What’s the Best Meal Kit Delivery Service in 2023?

Does the question “What’s for dinner?” stress you out, even when you’re the one asking it?

Feeding lots of hungry mouths, trying to coordinate schedules, and just working up the motivation to cook something from scratch each night make dinner a chore.

Meal delivery kits were created to solve these problems. They not only eliminate the need for you to think of what you’re going to cook, but they also send you exactly what you need to prep it. Meal kits can help reduce food waste, save time, and make your life easier.

But with so many services out there, it can be tough to pick. That’s why we’ve put together this list of eight of the best meal kit delivery services to help you choose the best one for you.

9 Best Meal Delivery Services

In this article, we’ll be reviewing the following meal delivery services.

There are more than just these out there, but these are the best meal delivery services we’ve found. To help you narrow down your choices, we’ll talk about who each service is best for and give you the most important features and highlights. Dig in!

Best for Customizability: Home Chef

Features

Price per serving: starting at $7.99

Number of servings: Two, four, or six

Meals per week: Two, three, four, five, or six

For people who like having things their way, Home Chef should be at the top of the list. This meal kit delivery service stands out for giving subscribers more options to choose from when it comes to customizing meal kits. The menu features over 30 meals, including easy-prep kits you make yourself and a number of oven-ready meals, and around 18 add-ons.

Home Chef gives you three different ways to modify meals. “Make it Yours” customization choices include doubling up on protein, swapping one protein for another (e.g. ground beef for ground turkey), and upgrading a protein to a more premium alternative (e.g. chicken for steak) for an added cost. Around 50% of meal kits come with “Customize It” options.

Home Chef is somewhat diet-friendly, with some selections for carb-conscious, calorie-conscious, and vegetarian meal kits each week. Packaging is average as most items are selectively recyclable.

Read our full review.

Best for Easy Meal Kits: HelloFresh

Features

Price per serving: starting at $7.49

Number of servings: Two or four

Meals per week: Two, three, four, five, or six

HelloFresh has positioned itself as America’s meal kit. It’s been the most popular meal delivery service for a while now, and this is partially because they’re doing the whole recipe thing right.

You don’t have to be a pro in the kitchen or even know much of anything about cooking to be successful with HelloFresh meal kits. They’re easy to follow and give directions more clearly than the average meal kit company, with big pictures of each step. You can check the difficulty setting on any meal kit to see if it’s something you can handle or even filter the menu to see the easiest dishes first. Recipes are rarely hard.

The HelloFresh menu has at least 30 meal kits to choose from each week, including vegetarian, a limited selection of plant-based or vegan, low-calorie, pescatarian, family-friendly, and quick and easy recipes. There are no strictly gluten-free or dairy-free recipes.

HelloFresh uses predominantly recyclable packaging to keep food fresh, but some ingredients, such as spices and sauces, are packaged in single-use containers.

Read more: Home Chef vs. HelloFresh vs. Blue Apron

Best for Students: EveryPlate

Features

Price per serving: starting at $4.99

Number of servings: Two or four

Meals per week: Three, four, five, or six

EveryPlate’s goal is to bring convenience at an affordable price, not make you feel like a chef. It’s the best meal kit for students because the food is as cheap as it is easy to prepare.

All recipes are six steps or less and take no more than 45 minutes to prepare. They also require minimal equipment, so they’re good for tiny or understocked kitchens. Fewer steps and ingredients mean easier prep and less mess, so you can still cook for yourself even with a busy schedule. And on average, EveryPlate costs less than half the price of other meal kits.

But the drawback to this is a more limited selection. This service gives less variety, and as far as dietary preferences go, you can choose meals with meat or without. That’s pretty much it.

EveryPlate’s packaging is more minimal than others. For example, rather than individually wrapped in plastic, produce is usually together in one paper bag. But box insulation is not easily or fully recyclable. HelloFresh launched EveryPlate in 2018 and you may notice many similarities between these two options.

Read our full review.

Best for WeightWatchers and Foodies: Blue Apron

Features

Price per serving: starting at $7.99

Number of servings: Two or four

Meals per week: Two, three, or four

When a food or service calls itself gourmet, you never know whether to believe it. But in our experience, as far as meal kits go, Blue Apron really is a step above the rest culinarily. It’s also the best meal kit service for WeightWatchers, balancing nutrition and flavor better than all the rest.

