We built the household app
we couldn't find.
Orbrey grew out of a chore list, then a frustrated whiteboard, then a list of complaints about every household app we tried. By the time the list of complaints was long enough, it had stopped being a complaint and started being a product spec. We've been building Orbrey from that spec ever since.
It started with a fridge, and too many lost lists.
Orbrey began with a household that forgot more events than it remembered, and no app that helped.
Elaborate chore charts got made in Canva, printed, stuck on the fridge, and forgotten inside a week. Shopping lists started in one app and finished in another, and lost both. Important calendar items got mentioned twelve hours before they happened, every single time. By the time anyone noticed the pattern, the whiteboard had already replaced the chore chart and was halfway to being replaced itself.
At one point we nearly bought one of those hardware household-organiser tablets, the kind that only runs one app and costs more than a small fridge. Someone sensible in the room pointed out that we already owned a perfectly good tablet, and asked whether there might be an app for that.
So we tried every household app on the store. Most of them did the basics: a shared calendar, a list or two, maybe a chore chart, and stopped there. The ones with AI used it for surface-level tricks. The ones with deeper features looked like they had been designed in 2009. Nothing connected the parts of running a house that actually need to talk to each other.
We kept finding ourselves saying “why does no one do this?” about increasingly specific things. Eventually the list of complaints was long enough that it stopped being a complaint and started being a product spec. That spec became Orbrey.
You probably recognise yourself in one of these.
Orbrey only works when more than one person uses it. These are the households we built it for — and that we hope are reading this.
For the person carrying the whole week in their head.
School pickups, the dentist on Thursday, what’s for dinner, who picked up milk. Orbrey puts the week somewhere everyone can see, so it doesn’t all live in one person’s head.
For two people who want the load to feel even.
Partners, roommates, anyone splitting a fridge. The calendar, the list, the chores — they’re all the same one. No more "I thought you were going to."
For families running a week across two homes.
The kids’ schedule stays clear no matter whose house they’re at. Two parents, two households, one shared view of the week — without anything that asks anyone to relitigate the past.
If one of those sounds like your week, see how Orbrey handles it.
Recipes get an unusual amount of attention.
The recipe, pantry, and grocery side is the part of Orbrey we obsess over most, because we cook from it every day.
Most recipe apps treat measurements as decoration. We've broken too many meringues trusting the wrong tablespoon to do that. Australia uses a 20ml tablespoon. The rest of the world uses 15ml. Most American recipes use cups by volume, where one wrong scoop changes the outcome.
So Orbrey detects the origin of a recipe on import and either tells you which tablespoon to grab or normalises the whole thing to grams and ml. Your bake stays exact, whether the recipe was written in Brisbane, Brooklyn, or Birmingham.
We also wanted the recipe, pantry, and grocery list to actually be the same brain. The apps we tried would call something “cilantro” in the recipe, “coriander” in the pantry, and “cilantro” again in the grocery list, with no idea they were the same plant. So in Orbrey, ingredient names are normalised across all three.
Mark a recipe as cooked and the pantry deducts the right amounts. Add a recipe ingredient to the grocery list and it knows you buy soy sauce by the bottle, not the tablespoon. The parts of the kitchen finally talk to each other.
A few quiet promises.
Not a manifesto. Just things we’ll actually do.
We read every email.
When you write to support, you’re writing to the people who build Orbrey. We’ll write back. Usually with too many words.
No ads. Ever.
Orbrey makes money from one thing: Plus subscriptions. That’s the only deal. Your meal plan isn’t a billboard.
Built around what you actually need.
Feature requests don’t disappear into a black hole. We read them, we respond, and the ones that earn their corner get shipped.
Recipes get extra care.
The recipe, pantry, and grocery side of Orbrey will always get an unreasonable amount of attention. It’s the part we cook from every day too.
We're not pretending to have a million users.
Orbrey is in closed beta. Instead of inventing testimonials, here’s where we are and how founding households shape what gets built next.
The first end-to-end loop is live.
Calendar, recipes, meal planner, groceries, pantry, tasks, rewards, and shared lists. Everything talks to everything, and the food loop is in daily use.
Polishing the bits that show up every day.
Smoother mobile, more recipe import sources, deeper calendar integrations, the rewards system getting a little more delight. Founding households help us pick the order.
Write to us. We read every email.
Founders get a direct line. Feature requests don’t disappear — the ones that earn their corner get shipped. We’ll tell you why if a request doesn’t make the cut.
Hi — we're a small team who cook from this every night.
Orbrey is built by a handful of people, in a real kitchen, for a real household. The meal planner you see on the site is the one we used to plan dinner tonight. If something feels off, it's because we haven't fixed it yet — write to us and it usually moves up the list.
— Placeholder name(s)
Be one of the first 100.
Orbrey is in closed beta. The first 100 households get Plus at A$59.99/year forever (normally A$89.99/year), plus a 90-day free trial. The price never goes up while you stay subscribed.