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Recipe Scaler Calculator

The one that actually lets you cook for 3 (or 11) without math brain.

I ruined a batch of chili last month. The recipe was for 6 servings; I needed to feed 10. I doubled everything by rote — but the beans, the broth, the spices? They didn't scale evenly once I accounted for evaporation and pot size. That was my fault. But the bigger problem was even getting to that point: I had to grab my phone, open the calculator app, and do 8 separate multiplication problems. For one recipe. By the time I finished, my onions were burning.

It sounds trivial, but when you're mid-recipe, hands messy, doubling or halving every ingredient is a genuine friction point. If you cook much, you've been there: you either risk winging it (and end up with bland or oversalted food) or you do a bunch of tiny math problems and lose your flow.

Why not just use a normal calculator (or a spreadsheet)?

Sure, you can do it manually. But:

I wanted something that felt like a small kitchen tool: immediate, humble, and exactly one function.

What this one does

You paste or type your ingredient list (one per line, quantity + unit + ingredient), tell it the original servings and your desired servings, and it spits out the scaled list. That's it. It preserves the ratio of every ingredient — if the original recipe was balanced, the scaled version will be too. No sign-up, no parsing magic that fails on egg counts or "to taste" notes. It just multiplies the numbers and keeps the text.

I built it for myself, but I figured others might be in the same boat. So I cleaned it up and put it on ToolsForUse.

Try the Recipe Scaler →


It won't save you from burning onions, but at least you'll know exactly how much cumin to add when you start over.