# One person, one regulation, one public price list: a Croatian app that plans a week of meals at today's supermarket prices

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/ios_6787523503.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> Strictly speaking, it's not a hit yet: three and a half months after launch it has only 1 ratings, and 11-06 briefly hit #17 on the Croatia Food & Drink Top Grossing chart, a one-day blip on a very thin chart. It's worth watching because Croatia has forced supermarkets to publish prices daily since 2025, and the 2026-10-01 rules added more pressure, so the data barrier is gone.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · iOS · written 11-6

Š

Špajza: Recipes & Deals · Kresimir Galic

# One person, one regulation, one public price list: a Croatian app that plans a week of meals at today's supermarket prices

**What it is** A Croatian-language iOS app: you enter your weekly budget, household size and preferred supermarket, and it plans 7 dinners, builds a shopping list from each store's official prices that day, packed by package, and compares the total across four stores. Subscription is €3.99/month or €29.99/year.

**Why it's getting attention** Strictly speaking, it hasn't taken off yet: three and a half months after launch it has only 1 ratings, and its 11-06 spike to #17 on the Croatia Food & Drink Top Grossing chart is a single-day blip on a very thin chart. It's worth watching because Croatia has forced supermarkets to publish daily prices since 2025, and a 2026-10-01 regulation tightened it further, removing the data barrier.

**B** **How you could follow** Don't build a Croatian version. Build a local-language version for another country whose law requires supermarkets to publish prices. Put the effort into matching products to recipes and pricing by package. Use recipe pages that show "today's cost per serving" for local search, and get users with a weekly four-store price comparison.

Grade B: the data is free, one person can build it, few people know about it, and the gap for porting it to other countries is clear. But Špajza hasn't yet shown that people use it continuously or will pay, and the markets are all small countries, so demand is a bet you'd have to make yourself. Few people know about it yet

Data (updated daily) · First launch 2026-07-21 · HR score 1 · 11-08 charted in 1 stores

iOS · best category chart rank · by store

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day

iOS · Ratings · HR

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.

A developer in Croatia has built an app: you tell it how much you spend each week and which supermarket you shop at, and it plans 7 dinners for the week and builds the shopping list from the prices the four big chains publish each day. Three and a half months after launch it has only 1 ratings on the App Store, yet on 11-06 it hit #17 on the Croatia Food & Drink Top Grossing chart. That ranking alone doesn't mean much. What's worth noting is the approach: the government forced supermarkets to publish prices, and one person built something that used to require a large company. Whether this can be transplanted to other countries is covered in the sections below.

### "Spent fifty euros and still couldn't make a meal at home"

Špajza's App Store description opens with: "You walk into the supermarket without a plan, spend fifty euros, and still can't put together a complete meal at home." Špajza means "pantry" in Croatian.

Using it takes three steps: pick a supermarket (Konzum, Lidl, Plodine or Spar), enter household size and weekly budget (€20 to €150), and it returns 7 dinners plus a shopping list grouped by store aisle. The example on the homepage shows a 35 euro weekly budget, 28.10 euros estimated spend, and "save 3.54 euros this week".

Several details are more careful than a typical menu app:

- **Pricing by package.** You can't buy 250 grams of minced meat loose; you can only buy a whole tray, so it prices the whole tray rather than estimating by recipe quantity. Leftover half-trays go into the "pantry" with one tap, so next week's plan uses them up.

- **It tells you how much your bill changes before you swap a meal.**

- **"Deals" only count if the supermarket officially lists them** , with the original price shown alongside.

- The website has over 300 recipe pages, each listing the lowest price for every ingredient. For example, bolognese for 2 people, based on the 11-03 price list, totals about €3.3 across 11 ingredients (from the website's recipe page, 11-06 to view).

