Eating is essential to our well-being, but cooking is another matter altogether. It requires grocery store visits, prep, cleanup, and making meals for yourself or an entire family. Thankfully, meal delivery services offer many nutritious options if you have little time (or desire) to put in much work in the kitchen.
But which meal delivery service is the best for you? We've eaten our way through all of the top contenders to help you decide. Read on for our top picks, followed by what to look for when selecting a service.
Table of Contents
Blue Apron Meal Delivery Service
Best for Novice Chefs
Why We Picked It
Blue Apron is an Editors’ Choice service that fills your belly and educates you about food. Beyond walking you through recipes, the instructions teach you about cooking and encourage you to become more creative as a home chef.
Who It’s For
Blue Apron is for anyone who wants to learn how to cook, not just receive easy meals. The service even lets you buy groceries and cookware to help you make meals from scratch.
PROS
- Great range of flavors
- Detailed instructions for cooks who are learning
- Wine and grocery add-ons available
- All-vegetarian subscription available
- Speedy attention to customers
CONS
- Not suitable for anyone with food allergies or vegan, keto, or paleo diets
- Non-meal kit products frequently unavailable
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $7.99-$12.49 |
| Shipping Fee | $10.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Green Chef Meal Delivery Service
Best for Fresh, Vegetable-Forward Meals
Why We Picked It
Want to eat healthier? Green Chef is a delivery service that makes it a breeze to eat more fresh vegetables. You can rest easy knowing that the plant-focused meals you cook will be as healthy as they are delicious.
Who It’s For
Green Chef is an Editors’ Choice pick for vegan and vegetarian diets. Meat eaters will find a few keto and paleo offerings, but vegetables are the real star of this excellent food service.
PROS
- Delicious, vegetable-heavy menus
- Superb quality
- Excellent options for meat eaters, too
CONS
- Potentially unwanted ingredients in sauces
- Unnecessary plastic in packaging
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $11.99-$13.49 |
| Shipping Fee | $9.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
HelloFresh Meal Delivery Service
Best for Omnivores
Why We Picked It
HelloFresh is an overall Editors’ Choice winner because it embodies everything that makes meal kits so enticing. Receiving weekly boxes of tasty food that’s easy to make is extra convenience in a busy life.
Who It’s For
HelloFresh is the meal kit for just about everyone. The vast, varied menu constantly rotates in exciting new items for virtually all diets. Quick delivery times and sustainable packaging round out the top-tier service.
PROS
- Wide-ranging menu
- High-quality ingredients
- Vegetarian, low-calorie, and family-size meal options
- Few prepared sauces and dressings (you make them fresh)
- Good packaging
CONS
- Not ideal for vegan, keto, or paleo diets
- Two-step process to review allergens
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $9.99-$12.99 |
| Shipping Fee | $10.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Hungryroot Meal Delivery Service
Best for Groceries With Recipe Suggestions
Why We Picked It
Hungryroot meal kits use a slightly different system than competing services. Instead of selecting specific meals from a menu, you tell Hungryroot the groceries you want. Hungryroot then sends you those groceries along with suggested recipes.
Who It’s For
Hungryroot is for shoppers who want the ease of meal kits along with the option to buy their own groceries. Ultimately, it’s all just food. Eat it however you like!
PROS
- Does all the work of grocery shopping for you
- Includes suggested recipes
- Excellent variety of foods
- Caters well to dietary requirements
CONS
- Credit system instead of exact price can be confusing
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $9.69-$11.39 |
| Shipping Fee | $6.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Fresh N Lean Meal Delivery Service
Best for a Variety of Prepared Meals
Why We Picked It
Fresh N Lean is an Editors’ Choice for prepared meals. That means the food arrives fully cooked, waiting for you to heat and eat. Its well-rounded menu appeals to all diet types. Other prepared meal services target certain groups with specific dietary needs, but Fresh N Lean is an excellent option for everyone thanks to its varied, high-quality menu.
Who It's For
Fresh N Lean is for everyone curious about prepared meals, regardless of diet. It's one of the best gateways to this particular meal-kit category. What you lose in freshness, you gain in sheer convenience. Fresh N Lean also lets you create custom subscriptions with a la carte items, which is a nice touch.
PROS
- Meals delivered fresh
- Varied menus for vegan and paleo diets
- Low price for prepared meals
- Lets you create custom subscriptions
CONS
- Limited control over the meal plans you receive
- Generic à la carte meals
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $10.49-$15.99 |
| Shipping Fee | $9.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
CookUnity Meal Delivery Service
Best for a Huge Selection of Prepared Meals
Why We Picked It
Don't want to do anything more than heat and eat? CookUnity is the service for you. It lets you choose between hundreds of tasty, fully prepared meals designed by its chef collective. CookUnity has numerous delicious options, so you'll find something that works for you regardless of food preferences or dietary needs.
