A solo dev's recipe-collection app that has been building for about 7 years: why REPITTA has held #9 on Japan's food Top Grossing

Japanese indie dev 上聖也 built a small recipe-saving app in his spare time over 2020 years. Today it sits in the top ten of the Food & Drink Top Grossing charts on Japan's Google Play and App Store. It didn't blow up overnight; it grew into that spot slowly. The Play listing date was just reset, so it looks like a new app. What's worth studying is a plain earning formula: saving recipes is free and unlimited, search costs money once your collection gets big, and the app parses Japanese recipe sites better than anyone else.

An older user's five-star review

Aug 30, 2026: a Japanese user left a long review of Repitta on Google Play. He calls himself a "single old guy who's been living alone," says he's been cooking for himself for over ten years since his wife passed away, and usually follows online recipes but tweaks the seasoning to his taste every time. Then, after a while, he forgets what he changed, and the original recipe no longer tastes right. "I searched around and found this great app! Save the recipes you like from the web, then save your own tweaked version!" The review has 45 "helpful" votes (Google Play, 11-06).

The developer replied that he built the app so people could keep their own taste once they've found it. That matches his first note-post from Feb 2020: he works remotely and cooks at home, but good recipes get lost after use, and he couldn't remember how he'd improved a dish or where it failed, so he couldn't recreate his own cooking. So he built an app: paste a recipe URL, it extracts the ingredients and steps automatically, and you can edit and manage them. The icon is a fried egg. He did the development and design alone.

What it is

A recipe collection folder for people who cook at home. Japanese recipes are scattered across recipe sites like クックパッド, クラシル and デリッシュキッチン, across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, and across cookbooks and handwritten notes. レピッタ pulls them all in, formats them consistently, then adds a weekly menu and shopping list, and lets partners and family view and edit together.

Three paid tiers (Google Play listing, 11-06):

The store page claims at the top that it has "the most reviews and supported recipe sites in Japan" (citing its own June 2025 survey, rated 4.9).

Is it really a new app?

No. Play shows an Oct 2026 5 listing date, but that's when the Play title was changed to the English "Repitta: Recipe Organizer" and expanded to 18 countries, which reset the date. The iOS version launched in Jan 2020 21 and is now on version 44.2.4, still updated as of Nov 2 (App Store). The developer set up a one-person company, 株式会社マカセテ (MAKASETE), in Feb 2020.

The numbers also show slow growth, not a spike:

iOS is the main market, with more than 6× as many ratings as Play. On Play it ranks #83–#87 on Top Grossing in 14 other countries, but that's a ranking padded by small-market charts with few apps, not proof of overseas revenue. iOS Singapore has only 4 ratings and Taiwan has 1.

Ranked #9 tells you how much it earns

It means it has a steady, real subscription income, but don't expect big money. The Japan Food & Drink Top Grossing chart is very thin: only 13 apps charted on Play that day. Ahead of it are large companies like クックパッド, クラシル, 食べログ, デリッシュキッチン and Nadia. Behind it, the apps are already very small.

Revenue isn't public. It's ranked #9 and #10 on the two platforms, which I roughly estimate at a few million yen a month (inference, no public data to verify). For a one-person company that's a very good business; for someone looking for the next big opportunity, keep this scale in mind.

Where the money comes from: saving is free, finding is paid

This is レピッタ's most instructive part. Saving recipes is completely free and unlimited, so you get dozens or hundreds of recipes in. Once you have enough, you find you can't dig up the one you want, and then search becomes a must-have at ¥300 a month. The more you save, the harder it is to leave, since moving to another app means migrating everything.

A five-star review from Oct 18 describes the process well: "Recipes from Instagram, Twitter and YouTube never had a good place to save... now the recipe sites can all be managed together, and search is paid. It's also nice that the phone screen doesn't turn off by itself." The last line: "迷わず年間で" (I bought the annual plan without a second thought).

Compared with Western peers: Paprika is a one-time purchase, and ReciMe hits you with a paywall right away. レピッタ has a low barrier, and the reason to pay shows up as you use it.

Where users come from

It has spent almost nothing, relying on store search and review sites.

• Store search: the iOS title is "レシピ記録・献立作成・買い物リスト管理 - レピッタ" and the Play Japanese title is "レシピの記録やメモ、献立の管理アプリ - レピッタ", packing in "recipe logging", "menu planning" and "shopping list". Its own TikTok bio reads: "Search 'レシピ 記録' and install the one with the fried-egg icon."
• Review sites: on the Japanese comparison site my-best's "Recipe management app popularity ranking (Oct 2026)", it ranks #6, along with introductions on pococe and hatenablog.
• Instagram and word of mouth: around Aug 2025 there were Instagram posts introducing it as "AI handling everything from menus to shopping lists", and scattered X users praising "being able to manage recipes from クラシル, クックパッド and デリッシュキッチン together, so convenient". I didn't verify whether the influencer posts were paid.
• Its own TikTok: @repitta_app has only 17 followers and 8 videos, the top one with 5,765 views (TikTok, 11-06), contributing very little.
• Paid acquisition: I found no sign of ad spend; the ratings growth is very flat, unlike large-scale paid acquisition (inference).