Blue Apron is ideal for foodies because it features more global ingredients and interesting recipes than most of the others. This doesn’t always mean more difficult or time-consuming, but sometimes the recipes are a little trickier. The delicious meals are created by chefs, and it shows, but they’re still beginner-friendly. Experience helps but isn’t needed to pull these off.

There are vegetarian meal options and “wellness” recipes that are WeightWatchers-recommended and under 600 calories on every menu with this meal delivery service. On average, there are around 16 to 20 meals to choose from every week.

Blue Apron uses excessive packaging. A lot of the plastic can be recycled, but it can get annoying to have to unwrap everything, especially if you try to keep your waste to a minimum.

Learn more.

Best for Dietary Restrictions: Sunbasket

Features

Price per serving: starting at $9.99

Number of servings: Two or four

Meals per week: Two, three, four, or five

Sunbasket is a unique meal delivery service for a number of reasons, but probably the biggest is that it’s so diet- and allergen-friendly. Whether you’re gluten-free, vegan, watching calories/carbs, or something else, Sunbasket probably has meals you can eat. This service caters to the following diets and more:

• Vegetarian
• Vegan
• Pescatarian
• Paleo
• Keto
• Gluten-free
• Soy-free
• Diabetes-friendly
• Mediterranean

Each week, you’ll choose from around 20 different kits and about 14 Fresh & Ready single-serving prepared meals.

This is also a good pick for eco-conscious eaters. Sunbasket meal kits use organic ingredients including produce and sustainably sourced proteins, and all the packaging is recyclable or compostable. But at a minimum of $9.99 per serving, Sunbasket is on the high end of average.

Read our full review.

Best for Prepared Meals: Factor

Features

Price per serving: starting at $11.00

Number of servings: One

Meals per week: Six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 18

Okay, so Factor isn’t technically a meal kit service. Rather, it’s a ready-made meal delivery service. Factor offers delicious meals that are fully prepared and cooked when they arrive at your door. Each meal is portioned for one individual, for one serving, and just needs a quick spin in the microwave at dinner time. No prep required. Many services are starting to offer some prepared meal options, but Factor is one of few doing this exclusively.

Unlike cooked meals you might find at your grocery store, Factor meals are never frozen, and they’re created by registered dietitians to be nutritionally-dense and filling. There are over 35 meals on the menu every week, including some vegan, vegetarian, low-calorie, and keto selections. But because Factor meals are ready to eat, they cannot be customized or changed.

Factor uses relatively little packaging, probably less as a whole than meal kit delivery services, and what they do use is recyclable. Meals are only available in one serving, so you’ll need to just order more per week if you have more people to feed.

Learn more.

Side note about prepared meals: Freshly, another prepared meal service, announced that it would be shutting down operations at the beginning of 2023. Since then, the sign-up page has been directing interested visitors to instead try out Factor. So Factor has even less competition now than before.

Best for Plant-Based Meal Kits: Purple Carrot

Features

Price per serving: starting at $11.00

Number of servings: Two or four

Meals per week: Three or four

Purple Carrot is the only fully plant-based meal kit in 2023. This vegan meal delivery service offers both meal kits and microwave-ready meals, and all of them are meat- and dairy-free. Purple Carrot is also one of few services with a dedicated gluten-free plan.

This service gives you a choice from about eight to ten kits each week if you’re looking at the entire menu, so it helps if you’re not too picky. It also offers extras like snacks and breakfast.

Purple Carrot makes a point of trying to reduce its waste and uses less than half the water and releases about a quarter of the carbon of the average meal for each kit. It also uses sustainable sourcing for its ingredients. All packaging is recyclable and some is even biodegradable.

There are very few options for box sizes compared to other companies, so this service is not ideal for big families. Purple Carrot is also one of the priciest at a minimum of $11 per serving.

Read our full review.

Best for Dieting and Keto: Green Chef

Features

Price per serving: starting at $11.99

Number of servings: Two, four, or six

Meals per week: Three or four

Anyone who’s ever dieted knows how difficult it can be to find diet-friendly meals you actually want to eat. Green Chef is the ideal meal kit service for people who want to avoid carbs and/or up their protein intake, with flavorful recipes that offer healthier takes on classics. This service is great if you have dietary restrictions too.