The free version lets you plan meals, generate lists and compare totals across the four stores, but shows ads. The paid Špajza+ costs €3.99/month or €29.99/year, and what it adds is "split one list across two stores": each item is bought at whichever store is cheapest that day. The 10-23 update also added breakfast and weekend desserts to the paid tier, plus Thermomix recipes (step-by-step speed settings and gram amounts scaled by headcount).

### Why now: the regulation removed the hardest step

This kind of product used to be hard to build because of the price data: nobody was compiling tens of thousands of products from four chains into daily prices for you. Croatia made this a legal obligation for supermarkets:

- **Starting 2025-05-15** , large chains must publish machine-readable price lists online every day (Official Gazette NN 75/2025). That same week, a local developer, Senko Rašić, open-sourced a scraper and built Cijene API. According to his blog from May 2026, it covers 29 chains and 1000 stores, with 10M price records per day.

- **Starting 2026-10-01** , a stricter rule followed (NN 101/2026): standardized formats, updates required before 8:00 every morning, and reference prices must be shown. Špajza's "prices refreshed around ~8:00 every morning" and "deals shown next to the original price" line up with exactly these two requirements.

The backdrop is that food prices in Croatia have climbed sharply over the past few years, and the government has repeatedly introduced price caps and price-disclosure measures. "How much will groceries cost this week" is something locals talk about every day. The data is free and the demand is there; what's left is matching products to recipes and calculating cost by package. AI coding makes that doable for one person now.

### The builder: one of 7 apps this year, and the only one tied to local data

The developer, Krešimir Galić, is based in Osijek. His day job is senior frontend at a European real estate website group, and he runs Front Tribe, a small outsourcing studio of 1–10 people. He calls himself an "AI-native developer" (LinkedIn, Front Tribe website).

On this developer account, 2026 shipped 7 apps in a year: a sugar quitter, a walking puzzle game, a habit tracker, an expense tracker, an AI voice journal, a Bible verse app, plus Špajza. Each one has only 0 to 2 ratings across the US, UK, Germany and Croatia stores (public App Store data, 11-06). This is a common playbook right now: one person uses AI to crank out apps in bulk and sees which ones survive. Out of 7 apps, only Špajza uses the local language and local data, which is the hardest part for anyone to copy.

### Has it taken off? Not yet

First, let's clarify that "Top Grossing #17":

| Date | Croatia Food & Drink Top Grossing chart |
|---|---|
| 10-28 | #91 |
| 11-04 | #133 |
| 11-05 | Not charted |
| 11-06 | #17 |

This chart is thin. 11-06 ReciMe, ranked #1, has only 94 ratings in Croatia, and Disha, #4, has just 3. On a chart like this, a handful of annual subscriptions (29.99 €) is enough to jump from off-chart to #17 (inferred). Every other signal is near zero: 1 total ratings, none added since 10-28; the Instagram account @spajza.app started posting at the end of August and has 6 followers; X, Reddit and local media turn up nothing. On the free chart it sits at #24–#90 in its category, which at this bar means single-digit daily downloads (estimated).

As for where users come from, the only thing visible is the recipe pages on the official site. 340 Several pages are in the sitemap, each showing "what it costs per serving today," and they're already indexed by search engines. The site also tells people to search "Špajza" in the App Store, but that word is used by plenty of restaurants and pickle brands in Croatia and Slovenia, so these results are easily pushed down by them.

### Who it's competing with

Local products fall into two camps, and nobody has done both:

| Product | What it does | Scale | What's missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Košarica (a small Zadar company, launched at the end of 2022) | Discount checking, price comparison, store hours and fuel prices | 2024-07 claims 60k users and has a subscription (reported by Slobodna Dalmacija) | No menu planning |
| New price-comparison apps like Kupilo and Cjenoteka | Shopping list + price comparison, barcode scanning | Only 1–6 ratings per Croatian storefront | No menu planning |
| Disha: Budget Meal Planner | Budget + supermarket + tastes → 7-day menu + list | 28 country-wide has about 170 ratings in total, and the Croatian Top Grossing chart sits at #2–#14 every day | The prices are estimated |
| Blitva | Recipes and meal planning in Croatian | 2 ratings in the Croatian store | No real prices |
| Lidl Plus, SPAR, Konzum's own apps | In-house coupons and loyalty cards | Lidl Plus has 46k ratings in the Croatian store | Doesn't work across stores, no menu planning |
| Just ask ChatGPT | Croatian media has written about the approach "tell ChatGPT your budget and supermarket and it plans the menu" | — | No today's prices, so no cross-store comparison |

