The URL import page handles web scraping.