Question 1

What is Riff.kitchen?

Accepted Answer

An AI kitchen manager that cooks from what you already own, rather than sending you shopping. Riff.kitchen is an AI kitchen manager. You tell it what you have - by typing, or by photographing a shelf - and it gives you recipes you can cook right now with those ingredients. The difference from a recipe search engine is that it remembers. Your pantry persists between visits, it tracks expiry dates, and the meal planner reads both, so it prioritises the food that is about to go off. A chatbot starts from nothing every time you open it. Recipe generation, the food scanner, pantry management, shopping lists and simple weekly planning are all free.

Question 2

Is Riff.kitchen free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Recipes, scanning, the pantry, shopping lists and simple planning cost nothing and are not trial-limited. Yes, and not as a trial. Recipe generation, the food scanner, pantry management with expiry tracking, shopping lists and simple weekly planning are free to use. Chef’s Pass ($6.99/month or $49.99/year) adds hands-free voice cooking, the advanced macro-aware planner and 30 AI food photography credits a month. Chef’s Pass also keeps the experience ad free.

Question 3

Is there a mobile app?

Accepted Answer

No separate app, and you do not need one - the site is mobile-first and the camera scanner works in the browser. There is no separate app to download. The site is built mobile-first and everything works in your phone’s browser, including the camera scanner. You can add it to your home screen from your browser’s share menu, after which it opens full-screen and behaves like an app.

Question 4

How is Riff different from other meal planners?

Accepted Answer

Most planners tell you what to buy. Riff starts from what you already have and cooks what is closest to going off. Most meal planners begin with a menu and hand you a shopping list. Riff begins with your kitchen. Because the pantry persists and carries expiry dates, the planner can rank recipes by what needs eating first. That is the part a stateless recipe generator cannot do, however good its recipes are - it does not know what is in your fridge or how long it has been there. The practical result is less waste and fewer top-up shops, rather than a tidier week of meals you still have to buy for.

Question 5

How does the food scanner work?

Accepted Answer

Photograph an open shelf and the AI reads the ingredients into your pantry. The photo is never stored. Tap the camera icon in the ingredient box and take one photo of an open fridge or pantry shelf. The image is sent to the AI model, which identifies the ingredients it can see and adds them to your pantry as an editable list. You do not have to type an inventory, and you can correct anything it got wrong afterwards. The photo itself is not stored. It is sent for analysis and discarded - only the resulting list of ingredients is saved.

Question 6

The scanner missed some ingredients

Accepted Answer

Light and one clear shot matter more than anything. Anything hidden or in an opaque container will not be seen. Good light and a single clear shot of an open shelf work far better than a dim or crowded photo. Two things it genuinely cannot do: read items hidden behind other items, and see inside opaque containers or packaging that does not show the contents. Anything it missed can be typed in, and the pantry stays editable - you can rename, re-date or remove any item at any time.

Question 7

How does expiry tracking work?

Accepted Answer

Items carry a date, the pantry warns you as it approaches, and the planner cooks those ingredients first. Pantry items can carry an expiry date, which you can set when you add them or edit later. As a date approaches, the item is flagged in your pantry and surfaces in the "use it up" section on the home page. The reason it matters is the planner: it reads those dates and prioritises recipes that consume the ingredients closest to going off. That is the whole point of keeping the pantry current - it is what turns a list into something that saves you money.

Question 8

What is a Chef Persona?

Accepted Answer

A setting that changes the tone, technique and complexity of the recipes you get from the same ingredients. A Chef Persona changes how recipes are written and what kind of cooking they suggest. The same three ingredients can come back as comfort food, as a macro-focused meal, or as something more technical. It sits alongside the other controls in "Customize Chef" - cuisine, meal type, maximum time and available equipment - so you can steer the result rather than accept whatever comes out first. Dietary needs are handled separately and are not a matter of style: allergies and diets filter every generation.

Question 9

What is Live Cooking mode?

