The best shared grocery list app, honestly compared

We make Home List, so read this the way you would read any maker’s list: the facts are checked and dated, the verdicts are ours, and we say where a competitor is the better pick.

What “shared” has to mean before anything else counts

A shared grocery list has one job a note or a text thread cannot do: when one person adds milk at home, the person already in the store sees it before they reach the checkout. Everything else is secondary. So before comparing features, three questions decide whether an app is in the running at all.

Does it work on both kinds of phone? Most households are mixed. If one of you has an iPhone and the other has Android, Apple Reminders is out — it shares only between Apple Accounts — and so is anything without a real Android app. Is it free for the second person? Some apps are free for one and charge the household. Does the sync go both ways, instantly? A list that refreshes when you reopen the app is a list that gets shopped from twice.

Every app below passes those tests except where noted. After that, the differences are about what the app does once the list exists.

The shortlist

AnyList — the category leader, and deservedly: recipes, meal planning, store-specific lists, a mature app on both platforms. The catch is that the good parts cost money. AnyList Complete is $9.99 a year for one person or $14.99 for a household, and as of 17 September 2026 it is what unlocks the web and Mac apps, item photos, price tracking and location reminders. Free AnyList is a very good shared list with basic recipes; the rest is Complete. Home List vs AnyList.

OurGroceries — the fastest, plainest shared list there is, on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, the web and Alexa. It sorts items into aisles and syncs close to instantly. The free version shows ads at the bottom of the screen; removing them costs about $0.99 a month, $5.99 a year or $19.99 once, and one purchase clears the ads for everyone sharing your lists. No store reminders, no receipts, no chores. Home List vs OurGroceries.

Bring! — tile-based, Swiss-made and hugely popular in Europe, with recipes and retailer offers built in. Its App Store listing says it contains advertising and lists location, identifiers and usage data as used to track you; Premium is $8.99 a year or $1.99 a month. Its notifications are about deals at stores near you, not about your list.

Listonic — a strong, simple list with prices and a total-cost calculator, free with ads on iPhone, Android and the web. Premium removes the ads, with monthly, yearly and lifetime options from about a dollar to twenty. Its privacy label lists location, user content and identifiers as used to track you. Rated 4.7 from around 10,000 ratings on the App Store.

Cozi — not a list app but a family organizer with a shopping list inside it, next to a calendar, to-do lists and a meal planner. Free with ads; Cozi Gold ($39) removes them and adds month view on the phone, Shopping Mode and more reminders. If you want meal planning and a family calendar in one place, Cozi is the incumbent. Home List vs Cozi.

Apple Reminders — the best free option if every single person is on an iPhone. The grocery list type sorts items into sections automatically, location reminders are built in, and there is nothing to install. It shares only between Apple Accounts through iCloud, so one Android phone in the house rules it out.

Google Keep — a shared checklist that works wherever anyone has a Google account: iPhone, Android, any browser. No ads, no cost, no aisle sorting, and since Keep’s reminders moved into Google Tasks the location reminders are gone. Good enough for two people who mostly shop together.

ShopBuddy — a newer, deliberately small app that is free forever with no ads and no premium tier, sorts items into store sections, and has a one-handed shopping mode. As of 17 September 2026 it has an iPhone app and a web app, with Android described as a closed beta. It does one thing and does it politely.

Home List — ours. A shared list with the same live sync and aisle sorting as the others, free on iPhone, Android and the web with no ads on any tier. The difference is what happens after the list is written: when someone arrives at a pinned store with items unchecked, their phone reminds them, and the rest of the household can be told so they can add the thing they forgot. It also scans receipts into a record of what the household spends, and it carries chores and a shared calendar. It does not do recipes or meal planning.

Side by side

Free tiers as of 17 September 2026. “Ads” means the free version shows them. The store column is the one that separates a list from a reminder.