Recipe Cost Per Serving Calculator
Work out what a recipe really costs — free, no sign-up, no ads between you and the numbers. Enter each ingredient's package price and the amount you actually use, and get the total recipe cost, the cost per serving, and a breakdown showing which ingredients drive the bill. Your recipes are saved in your browser and never uploaded.
Saved recipes
Click a recipe to load it. To rename, edit the recipe name below — it saves as you type. Everything stays in this browser.
Recipe
Ingredients
Result
How the unit conversion works
Each ingredient's cost is package price × (amount used ÷ package size), with both amounts converted to a common base first. Weights convert within the mass family (1 kg = 1000 g, 1 lb = 453.592 g, 1 oz = 28.3495 g), volumes within the volume family (1 l = 1000 ml), and "each" counts items (eggs, tortillas). The calculator will not convert across families — 100 ml of flour does not weigh 100 g, and the right factor depends on the ingredient's density. If a row mixes weight and volume it is flagged and left out of the total rather than silently guessed; switch both sides to the same family using the numbers on your package.
Why cost per serving beats guessing
Whole-recipe totals mislead: a $18 tray bake that feeds eight (≈ $2.25 a serving) is cheaper eating than a $9 dish that feeds two. Per-serving numbers also make honest comparisons against takeout, meal kits, and school-canteen prices, and the breakdown shows where the money actually goes — it is usually one or two ingredients, not the pinch of spices.
Batch cooking
Use the ×2 / ×3 scale buttons to price a double or triple batch: ingredient amounts and the total scale up, and if you also raise the servings to match, you'll see the per-serving cost — which is where batch cooking usually wins, because pantry staples and packaging overhead spread across more portions.
How accurate is this?
The arithmetic is exact for the numbers you enter, but the result is still an estimate of true cost: it uses the prices you type (not live store data) and assumes the unused part of each package keeps its value for later cooking. Trim waste, spoilage, and energy costs aren't modeled. Tiny amounts are never rounded away — a pinch of salt shows as "< $0.01" and its true fraction of a cent is still counted in the total.
Do you have affiliate relationships?
No. There are currently no affiliate links, sponsored placements, or paid recommendations on this page. If that ever changes, it will be clearly disclosed here.
Are my recipes uploaded anywhere?
No. The page is fully client-side; recipes are stored only in your browser's localStorage.