One Subscription, Whole Family Pro: How Forktastic's Family Plan Works
Forktastic Pro covers up to six family members with full feature parity from one subscription. How the model works, and what the math looks like vs per-seat plans.
Most family-plan offerings in subscription apps are some flavor of "discounted per-seat." Two adults pay 1.5x the solo price. Four people in the house pay 3x. Apple Family Sharing nudges most of the industry toward this shape because it's easy to implement on top of Apple's own subscription model.
Forktastic's Pro plan does something different: one subscription covers up to six family members with full feature parity. Not "share access to one paid account" — actual multi-user family entitlement built into the database. This post explains how the model works, what it costs vs. competitors, and why we built it this way.
The model in one paragraph
Each Forktastic user has an account. Pro is an entitlement attached to an account. When that user is the owner of a family group, the Pro entitlement extends to every other member of the family group — up to six people total. Each family member signs in as themselves, has their own profile, their own notes, their own personal meal plans, and full Pro feature access. The owner remains the only person paying.
Why this isn't account-sharing
Account sharing means multiple people use one login. You can't tell who did what. You can't have personalized meal plans. You can't have separate Health logs. You can't track who cooked which recipe in the family activity feed. Account sharing is also against the terms of most apps.
Family Pro inheritance keeps each user distinct. The Health log of the gluten-free family member doesn't pollute the kid's log. The meal plan the dad makes for himself doesn't get suggested to the mom in family mode. Identity stays clean; the entitlement just shares.
What the math looks like
Compared to a per-seat family plan: if Forktastic Pro is $X/month and AnyList family is $X/month per seat, then for a four-person household, Forktastic costs $X and AnyList costs 4*$X. That's a meaningful difference over a year. For households that have been paying multiple subscriptions to the same app under different accounts, the savings compound.
The trust question
What stops a family group from being an actual cooperative of unrelated people who all live in different cities? In practice, very little — except that the family group is bounded to six members and the friction of coordinating six unrelated people through one owner is high enough that the model isn't exploited. If we see abuse patterns, we'll add stricter checks; in the current implementation, we trust the model is used as intended.
What the owner can and can't do
The owner manages the family group: invites new members, removes departing members, and is the one paying. The owner does not have admin access to other members' personal recipes, personal meal plans, or Health logs. Family-shared content is shared; personal content stays personal.
Where to go next
For the family-sharing setup walkthrough, two-minute setup. For the family pillar guide, family pillar. For AnyList family pricing comparison, AnyList vs Forktastic.