Mealie is a self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner. You run it on your own server (typically via Docker) and access it through a web UI. It stores recipes in a Postgres or SQLite database and ships an admin-only Backups feature that produces a zip snapshot of your entire collection.

How do I export my recipes from Mealie?

Sign in as an admin and go to Settings → Admin Settings → Backups (or navigate to /admin/backups). Click Create Backup, wait a few seconds, then click Download on the new entry. When you download from Admin → Settings → Backups, you'll get a zip file containing a database.json (all your recipes in one place) plus a data/ folder with images. Older Mealie installs may produce a zip with one folder per recipe — we support both formats.

What gets preserved in the conversion?

Title, description, ingredients, instructions, prep/cook/total times, yield, categories, tags, notes, nutrition, and source URL all carry through to the schema.org Recipe shape used by every output format. Images embedded in the backup are preserved in PDF and HTML outputs.

Can I migrate from Mealie to Tandoor or Nextcloud Cookbook?

Yes — convert your Mealie backup to JSON-LD here, then import the JSON-LD into Tandoor (which has a JSON-LD importer) or drop the resulting recipe.json files into Nextcloud Cookbook's Recipes folder. The schema.org JSON-LD output is the lingua franca between self-hosted recipe apps.

Mealie backup zips supported

Convert your Mealie recipes

Upload the zip from Mealie's Create Backup button. We support both the current Mealie backup format (database.json) and the older per-recipe export format, and emit PDF, JSON-LD, CSV, Markdown, or .cook.

100% free. Open-source parsing. No account required.

What's inside the export

Mealie's backup is a structured zip — here's what we read out of it.

recipes/<slug>/<slug>.json Parsed

Mealie's per-recipe export format — one JSON file per recipe holding ingredients, instructions, times, nutrition, tags, categories, notes, and source.

images/ & assets/ Preserved

Each recipe folder ships its hero image and any user-uploaded assets. We keep them attached to the recipe through PDF and HTML outputs.

How to export from Mealie

1

Sign in as an admin

Backups are an admin-only action — a regular user role can't trigger one. If you don't see the Backups menu, your account is the issue, not the install.

2

Open the Backups screen

Go to Settings → Admin Settings → Backups (or navigate directly to /admin/backups). In older Mealie versions it may live under Settings → Backup & Restore. Either path lands on the same Create Backup button.

3

Create and download the backup

Click Create Backup. After a few seconds a new entry appears in the list — click Download to grab the zip. Current Mealie produces a zip containing database.json plus a data/ folder; older installs produce one folder per recipe.

4

Upload the zip here

Drop the .zip into the upload area above and pick the output format you want — PDF, JSON-LD, CSV, Markdown, or .cook.

Why convert Mealie?

Self-hosting Mealie buys you ownership but not portability. A docker upgrade gone sideways, a Postgres failure during a migration, or just deciding you don't want to maintain a server anymore — and your recipes go with the instance.

The admin backup zip is the easiest portable snapshot of your collection — it doesn't depend on Mealie itself continuing to run. We're the reader for that snapshot — for printing, archiving, sharing, or moving to whatever's next.

Convert to JSON-LD to migrate to Tandoor or Nextcloud Cookbook (both accept schema.org JSON-LD on import), PDF for printing, Markdown for a personal cookbook, or .cook for any CookLang-compatible tool.

Export to any format

Get your recipes in formats that work for you

{ }

JSON

Schema.org compliant

PDF

Print-ready cards

CSV

Excel-friendly

MD

Markdown

Plain text

.cook

CookLang

For developers

DB

SQLite

Portable database

ORF

Open Recipe

YAML format

Free your Mealie collection

Drop your Mealie backup zip above and we'll convert every recipe into the format you want.