While not exclusively keto, Green Chef is known for its keto-friendly dishes. Also on the menu are gluten-free, vegan (a handful on each weekly menu), vegetarian, and high-protein meals. And usually, there is overlap between these so that a meal falls into a couple of categories. This service is a favorite with fitness enthusiasts and a good choice for anyone who values eating organic. There are about 30 recipes on the menu and the average cook time is 30 minutes.

Green Chef’s service is pretty eco-friendly overall, with recycled and recyclable materials for packaging and sustainably sourced ingredients. Green Chef was acquired by HelloFresh in 2018, but these services are distinct except for similarities in ordering and packaging.

Read our full review.

Best for Families: Dinnerly

Features

Price per serving: starting at $4.99

Number of servings: Two or four

Meals per week: Three, four, five, or six

Last but not least, we have Dinnerly, our top pick for (smaller) families. Dinnerly is probably the best meal service for families not only because of the low cost but because all meals are just five steps. The menu is a good mix of more adventurous meals and basic crowd-pleasers.

Because it falls in the budget price range for meal kits, Dinnerly can be most closely compared to EveryPlate. But we prefer this service over EveryPlate for families specifically because there’s a little more wiggle room for customization and more recipes that don’t contain added gluten or dairy. There’s also a whole kid-friendly section of the menu.

Dinnerly also puts extra emphasis on “fuss-free” meals and even has a line of recipes that don’t require you to bust out the knife and cutting board (look for “No Chop!” on the menu, you can’t miss it). Dinnerly is moderately diet-friendly. You can make your box vegetarian and there are gluten-free and dairy-free recipes every week. Dinnerly isn’t the most gourmet, but you’re going to get good value and keep the picky eaters in your life happy at a fair price per serving.

Almost all Dinnerly packaging can be recycled and “Climate Hero” recipes emit less carbon.

Read more: Dinnerly vs. EveryPlate

How To Choose a Meal Kit Service

Although it’s easy to cancel a meal kit subscription or skip a week as needed, there’s still a bit of a commitment when you choose one of these services. The point is that they should save you time, and having to switch between subscriptions defeats the purpose. You want to get it right the first time if possible.

Here are some of the main factors to pay attention to when comparing meal kits.

Pricing/Value

There’s much debate over whether meal kits can actually help you save money, but this really just depends on what you’re spending now. But if the cost of meal kits is what’s going to be the deciding factor for you, skip to the next section, “Meal Kit Price Comparison,” for a side-by-side overview of nine of the most popular meal kit delivery services.

Overall, meal kits can be cheaper than grocery shopping and putting together meals for yourself, especially if you get groceries for just one or two meals at a time. But if you buy in bulk or you’re clever with coupons and deals, you’ll likely spend more per serving on a meal kit.

Read more: How to Save Time and Money with These 10 Cheapest Grocery Delivery Services

Dietary Preferences/Dietary Restrictions

If you’re gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, vegetarian, or you have any other food allergies or preferences, you’re going to need to start your search with meal kit services that are accommodating. Sunbasket and Green Chef tend to be the best for those with restrictions.

Most but not all meal kit companies offer meal options that can be customized to meet your dietary needs, but very few are truly allergen-friendly. Check out the menu for any given week to see if you’d be able to find enough meal kits you could eat. But know that if you have a very serious or life-threatening allergy, no meal service is likely to work as none can guarantee that there won’t be cross-contamination. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

Meal Options

If you get tired of eating the same meals again and again, you should appreciate meal kits in general because the menu changes each week. But some services are better than others at adding variety and “spice” to rotation. If you get sick of foods quickly, go for a meal kit with a bigger menu like HelloFresh, Home Chef, or Green Chef so you have plenty of options.

Health

Healthy meals look different for everybody. Whether you’re following a low-calorie, low-carb diet or you’re just trying to eat more vegetables, you’ll need to look into a service’s meal options before signing up and check out the nutrition facts for a few recipes. Certain meal delivery services are focused more on things like convenience or flavor than nutritional value or balance.

If you’re watching your calories or have certain fitness or nutritional goals, Green Chef, Sunbasket, Purple Carrot, and Factor might be a good fit for you.