Two signals matter most. First, Košarica shows locals will install a price-comparison app for "comparing prices," even pay for one. Second, Disha ranks in the top 15 on the same chart every day using estimated prices, which shows people will pay for "plan meals by budget." Špajza has real prices that Disha doesn't, yet it hasn't turned that into users.

### If it were you

**My take:** Building a Croatian clone of Špajza isn't worth much. What's worth doing is taking this approach to other countries that require supermarkets to publish prices, and building it in the local language. The data is free, and one person could ship it in a few weeks. But whether anyone keeps using a product like this and pays for it, Špajza hasn't proven yet. That's a bet you'd have to make.

**Who it's for:** indie devs who can build mobile apps and clean up data, ideally living in that country, speaking the language, and shopping at those supermarkets themselves.

**Who it's not for:** anyone hoping to pay back paid acquisition quickly. The markets are small and the average order value is a few euros, which doesn't add up. Don't go into big English-speaking markets either: there's no mandated public price data there, and estimated-price products like Disha and ReciMe already hold those spots.

**How to do it:**

1. Start by finding data sources. Check which countries have laws requiring chain supermarkets to publish machine-readable price lists daily, and whether there are ready-made open-source scrapers like Cijene API. Greece, Hungary and Serbia have similar price-disclosure mechanisms, but which chains they cover and whether the formats are directly usable has to be verified one by one (unverified).

2. The hard parts are "matching products to recipe ingredients" and "calculating cost by whole package." Users will trust you or not based on those two steps.

3. The free version should show "total cost this week and the cheapest store." What you charge for is features that calculate the savings directly, like "split purchases across two stores" and "price drop alerts."

**How to get users:** build a web page for each recipe showing "what it costs per serving today," and target long-tail local-language search, which is what Špajza does well. What it hasn't done is post a weekly short video or post, "this same basket at four supermarkets this week costs this much." Local media already loves writing about price hikes and comparisons, so this kind of content gets shared. Pick a name that's searchable in the App Store, and avoid common words like "pantry" that restaurants have already claimed.

**Timing:** Croatia's new rule took effect 10-01, and other countries are still gradually following. Aim to launch before the local chains or older price-comparison apps like Košarica add menu features themselves. At this pace, you have roughly 6–12 months (estimated).

**Signs you've got it wrong:** three months after launch, organic downloads have picked up but ratings are still single digits; or users only use price comparison and never open the menu feature. Either means people want "which store is cheapest" and not "plan my meals for me," so fall back to price comparison, or don't build it at all.

[iOS store page ↗](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6787523503)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disha: Budget Meal Planner | iOS | 2026-06-16 | 28 country-wide has about 170 ratings in total, and the HR Top Grossing chart sits at #2–#14 every day | Same budget + supermarket → 7-day menu + list, but with estimated prices and multiple countries; Špajza uses the day's real price lists and only covers Croatia |
| Košarica(Smart Solutions Zadar) | Other | end of 2022 | 2024-07 claims 60k users and has a subscription | Discount catalogs, price comparison, store hours and fuel prices, no menu planning |
| Cijene API(cijene.dev) | Open source | 2025-05 | 29 chains, 10M price points a day, dozens of API users | A data backbone, not aimed at consumers |
| Kupilo – Pametna kupovina | iOS | 2026-06-29 | HR: 1 ratings | List price comparison, barcode scanning, no menu planning |
| Košarica – Usporedi cijene(Cjenoteka) | iOS | 2025-06-06 | HR: 6 ratings | List plus price comparison, no recipes |
| Blitva | iOS | 2026-07-29 | HR: 2 ratings, Top Grossing #23 | Recipes and meal planning in the local language, no real prices |
| Lidl Plus / SPAR Croatia / KONZUM and other chain apps | iOS | 2017–2025 | Lidl Plus has 46k ratings in HR | Only in-house deals and loyalty cards, no cross-store comparison, no menu planning |
| ChatGPT for menu planning | Big-company features | — | Croatian media has written about this use | No real prices for the day, so no cross-store comparison |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Official site SEO (recipe pages show cost per serving)** : several getspajza.app/recepti/... recipe pages are already indexed

