Cook like you've got money. Spend like a student.

The maths of the student fridge

Food is the biggest flexible cost in a student budget and most of the waste is the same every week: the half-loaf, the bag of spinach, the cooked rice, the biscuits that went soft. Every one of those was paid for and every one of those goes in the bin, which is the loan going in the bin.

Grub's whole personality is built on not letting that happen. Not because waste is wrong, but because it's food and he's greedy. Tell him what's going off and he writes something you'd actually want to eat out of it, so the money you spent on Monday feeds you on Thursday.

The cookies story

One tester, a student, had a packet of white chocolate chip cookies that had gone stale, a bit of milk, and a late-night case of the munchies. He typed the cookies in. Grub came back with a microwave mug cake built around them: cookies crushed into the base, milk to bind, four minutes in the microwave. The cookies would have been binned. Instead they were pudding.

That's the app at its best. Not a recipe for a mug cake, of which there are ten thousand online, but a recipe for your mug cake out of the specific sad things in front of you, written for the one appliance you've got.

Built for a halls kitchen

Set your kit once and every recipe is written for it. For most student kitchens that means:

• No oven, or an oven you don't trust. Set the heat source to none and Grub treats it as a hard constraint: nothing baked, nothing roasted. Dinner is built on the hob and in the microwave.
• Microwave and kettle only. Set both heat sources to none, add microwave, and the whole recipe is written for that. Real food, not mug-cake gimmicks, except when you want a mug cake.
• An air fryer if you were lucky enough to bring one. Grub uses it for the crispy things.
• One pan, one ring, one bowl. Tell Grub who's eating (just you) and how fancy (weeknight) and the portions and washing-up follow.

Your allergies, your flatmate's cooking

If you have an allergy or a diet, student cooking is harder still: you're cooking for yourself, from a shared shelf, with no one checking labels for you. Set your dietary needs once and every recipe fits them, re-checked by Grublin's own code for the hard rules. Vegan on a budget, gluten-free in halls, halal with whatever's in the fridge: set it and stop thinking about it.

One honest note: preferences live on the device, so one phone holds one set of rules. If you cook for a flatmate with different needs, add their allergens to yours for that meal; stricter is safe.

Not the same pasta again

The other thing students run on is repetition: pasta, pesto, repeat. Grublin breaks it without a meal plan or a shopping list. Tell Grub what's in and he decides. Not that one? Tap Try a different idea, or Surprise me, and he goes somewhere you wouldn't have searched for. Fancy something specific? Switch to I fancy something and type the craving. Saw a dish you want? Photograph it and get a version you can make in halls for a fraction of the delivery fee.

The money bit, plainly

• Free: a few recipes a day, another any time you watch a short ad. Up to five saved recipes. Photo scanning is free.
• No account, no card, no trial that quietly converts. Install and cook.
• Premium exists (no ads, unlimited recipes and saves) but nothing on this page needs it.