Accepted Answer

A hands-free voice chef you can talk to while cooking. Included with Chef’s Pass. Live Cooking reads a recipe aloud and answers questions while you cook, so you do not have to touch a screen with messy hands. You can ask it to move on, repeat a step, or tell you what to use instead of an ingredient you do not have. It is part of Chef’s Pass rather than the free tier, because each spoken exchange is a real AI request. Steps are read using your chosen measurement system, so the numbers you hear match the ones on screen.

Question 10

How does the weekly planner choose recipes?

Accepted Answer

It starts from what you own and cooks the ingredients closest to expiring first. The planner reads your pantry rather than a catalogue. It builds a week from what you already have, and it orders things so the ingredients nearest their expiry date get cooked first. Simple weekly planning is free. The advanced planner, which targets calories and macros against a body profile, is part of Chef’s Pass. Anything the plan needs and you do not have goes onto the shopping list, so the gaps are explicit rather than assumed.

Question 11

How do allergies and dietary restrictions work?

Accepted Answer

They are applied to every generation as a filter, not a suggestion - set them once in your account. Diets, allergies and dislikes are set once in your account and then applied to every recipe generation, rather than being something you have to restate each time. They are treated as a constraint on the output, not a preference to be balanced against an interesting recipe. One honest caveat: this is an AI system, and if you have a severe allergy you should still read the ingredient list before cooking. Check anything you are relying on, the same as you would with a recipe from a book.

Question 12

Can I switch between metric and US measurements?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in your account. It applies everywhere, including the steps read aloud in cooking mode. Yes. The setting lives in your account and applies everywhere - ingredient lists, instructions, and the steps read aloud in Live Cooking. Conversions are deliberately cook-friendly rather than literal. 200°C is shown as 400°F because no oven dial has 392 on it, and small masses stay in grams because 3 g rounded to ounces is "0 oz". There is a fuller explanation, with the conversions themselves, on our cooking conversions page.

Question 13

Which countries does the Instacart hand-off work in?

Accepted Answer

The United States and Canada. Everywhere else the shopping list works exactly the same, you just take it to the shop. The Instacart hand-off works in the United States and Canada, which is where Instacart operates. Everywhere else the shopping list behaves identically - it is built from the gaps between a recipe and your pantry. You take it to the shop yourself instead of sending it to a cart. The shopping list is a convenience either way. The point of Riff is the food already in your kitchen.

Question 14

What do I get with Chef’s Pass?

Accepted Answer

Hands-free voice cooking, the advanced macro-aware planner, 30 AI food photography credits a month, and no ads. Chef’s Pass is $6.99 a month or $49.99 a year, and adds three things to everything already in the free tier: - Live Cooking - the hands-free voice chef, with no session limit - The advanced weekly planner, which targets calories and macros against a body profile - 30 AI food photography credits each month, with top-up packs available if you want more - No ads, permanently Everything else - recipe generation, the food scanner, the pantry, shopping lists and simple weekly planning - is free and stays free.

Question 15

How do I cancel Chef’s Pass?

Accepted Answer

Go to /account, open the Plan tab and cancel. No call, no retention flow, and you keep access to the end of the period you paid for. Open your account page, choose "Plan & credits", and cancel there. There is no confirmation call and no retention flow designed to talk you out of it. Your access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for, rather than stopping the moment you cancel. Nothing further is charged. You can also manage the subscription directly through Paddle, who handle the billing, using the billing portal link on the same page.

Question 16

What happens to my recipes and pantry if I cancel?

Accepted Answer

You keep all of it. Cancelling returns you to the free tier; nothing is deleted. You keep everything. Cancelling returns you to the free tier, which still includes unlimited recipe generation, the food scanner, your pantry with expiry tracking, shopping lists and the simple planner. What you lose is hands-free voice cooking, the macro-aware planner and the monthly image credits. Nothing is deleted, and recipes you have saved or published stay exactly as they are.

Question 17

Can I get a refund?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Paddle is the merchant of record and processes refunds - see the refund policy for timescales. Yes. Payments are handled by Paddle as merchant of record, and refunds go through them. Our refund policy page sets out the process and the timescales. If something went wrong on our side, contact us and we will sort it out rather than pointing at a policy.

