Is Mealie Down? Real-Time Status & Outage Checker

Mealie is an open-source self-hosted recipe manager with 7,000+ GitHub stars. It features recipe importing from any URL, meal planning, shopping lists, and a beautiful responsive UI. Built on FastAPI (Python) + Vue.js, Mealie supports both SQLite and PostgreSQL backends and functions as a mobile-friendly PWA. Created by Hay Kranen and maintained by a growing community, it serves as a self-hosted alternative to Paprika and Plan to Eat — used by families and home cooks who want full ownership of their recipe collections without subscription fees or data lock-in.

When Mealie goes down, recipe imports stop working, meal plans become inaccessible, and shopping list generation fails. Because Mealie's recipe scraper depends on an active internet connection and frequently-changing site structures, even a partially degraded instance can silently break URL imports while appearing to function normally for existing recipes.

Quick Status Check

#!/bin/bash
# Mealie health check script
# Tests app/about API, process, port, database, and authenticated group endpoint

MEALIE_URL="${MEALIE_URL:-http://localhost:9000}"
MEALIE_TOKEN="${MEALIE_TOKEN:-your-api-token-here}"
DB_PATH="${DB_PATH:-/app/data/mealie.db}"

echo "=== Mealie Health Check ==="

# 1. Check Mealie process running
if pgrep -f "uvicorn\|mealie\|gunicorn" &>/dev/null; then
  echo "[OK] Mealie process is running"
else
  echo "[FAIL] Mealie process not detected"
fi

# 2. Check port 9000 is listening
if nc -z localhost 9000 2>/dev/null; then
  echo "[OK] Port 9000 is open"
else
  echo "[FAIL] Port 9000 is not responding"
fi

# 3. App about endpoint (no auth required)
ABOUT=$(curl -sf "${MEALIE_URL}/api/app/about" 2>/dev/null)
if echo "$ABOUT" | grep -q '"version"'; then
  VERSION=$(echo "$ABOUT" | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin).get('version','?'))" 2>/dev/null)
  echo "[OK] App about API responding — version ${VERSION}"
else
  echo "[FAIL] App about endpoint not responding: ${ABOUT:0:120}"
fi

# 4. Authenticated group endpoint
GROUP=$(curl -sf \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${MEALIE_TOKEN}" \
  "${MEALIE_URL}/api/groups/self" 2>/dev/null)
if echo "$GROUP" | grep -q '"id"'; then
  NAME=$(echo "$GROUP" | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin).get('name','?'))" 2>/dev/null)
  echo "[OK] Authenticated API working — group: ${NAME}"
else
  echo "[FAIL] Authenticated API failed: ${GROUP:0:120}"
fi

# 5. Database file (SQLite)
if [ -f "$DB_PATH" ]; then
  DB_SIZE=$(du -sh "$DB_PATH" 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $1}')
  echo "[OK] SQLite database found (${DB_SIZE})"
else
  echo "[INFO] SQLite not found at ${DB_PATH} (may be using PostgreSQL)"
fi

echo "=== Check complete ==="

Python Health Check

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Mealie health check
Checks app/about, JWT auth, recipe count, household info, and admin statistics.
"""

import os
import sys
import requests

MEALIE_URL = os.environ.get("MEALIE_URL", "http://localhost:9000")
MEALIE_USER = os.environ.get("MEALIE_USER", "changeme@example.com")
MEALIE_PASS = os.environ.get("MEALIE_PASS", "MyPassword")
MEALIE_ADMIN_TOKEN = os.environ.get("MEALIE_ADMIN_TOKEN", "")
TIMEOUT = 15

def check(label: str, ok: bool, detail: str = "") -> bool:
    status = "OK  " if ok else "FAIL"
    msg = f"[{status}] {label}"
    if detail:
        msg += f" — {detail}"
    print(msg)
    return ok

results = []
user_token = None

# 1. App about (no auth)
try:
    r = requests.get(f"{MEALIE_URL}/api/app/about", timeout=TIMEOUT)
    ok = r.status_code == 200 and "version" in r.json()
    data = r.json() if ok else {}
    version = data.get("version", "unknown")
    production = data.get("production", None)
    results.append(check(
        "App about endpoint",
        ok,
        f"version {version}, production={production}"
    ))
except Exception as e:
    results.append(check("App about endpoint", False, str(e)))

# 2. Authenticate via username/password to get JWT
try:
    r = requests.post(
        f"{MEALIE_URL}/api/auth/token",
        data={"username": MEALIE_USER, "password": MEALIE_PASS},
        timeout=TIMEOUT,
    )
    ok = r.status_code == 200 and "access_token" in r.json()
    if ok:
        user_token = r.json()["access_token"]
    token_type = r.json().get("token_type", "?") if ok else ""
    results.append(check("JWT authentication", ok, f"token_type={token_type}" if ok else r.text[:80]))
except Exception as e:
    results.append(check("JWT authentication", False, str(e)))

auth_headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {user_token}"} if user_token else {}

# 3. Recipe count
try:
    r = requests.get(
        f"{MEALIE_URL}/api/recipes",
        params={"page": 1, "perPage": 1},
        headers=auth_headers,
        timeout=TIMEOUT,
    )
    ok = r.status_code == 200
    data = r.json() if ok else {}
    total = data.get("total", 0)
    results.append(check("Recipes accessible", ok, f"{total} recipe(s) in collection"))
except Exception as e:
    results.append(check("Recipes accessible", False, str(e)))

# 4. Household / group info
try:
    r = requests.get(
        f"{MEALIE_URL}/api/households/self",
        headers=auth_headers,
        timeout=TIMEOUT,
    )
    ok = r.status_code == 200 and "id" in r.json()
    name = r.json().get("name", "unknown") if ok else ""
    results.append(check("Household info", ok, f"household: {name}"))
except Exception as e:
    results.append(check("Household info", False, str(e)))

# 5. Admin statistics (requires admin token)
admin_headers = (
    {"Authorization": f"Bearer {MEALIE_ADMIN_TOKEN}"}
    if MEALIE_ADMIN_TOKEN
    else auth_headers
)
try:
    r = requests.get(
        f"{MEALIE_URL}/api/admin/statistics",
        headers=admin_headers,
        timeout=TIMEOUT,
    )
    ok = r.status_code == 200
    data = r.json() if ok else {}
    recipe_count = data.get("totalRecipes", "?")
    user_count = data.get("totalUsers", "?")
    results.append(check(
        "Admin statistics",
        ok,
        f"{recipe_count} recipes, {user_count} users" if ok else f"HTTP {r.status_code}"
    ))
except Exception as e:
    results.append(check("Admin statistics", False, str(e)))

# Summary
passed = sum(results)
total = len(results)
print(f"\n{'='*40}")
print(f"Mealie health: {passed}/{total} checks passed")
if passed < total:
    print("Action required: review FAIL items above")
    sys.exit(1)
else:
    print("All systems operational")
    sys.exit(0)

Common Mealie Outage Causes

Architecture Overview

Uptime History

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