WP Recipe Maker and Tasty Recipes are both solid plugins, both have everything you need for SEO and functional, good-looking recipe cards. As a food blog developer, I get asked about these two plugins a lot, so here’s a rundown for you of the differences, pros, and cons. (And which one I recommend.)
1. Ease of Use
As far as adding actual recipes to posts, both are very easy. It’s all self-explanatory, you just fill out the fields with the appropriate details.
WP Tasty is a little simpler since it doesn’t have as many options…but it doesn’t have many options.
2. Customization Options
- WP Recipe Maker: Offers practically unlimited customization—you can completely customize the look of your recipe cards to match your blog’s design. It will take some time to get the hang of designing with it, but your options are wide open. But if don’t need a custom card, or you’re not ready to, you can just start with one of their premade templates.
- WP Tasty Recipes: While there are some things you can customize, it’s a lot more limited than WP Recipe Maker. The premade designs are good looking, but they may or may not match your blog. If you are a developer, you can build your own card design from scratch, but Tasty Recipes doesn’t support that, and you won’t be able to take advantage of new features that they release while using a custom design.
3. SEO Features
- WP Recipe Maker: Really great SEO capabilities with built-in schema markup to help your recipes show up in Google’s rich snippets. Plus, it integrates with popular SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math.
- WP Tasty Recipes: Also strong in SEO, with solid schema markup support.
4. Pricing
- WP Recipe Maker: Offers a free version with basic features, which is great if you’re just starting out. The premium versions range from $49 to $149 per year, depending on the features you need.
The lowest tier of premium includes things like customizable nutrition labels, ingredient and equipment links, and a call-to-action section (usually “Did you make this? Share on…” that you see at the bottom of recipe cards). - WP Tasty Recipes: No free version here. It’s $99-$250 per year, which includes all features and updates.
5. Unique Features
There are way too many features to list, but here are some highlights of each:
- WP Recipe Maker (paid versions):
- Nutrition label generator.
- Adjustable servings with automatic ingredient recalculations.
- Ingredient and equipment affiliate links
- Video integration for step-by-step guides.
- QR codes on printable recipes
- WP Tasty Recipes:
- It includes a spot for a nutrition label, but you have to either do the nutrition calculations yourself, or subscribe to another service to have it done automatically.
- Affiliate links for recommended equipment if you purchase a second plugin.
- Focused on keeping things lightweight and fast.
6. Support and Updates
- WP Recipe Maker: Brecht is known for great customer support and regular updates to keep the plugin running smoothly with the latest WordPress versions, in addition to always adding new features.
- WP Tasty Recipes: Support is okay, it can take a few back-and-forth emails before you get to someone who can help with your problem. Updates are consistent though.
Final Thoughts
Both WP Recipe Maker and Tasty Recipes are solid choices, but as a developer, I highly recommend WP Recipe Maker. I’ve been working with both for years and when the two are compared, Tasty feels so limited and restricted, while the options with WPRM feel endless–not just with customizing the look of the recipe cards, but with the functionality options the developer is constantly adding.
If you’re in the very beginning of food blogging, I’d go with the free version of WP Recipe Maker, if you’ve already started, or are planning on growing quickly and want more options, definitely try the WP Recipe Maker Pro.