- **Verified** **Instagram** : @spajza.app started posting on 2026-08-28, 6 followers

- Inferred **App Store search** : the official site directs people to search 'Špajza' in the App Store; the word is heavily used by restaurants and brands

- Inferred **Ads / creators / media** : no evidence found (x-radar 0 posts, nothing on Reddit, ad libraries not tracked)

## Špajza: Recipes & Deals (iOS 6787523503) research report

> In one line: a Croatian-language iOS app. You enter a weekly budget (20–150 €), how many people you're feeding and which supermarket you go to; it plans the week's meals (7 dinners, with the subscription adding breakfasts and weekend desserts) and generates a shopping list. The list is priced using the day's official price lists from four supermarkets (Konzum, Lidl, Plodine, Spar), by whole package, and it compares total costs across the four stores. The free version covers nearly everything; Špajza+ is 3.99 €/month or 29.99 €/year.

### Conclusion first

**It hasn't really taken off yet.** The recall scoring relies on "only 1 ratings and already on the Croatian Food & Drink Top Grossing chart at #17," but that signal is weak:

- The Croatian (HR) Food & Drink Top Grossing chart has a very low bar. 11-06 ReciMe, ranked #1 that day, has only 94 ratings in HR, and Disha, #4, has just 3 (appstore library chart_rank / app_profile, 2026-11-06).

- Špajza's Top Grossing trajectory: 10-28 #91 → 11-04 #133, sliding a bit every day, 11-05 off the chart, then 11-06 jumped back to #17 (appstore library, chart_rank). That looks more like one or two subscriptions (probably annual at €29.99) causing a single-day spike than revenue that's steadily climbing.

- In the HR category it ranks #24–90 on the Top Free chart (same library). With #17 on that category's free chart carrying only 1 ratings, going by that threshold it's probably getting single-digit downloads a day (inference).

- Total ratings since launch: 1, and the count hasn't moved since 10-28. The Instagram account @spajza.app has 6 followers (2026-11-06 web scrape). X corpus search turns up no mentions (x-radar, 120 days). Reddit shows no discussion either.

What's worth watching isn't the numbers but the **approach** : the government forced supermarkets to publish price data, there's an open-source price API, and AI helps write the code, so one developer can build a "weekly menu with real prices" that used to need a big company. The timing is right too: 2025-05-15 the government required supermarkets to publish machine-readable price lists daily; 2026-10-01 a newer rule tightened it further, requiring updates by 8:00 each day (NN 101/2026).

### 1. Product and developer

- Launched 2026-07-21, current version 1.0.11 (2026-10-23). Croatian only, iOS 16+ only. Not found on Google Play (iTunes lookup, Play search, 2026-11-06).

- Latest update (10-23): Špajza+ added breakfast and weekend desserts; added a Thermomix version (step-by-step settings and gram amounts scaled by servings); fixed the "budget left unspent" bug; re-checked quantities, prices and calories for every recipe. Shipping is frequent.

- The developer is Krešimir Galić in Osijek, a front-end developer and "AI-native developer" who runs a small contracting studio, Front Tribe (founded 2018, 1–10 people, React/React Native), and works as a senior front-end developer at AVIV Group (LinkedIn, fronttribe.com, Clutch).

