AnyList Reviews 

As I write this review, the current Trustpilot rating for Anylist is only 3.1, a rating damaged by only a handful of very low ratings. That's a shame, because Anylist deserves a much higher rating.

So, caveat -- the negative reviews were submitted mostly by detailed, techie people who were having problems with the finer points of organising their information on the app. And to be fair, for them, their complaints are perfectly valid. They want an app that performs according to their needs, and Anylist seems to fall down on their promises in some of these areas. Then there were the usual few with operating issues not resolved, possibly because of their own faulty communications with Tech Support. However. . .

All of those are outliers (perhaps scored too low because of their frustration, rather than as a reflection of the overall value of the app?) and do not reflect the genuinely good value Anylist provides in their robust Lists and Recipes functionality.

I contend that the average user wants simply to
* record various types of lists, noting useful variables
* create or import recipes that are editable
* export a list to someone who doesn't share the app
* access one account through different devices
* share one account with several different users
* be confident of prompt and efficient customer support
* etc and so forth

Other reviewers have shared what they love about Anylist, and I echo their sentiments. For what I need (and didn't realise I needed until Anylist), Anylist gets one of my rare 5 stars. Yes, they are ambitious and no doubt need to continue developing the app per the very real issues expressed in some of the negative reviews. But for our household, Anylist has been a game changer.
👍👍👍👍👍

The idea behind this app is amazing, but it simply is just a chore to use.

First off, you can do so much; you can add prices, specific store prices, quantities, package sizes, etc. You can import and save recipes from their partner search engine super easily. This is amazing! However, there are a few major issues I am finding with using this app that I have found to be EXTREMELY frustrating and making me regret my purchase.

First, recipes and adding items to the list(s). I can find tons and tons of recipes and import them and the platform will create directions, list ingredients, and make it super easy to meal plan...on digital paper (or print if you like). But this is where the good ends. Let's say you want to, idk, add multiple recipes to your next weekly shopping list. Well, the recipes all will most likely have different descriptions of items (i.e. 2 cloves vs 2 large cloves). Thus your list adds two items, both being able to be solved with 1 bulb of garlic, or 1 garlic item being added, not 2 separate items. Not only is this annoying, but also does not remember the prices you put in for the garlic the last time you bought it or added it to the list. Thus making the cost prediction before you shop useless, unless you manually add items to the list based of your favorited items, which makes the whole automatically add items to a shopping list an absolute time-sucking chore. Pointless.

I spent at least 45 minutes making a shopping list, complete with researched products from my local Walmart, and then deleted recipe items in order to try the above feature, and it duplicated items from 2 recipes and NONE of the items had prices that I had previously entered unless I found them and added them in the "recent items" tab. What?! What is the point? Every time I want to remake a recipe I have to enter in all the prices again?? Long story long: it is great for making a list from a recipe but you will not have pricing, totals of all similar ingredients, a store, or any other information pertaining to the ingredients. Your shopping list with say, 5 days of dinners could be a hundred items with multiples duplicated making the list hard to read and shop for the items, let alone have an idea of what they cost or what your total is. It would be quicker to just write down what you need from the recipes tab manually combining the items, but you still wouldn't have the price. UGH! What a mess.

Now, adding an item. To start, you will have no items. None. You must manually enter every item, look up prices or add them in while shopping, for every store you ever buy it from. Let's say its a tomato. It takes 5 minutes or more to find the pertinent information for 1 tomato. Then you go to add a recipe that needs a tomato. It will not use this item you made, so you basically did all that for nothing. So, you must go through your meal plan, and check each item one by one, and see how many tomatoes you need, then go to your list, open your favorites or recent items, and add that many tomatoes to your list, but it won't be tagged for a recipe, but at least you know how many tomatoes you need for the week.

You can edit recipes. So, let's say you want to edit a recipe to include items that you created. You don't do it this way; you have to edit the item in every recipe for a price so that way when you add it, it will have a price. You do so by adding a recipe ingredient to the list and then editing the price. Why? Because every recipe relies on the name of the item, and each recipe's item is its own item, and must be edited separately. Here's how that doesn't work; if you have tomato in another recipe, you have to edit it but it only pertains to the recipe it is added from. So when you create a list from multiple recipes, you may have two or maybe even 5 items on the list that are all tomato. Okay, so how do you get around this? Go to all your recipes (maybe you have 100 of them) one at a time, edit the recipe, find "Large Tomato" or "Medium Tomato" and rename it to "Tomato" instead so the system recognizes its the same item. Except that doesn't work either. So you may have tomato 10 times on your list, all of different amounts needed for recipes, so you just kinda guess how many you need. LOL.