Why it holds up

First, it parses Japanese recipe sites accurately. Western apps like Paprika, ReciMe and Recipe Keeper generally struggle with Japanese recipe sites; ReciMe has only 98 ratings on iOS Japan. A Jul 19 review says: "I've used several recipe management apps, and this is the best. The recipe extraction accuracy is really great, I'm moved."

Second, one person has kept at it for 7 years. 44 major versions, growing from URL saving to menus, shopping lists, family sharing, photo import, AI menus and a web version. The developer personally replies to every review comment.

Third, AI made hard features easy to build. Photographing a cookbook page or a handwritten note and turning it into a structured recipe, or recommending a menu based on what's in your fridge, used to need lots of hand-written rules. Now it just takes a large model, and the app has been adding these since 2025.

But it has an obvious weak spot: its value is "moving other people's recipes over", and the big sites may not allow that. クラシル has already objected, and レピッタ can't currently import クラシル recipes. The older user above raised this in his review, and the developer acknowledged it in his reply (Google Play, 8-30 review). If クックパッド and デリッシュキッチン follow suit, its biggest selling point gets cut down.

Who it's competing with

The Japanese market is already crowded:

Almost nobody in the Chinese or English world knows about it: revenue isn't public, and there's been no discussion on X in nearly 30 days. But locally in Japan, this category already has five or six players, old and new, and foreign players have come in with paid acquisition.

If it were you

C: worth learning from, but copying it isn't worth it. It's a real but small business, and in Japan that spot is already held by it, クックスルー, and CookGo, which is buying traffic. What's really worth taking away are its two approaches, which you can apply somewhere else.

Who it suits: indie devs who can build mobile apps, who have a pain point of "saving stuff and never finding it again", and who can hold on for two or three years of slow growth; or people whose native language is a non-English one and who know the local content sites well.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone who wants to head-on build another recipe collection in Japan (there are at least five players already, with foreign companies buying traffic); anyone who wants results in a few months (it grew over 7 years, and its chart position comes from subscriptions accumulated bit by bit); anyone who only wants to target English-speaking markets (ReciMe, Paprika, Honeydew and Pepper are already very crowded).

How to build it: two routes. One is to take the "store everything free, pay to search and organize" model to other hoarding categories: bookmarks, outfits, parenting resources, school notices, renovation inspiration. The developer's second app, プリクリ, does exactly this with school notice slips. The other is to pick a language that Western AI recipe apps handle badly, get parsing right for the main local recipe sites and video platforms, and treat that as the part nobody can copy. Whether markets like Korean, German or French are still empty needs checking in local stores first (unverified).

How to get users: follow its playbook and spend nothing at first. Pack store titles with the terms locals actually search (it uses "recipe log", "menu", "shopping list"), push for placement in local review-site rankings, and reply to every review personally. Only once subscription conversion is stable should you consider paid acquisition, like CookGo does.

When to move: there's no deadline. This isn't a race-the-window business. If anything is urgent, it's that AI has made "photo import and auto-organize" something anyone can build, so the later you enter the same language market, the more competitors you'll face.

Signs we misread it: (1) Its Play English version takes off in 18 countries and overseas ratings climb clearly, which would mean "localized parsing is the moat" is wrong and a generic version also sells. (2) Cookpad and Delish Kitchen also refuse imports and it drops out of the top ten, which would mean the "import other sites' content" route carries more platform risk than expected and any follow-up needs scenarios that don't depend on big sites. (3) Paid-acquisition foreign players like CookGo push it out of the Top Grossing top ten within a few months, which would mean slow word-of-mouth growth can no longer compete and entering this category requires a budget.

Data and sources

• Store: Google Play Japan page and reviews (11-06), App Store Japan (id 1494651925), daily installs, ratings and chart positions across both stores, 10-28 to 11-06.
• Developer: note article "レシピ管理アプリをつくった" (2020-02-04), company site makasete.co.jp, official site repitta.com.
• Reviews and word of mouth: my-best recipe management app rankings (updated 2026-10), pococe and hatenablog articles, user posts on Instagram and X.
• TikTok: @repitta_app profile (11-06).
• Revenue is an estimate; the developer has never published revenue or subscriber numbers.