Freecost

Freecost is a food-costing tool for restaurant kitchens, available on Android and the web. It provides a shared place to track ingredient prices, recipe costs, and menu margins, and automatically calculates food-cost percentages for recipes and menu items. Its ingredient database records prices, vendors, pack sizes, and allergens. Users can scan delivery invoices; extracted prices update ingredient costs and affected recipes. Inventory counts work offline and include dated dollar valuations, while waste logging shows weekly cost trends. Kitchen materials include printable recipe and build cards, order guides, and prep lists, and one account can cover multiple kitchens. CSV and Excel imports are included. The Android app supports full offline use, including inventory counting. The free plan has unlimited recipes, menu items, and ingredients, with no per-seat pricing or usage cap, and no trial. The listed scope excludes labor scheduling, purchase-order approval workflows, vendor management across several locations, and catering event and BEO management.

Freecost brings recipe costing, ingredient pricing, invoice scanning, inventory counts, and waste tracking into one kitchen tool. The free plan has no usage cap or per-seat pricing, but it does not cover several operational workflows such as labor scheduling and purchase-order approvals.

Freecost suits restaurant kitchen operators who want to track food costs, ingredient prices, inventory, and waste. Its offline Android mode may suit kitchens that need to count inventory without connectivity.

Freecost is a kitchen costing and operations app for restaurant operators who want ingredient, recipe, and inventory records in one place. Its no-cost, uncapped plan makes it a strong fit for kitchens focused on food costs and waste; it is a weaker choice when formal purchasing, staffing, or catering workflows are essential.

Overview

Freecost connects ingredient prices to recipe and menu costs, calculating food-cost percentages automatically. Scanning delivery invoices can extract prices and update ingredient costs and affected recipes, tying supplier changes to their impact on menu margins.

Beyond costing, the app covers offline inventory counts with dated dollar valuations and waste logging with weekly cost trends. Printable recipe and build cards, order guides, and prep lists support kitchen work, while multiple kitchens can share one account. Android's full offline mode is useful for counting stock where connectivity is unreliable. The product does not cover labor scheduling, purchase-order approvals, vendor management across several locations, or catering events and BEOs.

Key features

Costing and ingredients

The ingredient database tracks prices, vendors, pack sizes, and allergens. Recipe and menu costing, yield and portion scaling, menu profitability, and ingredient price updates give operators a connected view of food costs. Invoice parsing runs on Brobata's own infrastructure, and invoice images are not sent to a third-party AI service.

Inventory and kitchen workflows

Offline inventory counts retain dated dollar valuations, and waste logs show weekly cost trends. Recipe and build cards, order guides, and prep lists make the tool useful beyond menu calculations. CSV and Excel imports provide a way to bring existing data in, but teams seeking integrations beyond those imports should not assume they are supported.

The privacy policy says data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2+ and at rest with Supabase AES-256 disk encryption, with database row-level security. Support is available by email at [email protected].

Pricing

Free — free. The plan includes unlimited recipes, menu items, and ingredients, multiple kitchens on one account, no per-seat pricing or usage cap, Android full offline mode, and CSV and Excel import. It has no trial clock and requires no credit card. That makes it unusually accessible for small kitchens and operators evaluating a costing workflow without committing to a subscription. The trade-off is functional rather than quota-based: the plan still lacks labor scheduling, purchase-order approvals, multi-location vendor management, and catering event and BEO management.

Platforms

Freecost is available on Android and the web. The Android app supports full offline use, including inventory counting, while the web version provides another way to access the shared kitchen records.

Who it's for

Freecost suits restaurant kitchens and operators who need to monitor ingredient prices, recipe costs, margins, inventory, and waste without seat charges or usage caps. Multiple kitchens per account make it relevant to operators with more than one site, especially if their needs center on costing and stock visibility. Kitchens that depend on staffing schedules, purchasing approvals, vendor coordination across locations, or catering and BEO management should choose a broader operations system.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Unlimited recipes, menu items, and ingredients on a free plan remove cost and usage barriers for core costing work.
• Pros: Invoice scans can update ingredient costs and affected recipes, connecting delivery prices to margin calculations.
• Pros: Offline inventory counts, dated valuations, and waste-cost trends add useful stock and loss tracking.
• Pros: Multiple kitchens on one account and no per-seat pricing suit teams that want to avoid charges tied to headcount.
• Cons: No labor scheduling or purchase-order approval workflows means it cannot cover those operational tasks.
• Cons: It lacks vendor management across several locations and catering event and BEO management, limiting its fit for more complex operators.
• Cons: CSV and Excel import are the stated integration options; kitchens needing other product integrations may need another tool.

Alternatives

For more options in this category, see Restaurant Recipe Costing Software.

• NxtEdge is a paid Android, iOS, and web option with custom pricing based on modules, locations, and operational requirements; consider it when a configurable paid subscription better matches the operation.
• Galley offers a free plan and an SMB Accelerator at $99 a month, with recipes, menus, costing, simplified onboarding, and no long contracts; choose it if those paid-plan terms suit your team.
• FoodNotify is a paid Android, iOS, and web option. Its Starter plan is €174.90 a month for one location, procurement and recipes, self-setup, and one automated supplier connection; it fits readers seeking those stated procurement and supplier features.
• Optimum Control is a paid Android, iOS, and Windows option with a free trial; OC Mobile costs $25 a month, while OC Pro costs $150 a month and includes OC Mobile plus a $250 setup fee. Consider it if a trial and those paid tiers fit your budget.
• JAMIX offers a paid Kitchen Intelligence System with custom pricing based on kitchens, operational scope, and selected plan, without user-based charges; it may suit operators comparing quote-based pricing.
• Savrsoft is a paid Android, API, iOS, and web option with a free trial; its Non-profit plan costs $49 a month for registered non-profits and includes Standard features after exemption-certificate verification.
• MenuEdge is a web and Android option for readers comparing another product in this category.
• Chefy offers a web-based free Core plan for a first venue, with costing, recipes, bulk product import, wastage recording, real-time costing updates, and team inclusion; it is a relevant alternative for a single venue prioritizing those features.

Verdict

Choose Freecost if your kitchen wants unlimited, no-cost recipe and ingredient costing plus inventory and waste tracking, with offline Android counts and support for multiple kitchens. Its main advantage is getting those core workflows without seat fees or usage caps. Look elsewhere if staffing, purchase approvals, multi-location vendor management, or catering operations are central to your work.