ALSO!!! Do not edit anything other than price after adding a recipe item to a list. If you do, it will not remember the information when you re-add the recipe items later. Wow. This is simply too much work for making a grocery list. Imagine having 50 recipes and you need to verify the pricing on every single ingredient regularly to even have the pricing feature (a premium feature by the way) be even remotely useful. I would rather stick to punching in prices as I shop into my phone calculator.

TLDR: This app could be great. But its not. It is an absolute chore, pointless to use, by the time you are done setting up a list you could have already been to the store and home.

Been using any list for a year now and I really like this app, it is fairly simple to set up and use and does help reduce shopping spend, waste and sticking with budget. The category system employed to manage & filter where recipes and ingredients have multiple tags as opposed to a traditional fixed hierarchy makes finding things simple. I like the new barcode scanner, this makes the weekly shopping list super simple and quick once set up.

I have one big criticism of the app though, there doesn’t appear to be anyway of exporting lists recipe’s calendars etc as text or csv files or linking it to excel / google sheets. I find using web forms to manage / compare prices a little clunky and there is always a risk of data loss with cloud only 3rd party storage. Over time a lot of hours are put in by users to build and maintain their data.
There are work arounds I keep my recipes in an desktop database and create html reports that can then be scraped into AnyList. Lists and prices etc are kept in the same db and exported as text files which can be cut and pasted into AnyList. All of this requires some coding knowledge and is more time consuming than built in import / export un the app would be

dont waste your time. Anylist does not sync to the widget, unless you open the app up. Sort of defeats the purpose of having a widget. support is very ho-hum also.

After having tried several grocery lists over the years I finally settled on AnyList a couple of years ago and have to say it's easily the best out of all those I tried.

The paid version is well worth the money too.

I particularly like the way it lets me organise categories to match the layout of my supermarket - makes shopping much more efficient!

Only downside is that it no longer works with Google Assistant - which I completely understand is something totally out of their control - but even so I still wouldn't consider switching to one that does.

I had been using the free version of this app on and off as I tested other shopping list apps. I've finally fully committed to AnyList. I do pay for the annual subscription since moving in with my partner; being able to share a grocery list with anyone who is shopping makes life so much easier. It's nice to know we didn't both buy milk! I like that it works on both Android and iOS devices and with the paid version I can also update the list from my PC or a browser on any device. The recipe and meal planning features are something I need to take more advantage of. I especially like you can specify which store you want to purchase something at, add photos, edit prices, and just generally make life easier!

Great app with all the required functionality. Has all the groceries on it

I am IN LOVE with this APP! I use it everyday to keep my grocery list up to date. So easy to add or delete items. I share with my husband, so he can add and delete from his devices too! But almost more than the List feature, I LOVE the recipe feature! I am always finding new recipes on the internet, or a friend gives me a new one. It is so easy to upload recipes! I find that about 90% of the recipes I try to upload work just fine. The rest I just copy and paste into the app. It's a little more work, but not as much as it used to be when we had to write every recipe by hand onto recipe cards! (Yes, I'm that old!!!) I love this feature because even when I'm out and about, and we decide what we want for dinner that night, I have all my downloaded recipes on my phone. This allows me to easily stop at the store for needed items, on my way home. I can't say enough good things about this app. We use the Premium version which has a small annual cost. In this day and age of paying subscription fees for just about everything, this is the one I will never be without! Love you, AnyList!

How did I shop without AnyList before? I'll admit there's a slight learning curve when you get started using it, but once you have everything set up the way you like, it's a gem.

You can set up reminders so that whenever you're in the area of a store you like to shop at, you're alerted so you don't forget to pick up items. Works flawlessly with Siri, is reasonably priced and truly makes shopping so much easier.

I especially like that I can add different prices for an item at different stores. So if clam sauce is $1.99 at Target but was $2.69 at the farmer's market, I can make spending decisions that work for me.

It's just an amazing app and support is wonderful. And I mean I really tested these poor people when I first subscribed and didn't know how to set up things. They were kind, patient and friendly.

You know how there are certain apps you'd gladly live without or switch up for pricing reasons? This is not one of those apps. As long as they're around, THIS is the grocery shopping app to choose. And I am not lying; I've purchased and tested SEVERAL including but not limited to ListEase (used for years, horrible), Cozi and ThatShoppingList. They don't even come close to what AnyList does so well.

