Recipe Cost Per Serving Estimator

WHAT IT DOES

Recipe Cost Per Serving Estimator helps you understand exactly how much your meals cost to make. It automatically extracts ingredient lists and serving sizes from recipe pages, then calculates the total recipe cost and cost per serving using either default ingredient prices or your custom price database. You can set a markup percentage to account for overhead or profit margin, override serving sizes, and see a detailed breakdown of each ingredient's cost. The tool supports multiple currencies and saves your ingredient price history so you don't have to re-enter prices for common items like flour, eggs, milk, or chicken. Perfect for meal planning, budget tracking, food bloggers calculating recipe costs, or anyone who wants to cook smarter and save money.

WHERE IT RUNS

This script runs on any website that contains recipe content—food blogs, recipe aggregators, cooking sites, meal planning platforms, and social media recipe posts. It operates entirely within your browser tab, reading the page's DOM and structured data to find ingredient lists. The script cannot access other tabs, your browsing history, bookmarks, downloads, or any data outside the current page. All settings and ingredient price data are stored locally using GM_setValue and never transmitted anywhere.

HOW TO USE

After installing with the BotGentz extension, the script automatically detects when you're on a recipe page and attempts to extract ingredients and serving sizes. The panel displays the total cost, cost per serving, and a breakdown of each ingredient's estimated cost. You can change the currency using the dropdown menu, adjust the markup percentage to include overhead or profit, and override the serving size if the automatic detection gets it wrong. The ingredient price database lets you customize default costs for over 20 common ingredients (flour, eggs, chicken, beef, etc.) and add your own custom items. Prices are saved automatically and persist across sessions. To copy the cost summary to your clipboard for use in spreadsheets or notes, click "Copy Summary."

THE REAL MECHANISM

The script uses a multi-stage extraction pipeline to find recipe data regardless of how it's structured on the page. First, it scans all JSON-LD script blocks and recursively traverses their object graph to find Schema.org Recipe nodes, extracting recipeYield (servings) and recipeIngredient arrays. If JSON-LD is not present, it falls back to microdata using itemscope and itemtype attributes. Finally, if no structured data exists, it scans visible text for common ingredient patterns including unit keywords like cups, tablespoons, grams, ounces, and pounds. When calculating costs, the script parses quantity prefixes (e.g., "2 cups" parses to quantity 2) and applies the user's default cost per unit for that ingredient. If no custom price exists, it falls back to a built-in database of average food costs. The markup percentage is applied multiplicatively, and all costs are formatted with the selected currency symbol. Results are rendered using pure DOM methods with no innerHTML from untrusted data.

THE PANEL

The Recipe Cost Per Serving Estimator panel is a BGPanel component that you can drag anywhere on your screen by its header. It snaps to the nearest edge when released, keeping your workspace organized. The panel collapses to a small bubble showing only the emoji icon when minimised—click to expand it again. You can resize the panel horizontally to see more settings and results. Press the Escape key to collapse the panel instantly. Your panel position and size are saved per-site, so it remembers where you like it on your favorite recipe sites.

PLEASE NOTE

This script requires the free BotGentz browser extension to function. Recipe websites vary widely in how they structure ingredient data—some use Schema.org JSON-LD, others use microdata, and many use custom formats. The script aims to extract whatever it can, but if a page uses non-standard or heavily formatted ingredient lists, manual adjustment of servings and prices may be needed. Ingredient prices are estimates based on average US food costs—you should adjust them to match your local grocery store prices for accurate budgeting. The script never reads or writes password fields, hidden inputs, or file inputs. It stores only your currency preference, markup percentage, and ingredient price database locally. No recipe data, ingredient lists, or cost information is ever collected, transmitted, or shared.