Food & Drink · head-to-head
Open Food Facts vs RecipeAPI
Open Food Facts is a crowdsourced, open database of food products worldwide, covering ingredients, nutrition facts, allergens, and Nutri-Score/Eco-Score ratings, with full bulk exports available alongside the live API. A live GET against the real gateway, world.openfoodfacts.org, returned a genuine product record while carrying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, resolving cors unknown -> yes; auth None was reconfirmed by the same keyless 200.
RecipeAPI.io searches recipes and returns parsed ingredient lists, estimated nutrition, and step-by-step cooking instructions, offered as a metered SaaS with a 500-request/month free tier before paid plans apply. A live GET against the real gateway, recipeapi.io/api/v1/recipes, returned a genuine 401 'Invalid or missing API key' JSON error while carrying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, reconfirming both cors yes and API Key auth in the same probe.
| Open Food Facts | RecipeAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | API Key |
| Pricing | free | freemium |
| Formats | JSON, CSV | JSON |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
Open Food Facts needs no API key, while RecipeAPI requires API Key — pick Open Food Facts to start without signup.