- In 2026 the same developer account shipped 7 apps: Sweet Zero (February, quitting sugar), LORE (March, walking puzzle game), Mosaik (June, habit tracker), Float (June, expense tracking), Špajza (July), Outloud (September, AI voice journal), and Manna (October, Bible verses). Each has only 0–2 ratings across countries (iTunes lookup, us/gb/de/hr). It's a classic "one person batch-ships apps with AI and sees which survive." Špajza is the only one tied to local data and a local language.

### 2. Competitors

| Competitors | Platform | Launched | Scale | How Špajza differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Košarica(Smart Solutions Zadar) | iOS/Android/web kosarica.hr | end of 2022 | 2024-07 claims 60k users; has a subscription (Slobodna Dalmacija 2024-07-13) | Browses discount catalogs, compares prices, checks opening hours and fuel prices; doesn't plan menus |
| Cijene API(cijene.dev,Senko Rašić) | Open source / API | 2025-05 | Covers 29 chains and 1000 multiple stores, 10M price entries a day, dozens of API users (per the author's 2026-05 blog) | A data backbone, not consumer-facing. Apps like Špajza could use it directly (whether Špajza's data comes from it is unverified) |
| Košarica – Usporedi cijene (Mislav Stanic, also called "Cjenoteka") | iOS | 2025-06 | HR: 6 ratings | Shopping lists plus price comparison, no recipes |
| Kupilo – Pametna kupovina(Q-bit d.o.o.) | iOS | 2026-06 | HR: 1 ratings | List price comparison (per item, per basket), barcode scanning; no menu planning |
| usporedicijene.info, pricecomparisons.net, cjenoteka.hr | Web | Since 2025 | Not verified | Web price comparison, catalog browsing |
| Each chain's own app (Lidl Plus, SPAR Croatia, Plodine Card, KONZUM) | iOS | Already live | Lidl Plus has 46k ratings in HR, SPAR has 8,653 (appstore library) | Only handles that chain's coupons and loyalty cards, no cross-store comparison |
| Disha: Budget Meal Planner(TIM HECK) | iOS | 2026-06-16 | About 28 ratings total across 170 countries; in HR it sits at #2–14 on Top Grossing every day (appstore library, 10-28 to 11-06) | **Closest rival** : same idea of "budget + supermarket + taste → 7-day menu + list," but its prices are estimates and it covers many countries and languages. Špajza uses real same-day price lists and only does Croatia. |
| Blitva(Alchemy d.o.o.) | iOS | 2026-07-29 | HR: 2 ratings, Top Grossing #23 | Recipes and meal planning in the local language, no real prices |
| ReciMe, KptnCook, Mob, mise and other international meal-planning apps | iOS | Years | ReciMe is #1 on HR Top Grossing (94 ratings) | English or German, no Croatian store prices |
| ChatGPT planning menus itself | Big-company features | — | journal.hr wrote up "tell ChatGPT your budget and supermarket and it plans the menu" | No same-day real prices, no cross-store comparison |

Pattern: after 2025-05, Croatia saw a wave of price-comparison products, but they only compare prices and don't plan menus. The menu makers (Disha, Blitva, ReciMe) don't have real prices. **So far Špajza is the only one doing both.**

### 3. Growth tactics (evidence)

- **Website SEO** : getspajza.app has recipe pages sorted by category (/recepti/kategorija/meso, /recepti/svinjska-rebra-s-ananasom-i-rizom, etc.), each labeled with "cost per serving at today's prices," and indexed by search engines (Jina search results). This looks like its main acquisition setup.

- **Instagram @spajza.app** : 2026-08-28 started posting, 6 followers, traction is basically nil.

- **App Store search** : the website says to search "Špajza" on the App Store. But "Špajza" (pantry) is a word restaurants and pickle brands use in Croatia and Slovenia (Bistro Špajza, spajza.eu), so search results get crowded.

