Open Source · Self-Hosted · Free Forever

Recipes deserve
memories.

Other apps store ingredients and steps. Zest stores the Christmas dinner with your family, the first cake your kid helped bake, the date night recipe that became a tradition.

docker compose up Try it free

No cloud. No subscriptions. No telemetry. Your data stays yours.

Not just a recipe manager.

Every recipe has a story. Zest is the only app that lets you tell it.

Memories

Attach photos, dates, locations, and stories to any recipe. Your collection becomes a culinary diary that grows more valuable over time.

Moment Cards

Generate gorgeous shareable images from your memories. Perfect for Instagram Stories, WhatsApp, or anywhere you want to share a moment with soul.

Cookbooks

Curate recipe collections with custom covers and personal notes. Share via link or export as beautiful PDFs — perfect for gifting.

Everything you'd expect,
and things you wouldn't.

4-Tier Recipe Scraper

Paste any URL. Zest tries 4 extraction methods. It will find the recipe.

"What to Cook?"

Tell Zest what ingredients you have. It tells you what you can make, ranked by match.

Smart Shopping List

Add ingredients from multiple recipes. Zest combines and scales them automatically.

Portion Calculator

Scale any recipe from 1 to 100 servings. Beautiful fractions: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4.

PDF Export

Professional cookbook PDFs with cover page and proper typography. Made for printing.

Auto Backups

Scheduled database + image backups. Manual export/import. Full disaster recovery.

Cooking Mode

Full-screen step-by-step with auto-detected timers and Wake Lock. Your screen stays on while you cook.

Dark Mode

Full dark theme for late-night recipe browsing. Respects your preference.

Secure by Default

JWT auth, bcrypt passwords, rate limiting. Your data never leaves your server.

The moment loop.

Every recipe manager stops at "save". Zest goes further.

Cook

Make something amazing

Capture

Save the moment in Zest

Create

Generate a Moment Card

Share

Not just a photo — a story

Running in 30 seconds.

Seriously. One command.

Requires Git and Docker installed.

terminal 
$ git clone https://github.com/MartinSantosT/myzest.git
$ cd myzest
$ cp .env.example .env
$ docker compose up -d

🍊 Zest is running at http://localhost:9925
~200 MB

Docker image size

SQLite

No external database

0

External services needed

Read the full manual

Prefer someone else handles the server? Try the SaaS version — free forever, up to 99 recipes.

Try Zest SaaS free
🍊

"We don't save recipes.
We save the moments
around the table."

Food is more than ingredients and steps. It's culture, family, memory. Zest was built with this simple truth: the recipe is the anchor, but the moment is the treasure.

Start your food diary