This app organizes my shopping lists (as well as any other lists I want to create like movies, wines I want to try, etc.) and saves me money in the process.

And as a sidebar to anyone who already uses AnyList, what I like to do is enter prices of new items I purchase into AnyList once I'm home with all my receipts. Over time you have your own database of what YOUR regularly purchased items cost. I now know what to purchase on Amazon and what not to.

Also, now that they've added the barcode scanning feature, I'm in heaven. I didn't think the app could get better and just like that, they've done it again. There's nothing I need that AnyList doesn't give me.

I could go on and on. Just check out AnyList. It's worth it.

I have to say that l am forever in Jason's debt and would recommend this app whether it is the "free" or the paid app. I have been with it more than thirteen years on the "free" app and decided to try the upgrade. Needless to say when l upgraded something got "lost in translation" and my free app information was deleted. I emailed the support team and Jason (one of the developers) said that I had lost my information. I was devastated. I emailed the support team to find out that all my information was gone. Numerous emails later and l am glad to report that not only did Jason answer all my emails in a timely manner but low and below he went beyond and was able to restore my information and l will be eternally grateful to him. This is a company that truly goes beyond to make sure that their subscribers are taken care of. Kudos to Jason/John

Been using AnyList for years. About time I gave a review for this perfect, robust, feature full app. AnyList is the appropriate name. I have standard grocery list, a travel list (putting items on list as I think of them for travel), a to-do list, a medication list that has all our medications, dosage,etc. even have a category for medications not taking any more and the reason. When we go to drs office and they ask what meds we are taking I pull out my list. I have a books and movies to watch list.
The recipe section alone is worth it. See a recipe on the internet you like? Just click the forward button and select AnyList Recipe Import. Voila!! It imports a fully editable recipe (not just a pdf file)
BEST app ever!

We have used this app for many years and even contacted the developers to suggest improvements. We found them responsive and awesome. We use pretty much every function of AnyList and use it everyday. It is fun to grab recipes off the web that you want to make. We have a category of recipes we call ‘new to try’ and try to pull from that category weekly. Each week we put together a meal plan together. We don’t always follow it exactly but we know we have ingredients for those dishes and really notice how much it reduces our food waste. And my husband creates favorite items and the store you can find them at, so we remember where we get our favorite oat milk or chocolate chips or whatever. Weeks we don’t use it I notice how our eating slides into less healthy less balanced territory. It is truly a great little app that is central to our lives!!

I am a real and true reviewer. I live in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina. I have used the Any List App for many years, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! I have recommended it to many people. I am such a strong supporter of this great App that I even pull out my phone and open up the App and let them see my own personal lists and demonstrate how it works. One would think I developed Any List myself due to the promotion I give it and how much I brag on it, but, unfortunately, I did not. I contacted the developer in the past just to express my appreciation for the incredible difference their lists have made in my life and to let them know how very much I love it. (I received a very nice response.) I consider it one of my best friends because it makes my life so much easier! I highly recommend Any List to everyone who wants to gain better control of their very hectic lives. I guarantee that you will love it too! I am receiving absolutely nothing whatsoever for my review, and it is totally unsolicited. Just a strong supporter based on my own personal experience. 😀

I paid for complete access in 8/21 and was able to get Anylist for the Web until a few days ago. Now the account shows that I have a basic account and I don't have web access. I have emailed them 4 times, and even sent a copy of my bank statement, but haven't gotten a reply. The app is nice, but, customer support is terrible.

Love this App, helps me shop and plan food better. I can make lists from my receipies which saves alot of time. they seem to listen to what you want and then try and do it for you. first downloaded the free App but to upgrade needed to pay in $ no good for me as in the Uk. Sent them an email and sent a link for £ wonderful service.

Used the free basic version. Set up a grocery shopping list and can change and sort categories into my supermarket aisle order. Used the online help which was good. I am really happy with this app. No problems so far.

Absolutely love this app! My husband and I have used this app for years. It's a great tool for organizing your shopping. We have itemized lists for not only our favorite stores, but have developed lists that identify the food/drink preferences of our children and grandchildren when they come to visit. It's a real time and memory saver for seniors! Would love to be able to "share" the grocery items between the stores, but that comes with the paid version of the app which we don't have. If I could give it more than 5 stars, I would!

I am paying for this app and can’t use it. Every single time I open this app it crashes. I have uninstalled it and reinstalled it; it does the exact same thing. Will not be buying this again... . I’ve been having this issue for a few days now. We sent an email to the developer but still no response.

Great product supported by great people - highly recommend. Easy and simple to use.