- **Ads, creators, press, Reddit/X** : none found (x-radar 0 results, no Reddit, the ad library doesn't track this product; not finding it doesn't mean it isn't advertised).

### 4. Why it could (possibly) take off

1. **Regulation removed the data barrier** : from 2025-05-15, the government required large chains to publish machine-readable price lists online daily (NN 75/2025), and the Cijene API open-sourced scraping within the same week. A 2026-10-01 rule (NN 101/2026) fixed the format and the "updated by 8:00 each day" deadline, and added "anchor prices" (reference prices). Špajza's "refreshed daily at ~8:00" and "original price shown next to promotions" map directly onto those two rules.

2. **The user pain is a local hot topic** : Croatia's food inflation over the past few years has prompted repeated government price caps and price-display measures, and "walked into the shop with no plan and spent €50 without a meal to show for it" is a common worry.

3. **The product is detailed** : pricing by whole package, prioritizing leftovers from the pantry for next week's cooking, showing the bill change when you swap a dish, splitting the list across two stores (paid feature). These details make it feel more trustworthy than estimate-based menu apps.

These points are still reasoning, not yet confirmed by growth data.

### 5. Differentiation

**Real same-day prices × menu planning × cross-store splits** , and only in Croatian, for the four big local chains. Compared with Disha, it's real prices versus estimates; compared with Košarica-type apps, it's a planned menu versus just a list. The differentiation is real, but it **hasn't turned that differentiation into growth yet** : ratings, social presence and buzz are all near zero. So the differentiation isn't why it's working; it's just why it's worth watching.

### 6. Takeaways

- Look for countries where the government mandates public retail price disclosure and build a local version. Beyond Croatia, Greece (e-katanalotis), Hungary (price monitoring platform), Serbia and others have similar public price mechanisms (coverage not checked one by one). The underlying data is free; the hard parts are product matching and pricing by package.

- Upgrade "price comparison" to "deliver an answer": instead of making users compare, give them "what to eat this week, where to buy it, and the total cost."

- Target long-tail SEO with recipe pages, each labeled with "today's cost per serving."

- One person, many apps: the one tied to local data has the moat, while the general tools (expense tracking, habit trackers) didn't take off.

### 7. Uncertain

- How many transactions the #17 spot on Top Grossing 11-06 actually represents is unverified. Guess: 1–2 subscriptions.

- Whether the data is scraped in-house or from the Cijene API is unverified.

- Whether it runs Meta/TikTok ads is unverified (the ad library doesn't track it).

- Retention and paid conversion are completely unknown.

### Sources

- appstore library (agent-im DuckDB): chart_rank, app_profile, 2026-10-28 to 11-06

- iTunes lookup: id6787523503, developer 1481337206

- [www.getspajza.app/](https://www.getspajza.app/) ;[www.instagram.com/spajza.app/](https://www.instagram.com/spajza.app/)

- [blog.senko.net/may-quick-takes](https://blog.senko.net/may-quick-takes) (Cijene API one-year anniversary)

- [slobodnadalmacija.hr/...kosarica...-1403738](https://slobodnadalmacija.hr/...kosarica...-1403738) (Košarica 60k users)

- [narodne-novine.nn.hr/clanci/sluzbeni/2025_05_75_979.html](https://narodne-novine.nn.hr/clanci/sluzbeni/2025_05_75_979.html); [www.zakon.hr/c/podzakonski-propis/1420945/](https://www.zakon.hr/c/podzakonski-propis/1420945/) (NN 101/2026); [www.vecernji.hr/...-1996899](https://www.vecernji.hr/...-1996899) (10-01 new rule, updates due by 8)

- [www.journal.hr/lifestyle/gastro/chatgpt-plan-obroka-popis-na…](https://www.journal.hr/lifestyle/gastro/chatgpt-plan-obroka-popis-namirnica/)

- LinkedIn hr.linkedin.com/in/krešimir-galić ;[www.fronttribe.com/](https://www.fronttribe.com/)

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.