Delivery Frequency and Order Sizes

If you have a lot of mouths to feed, a service that only goes up to four servings won’t work. And if you’re cooking for just yourself or yourself and one other person, it’s nice to have a range of options for the number of meals you get per week to help you manage leftovers.

Only Home Chef and Green Chef go up to six servings. Most of the others max out at four. Factor is probably the most convenient option for individuals but for those who actually want to cook, Home Chef and HelloFresh give you the choice between two, three, four, five, or six weekly meals. Also, pay attention to ready-made meal selections if you’re cooking for one.

Packaging

If disposable plastic bothers you to your core, you’re not alone. Most meal kits use recyclable materials in their packaging but some like HelloFresh and Green Chef are more transparent about their waste reduction efforts.

Find a meal delivery service that prioritizes sustainable packaging if this matters to you. Sunbasket and Purple Carrot are better than most, with some compostable or biodegradable materials and great carbon offsetting initiatives.

Meal Kit Price Comparison

With all meal kit services, the more you order, the more you save. Know that if you’re buying for just one or two people, you’re likely to end up on the high end of the price range for whichever subscription service you choose. Order more meals per week to help cut the cost if you can afford it.

Also, these prices don’t account for customizations and upcharges. For example, if you select premium meals or want to upgrade a protein, you’ll pay a higher cost per serving for that meal.

Which Meal Delivery Service Is Best?

The best meal service for you depends on your budget. Here’s how all the prices compare.

EveryPlate and Dinnerly are tied for the cheapest options at a starting price of $4.99 per serving. These are the most affordable meal kits but you’ll only get the lowest price if you order as many meals as possible. These services have exceptional welcome offers too.

HelloFresh, Home Chef, and Blue Apron are around the same price at a minimum of $7.99 or $8.99 per serving. All three of these offer many options for customizations that may influence the final cost.

Sunbasket, Factor, and Purple Carrot have comparable prices but very different menus and advantages. These services are more premium side but Sunbasket is a meal kit service, Factor is a ready-made meal delivery service, and Purple Carrot is both. Sunbasket starts at $9.99, Factor starts at $10.99, and Purple Carrot starts at $11.00.

Green Chef is the costliest option on our list with a minimum price per serving of $11.99. This makes it the most premium meal kit when you compare the lowest prices but Sunbasket might max out at a higher price point depending on which meals you select and how many.

How To Save on Meal Kit Services

If you know you’d like to sign up for meal kits but you’re not sure your budget can swing it right now, there are ways to spend less when you start – and keep the savings coming.

Use Free Trials and Coupon Codes

Every service on the list usually offers a discount on your first box, some on your first several (many will give you the best discount on the first box and gradually smaller discounts on the next few). You can typically save serious cash when taking advantage of these offers and eat several meals for “free.”

Use Referral Codes

If you know someone who uses meal kits, chances are they might have a coupon code they can share with you. This might be good for a heavily discounted box or even a free first order, minus shipping. These codes are typically only valid for new subscribers.

Check Rakuten for Cash Back

Rakuten (formerly ebates) offers cash back at thousands of stores online and in-store, including many of the names on this list. Amounts vary and promotions change, but you may be able to save 10% or more on services like Home Chef, Blue Apron, or Green Chef. The catch is that you’ll typically only qualify for the cash back offer on your first order.

Download the Rakuten browser extension to automatically see if there’s cash back available for the meal delivery service you’re considering and any website you visit. Rakuten is free to join and use and offers coupons and savings for a wide variety of services and products.

Use Credit Cards

Credits cards are almost always a good way to save, when you’ve got the right ones. But meal kit subscriptions are classified differently by different credit cards. Meal delivery services sometimes fall into dining cash back or rewards categories, sometimes into online shopping categories, and sometimes into the lowest flat rate assigned to “everything else.”

If you have a credit card you want to use for meal kits or a new one you’re thinking about applying for, check to see how these subscriptions are coded with that specific card and if there are any special promotions for the service you’re interested in.

For example, Bank of America codes most meal kit subscription services as online shopping. That means that you could use the Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards credit card and choose online shopping as your top cashback category.