Question 18

Do you store my card details?

Accepted Answer

No - we never see them. Paddle is the merchant of record and handles all card data. No, and we never see them. Paddle is the merchant of record: they process the payment, handle the card data and are responsible for sales tax. Riff.kitchen only ever receives confirmation that a subscription is active.

Question 19

Do image credits roll over?

Accepted Answer

Monthly allowance credits do not. Top-up packs you buy separately never expire. The 30 credits included with Chef’s Pass are a monthly allowance and reset on renewal rather than accumulating. Top-up packs bought separately do not expire. If you need more in a given month, those are the ones to use - and the allowance is always spent first, so buying a pack never wastes it.

Question 20

Can free users generate food images?

Accepted Answer

No. AI food photography is a Chef’s Pass feature; free accounts cannot buy or use image credits. No. AI image generation is part of Chef’s Pass. Subscribers get 30 credits a month and can buy top-up packs if they run out. Free accounts cannot purchase or use image credits. Every other part of the free tier - recipes, scanning, pantry, shopping lists, simple planning - is unaffected. Image generation is the one feature with a per-use cost to us that is large enough to meter, which is why it is the only thing counted in credits at all.

Question 21

What happens to the photos I take of my fridge?

Accepted Answer

They are sent for analysis and discarded. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or used for training. The photo is sent to the AI model for analysis and is not stored. We do not upload it to our servers, we do not keep a copy, and it is not used to train anything. Once the ingredients have been identified the image is gone. Only the resulting list of items is saved, to your pantry.

Question 22

Is my pantry private?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Only recipes you explicitly publish are public, and you can unpublish them at any time. Your pantry, shopping list, meal plans and saved recipes are visible only to you. The only thing that becomes public is a recipe you explicitly choose to publish to the community cookbook, and you can unpublish it at any time. When you publish, you can do so anonymously. Riff never shows your real name - publishing uses a display name you control, and the default is deliberately not identifying.

Question 23

Can I delete my account and everything in it?

Accepted Answer

Yes, yourself, from /account - no email and no survey. Published recipes are anonymised rather than deleted. Yes, and you do it yourself. Open your account page and use the "Delete account" section. There is no form to email, no survey, and nothing to hunt for. It removes your pantry, shopping list, meal plans, saved recipes, usage history and profile, and then deletes the sign-in identity itself. One deliberate exception: recipes you published to the community are anonymised in place rather than deleted, so other people’s saved copies and collections do not break. The account page says so next to the button.

Question 24

Recipe generation failed. What now?

Accepted Answer

Try again first - most failures are a momentary timeout. Nothing is charged for a failed generation. Try again first. The most common cause is a momentary timeout from the AI provider, and a second attempt usually works. If it keeps failing, reduce the number of ingredients slightly - very long lists occasionally produce a malformed response. Nothing is charged for a failed generation. If a credit was ever taken for something that did not produce a result, it is returned.

Question 25

Why am I being told I have reached a limit?

Accepted Answer

Guests get a small allowance before signing up. Signed-in accounts have a daily fair-use ceiling that resets at midnight UTC. There are two different ceilings. - Guests get a small allowance before being asked to create a free account. Creating one is free and lifts it immediately. - Signed-in accounts have a daily fair-use ceiling that ordinary cooking never reaches. It exists to stop automated abuse driving up costs, and it resets at midnight UTC. Neither is a paywall. If you have hit the signed-in ceiling during normal use, tell us - that is a limit set wrongly, not a limit you broke.

Question 26

How accurate is the nutrition information?

Accepted Answer

It is an AI estimate from the ingredient list. Good for comparing recipes; not suitable for medical use. It is an estimate, generated from the ingredient list, and should be treated as a guide rather than a measurement. It is useful for comparing one recipe against another and for rough calorie targets. It is not suitable for medical or clinical purposes. If you are managing a condition that depends on precise numbers, verify them independently.

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