And if you have a Chase credit card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, you can often take advantage of promotional Chase Offers for more cash back on services like Home Chef, Green Chef, and more. But even without these offers, using a card to pay for a subscription is a good way to put a little bit more money back into your account with regular earnings.

Read more: The Best Cash Back Credit Cards of 2023

Who Are Meal Kit Delivery Services Best For?

People Who Order a Lot of Takeout

If you order out a lot right now, either because you don’t have the energy or time for grocery shopping or just because you hate thinking of what to cook every day, you’re a good candidate for a meal kit delivery service.

You’ll likely spend less money than you’re spending now to order out even if you choose one of the more expensive options, and you’ll probably find it easier to eat well using kits.

Couples and Small Families

Couples and families with one or two kids are the target audience for meal kit services. Most services offer serving sizes of either two or four, so you can cook one kit for each night of the week you could use some help without having to worry about storing leftovers.

Busy People

Meal kits still require you to cook, but more and more of them are creating meal plans specifically for easy-prep, fast, and low-effort recipes. If you struggle to get dinner on the table because your life is so hectic, meal kits can help you save time feeding yourself and your family so you don’t give in to the temptation of grabbing fast food on the way to your next activity.

Who Are Meal Kit Delivery Services Not Ideal For?

Large Families

Most meal kit companies only offer meal plans for either two or four servings per meal. Even if you use a service with family-friendly meals, like Home Chef, HelloFresh, or Dinnerly, you might have trouble making meal kits work if you have more than four people at your table. You could technically double up on some of your meals and cook two at once, but this may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Meal Planners

If you’re a fan of preparing all or most of your food for the week to cut down on your time in the kitchen on weekdays, meal kit services aren’t going to be for you. Except for Factor, these require you to cook, and they’re not meant for making ahead as most dishes are intended to be served fresh. Some meal kits are better than others as leftovers, but none are created for this.

Meal kits also don’t offer a ton of flexibility beyond the occasional swap or upgrade. If you want more control over where your recipes come from and what kind of eating plan you can choose from, a meal planning service might be a better choice.

To make planning meals easier, check out eMeals. eMeals is a subscription service that gives you a meal plan each week that includes the grocery lists and recipes you need. You can even decide which sites your recipes come from and the service gives you a long list of dietary preferences to choose from. You can also link it with grocery delivery services to then have the items you need delivered directly to you as you would with a meal kit service.

Read more: Best Meal Planning Service: Our Top 10 Recommended Picks

Big Eaters

If you have an above-average appetite, you might not be a good fit for meal kits. There’s no way to change the size of meals and sometimes they’re a little on the small side. Only some like Home Chef give you the option to double up on protein, and this can get quite a bit more expensive. There’s a chance you’ll find meal kits to be unsatisfying.

Summary

The best meal delivery services can make a huge difference in your life and change the way you cook for the better. But since every service is so different, it’s important to choose the right one for your budget, lifestyle, and preferences.

Use this list if you’re thinking about trying a meal kit service, and don’t forget to take advantage of money-saving tricks and discount codes to get more meals for less.

Read More:

• How to Hack Grocery Gas Rewards Programs and Save Money
• 9 Best Grocery Receipt Scanning Apps to Make Money

FAQs

What Is the Difference Between Meal Kit Services and Meal Planning Services?

Meal kit services provide you with the ingredients and recipes you need to create home-cooked meals. They give you a menu of dishes to choose from, and then you get everything you need to prepare (minus a few staple ingredients) the meals you pick. There are some options for customization but you can only modify existing recipes.

Meal planning services, on the other hand, provide you with resources to simplify and organize meal prepping. Often, they give you recipes, grocery lists, and other ideas for snacks and sides throughout the week. They might be compatible with grocery delivery services, but maybe not.

How To Cancel a Meal Kit Service

Most meal kit subscriptions are very easy to modify, with options to skip weeks, change delivery dates, pause the service, or cancel in a matter of seconds. If you ever need to change your subscription, just navigate to your account settings and find the section that shows your delivery schedule and frequency. This is where you’ll be able to make changes to your upcoming deliveries, pause your subscription, or cancel entirely.

If you do need to cancel a meal kit service, be prepared to go through several pop-ups before your account is actually deactivated. These services will do just about everything they can to change your mind as you’re on your way out.