Who It’s For
CookUnity is for people who want a convenient and comprehensive prepared meal service that doesn't sacrifice choice. Just be aware that the service has gaps in its delivery map.
PROS
- Many tasty options
- Easy preparation
- Accommodates a wide range of dietary needs
- Flexible scheduling and meal selection
CONS
- Inconsistent portions
- Annoying packaging
- Some gaps in delivery coverage
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $11.09 |
| Shipping Fee | $9.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Factor Meal Delivery Service
Best for High-Quality Prepared Meals
Why We Picked It
Factor is a prepared meal delivery service owned by HelloFresh, and it's similarly excellent, selling delicious rotating dishes that are incredibly convenient to prepare.
Who It’s For
If you want more variety in your prepared meals, Factor is another great overall option. You have to subscribe (it lacks an a la carte option), but the menu should accommodate all diets. Plus, you can purchase add-ons for your weekly meals to round out your deliveries.
PROS
- Many high-quality prepared meals
- You can pick meals from a rotating menu
- Optional add-ons
- Subscriptions include a 20-minute dietitian consultation
CONS
- Requires a subscription
- Seasoning is occasionally off-balance
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $10.49-$12.99 |
| Shipping Fee | $9.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Mosaic Meal Delivery Service
Best Variety for Vegans and Vegetarians
Why We Picked It
Mosaic offers surprising variety, despite focusing on vegetarian diets. Its prepared meals include everything from soups and bowls for individuals to pies designed to feed an entire family.
Who It’s For
People who want choice in their healthy, prepared vegetarian meals. This flexibility also extends to the service; it lets you choose between cheaper, smaller items and larger, more expensive ones as you craft your subscription.
PROS
- Tasty vegan and vegetarian meals
- Many sizes and prices for individuals and families
- Flexible subscription
CONS
- Soups could use more substance
- Larger meals have lengthy cook times
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $5.99 to $23.95 |
| Shipping Fee | $9.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Purple Carrot Meal Delivery Service
Best for Vegans Who Cook
Why We Picked It
Purple Carrot is a vegan meal kit service that teaches you to appreciate the ingredients you’ve harvested from the earth. It’s another great company that helps develop your skills as you prepare tasty meals.
Who It’s For
Purple Carrot is for vegan home chefs who want to feel good about the entire cooking process. Learning how to cook delicious, healthy meals that don’t come from animals checks off many sustainability boxes.
PROS
- Varied, delicious, vegan meals
- Good for hands-on cooking and learning new skills
- Helpful customer service
CONS
- Packaging could be more eco-friendly
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $11.00-$13.25 |
| Shipping Fee | $10 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Veestro Meal Delivery Service
Best for Easy Vegan Meals
Why We Picked It
Prepared meals are especially useful for vegan and vegetarian diets, as they remove the hassle that makes it so hard to form healthier eating habits. Veestro offers many vegan meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that taste great, and don't require much prep time.
Who It’s For
Veestro is for people who want to really commit to eating vegan. You must buy many meals up front, but they last a while in the freezer. A la carte and subscription plans give you plenty of flexibility when choosing meals.
PROS
- A la carte and subscription plans
- Easy prep with premade meals
- Healthy, without sacrificing taste
- Lunch and entrée options
CONS
- Meals aren't always filling
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Price Per Serving | $11.99 to $22.99 |
| Shipping Fee | $7.95-$12.95 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Dairy-free Options |
Which Meal Delivery Service Is the Best?
Meal delivery (also known as meal kit delivery) is a subscription service in which a company sends you a box of fresh ingredients in the right amounts for a few recipes that you can make at home. It's a rapidly growing sector of the food industry worth billions.
Cook-from-a-kit boxes, such as Green Chef and HelloFresh, are just one style of meal delivery. Some throw the "kit" element to the wind and instead provide heat-and-eat meals that require minimal effort. Sunbasket, for example, provides the ingredients for a family dinner already mixed and assembled in an oven-safe container.
Splendid Spoon specializes in ready-to-eat meals for one person, such as smoothies, soups, and bowls. It also has prepared plates that are more akin to a microwavable TV dinner. CookUnity, Factor, Balanced Bites, Fresh N Lean, and vegan services Mosaic and Veestro fall into this pre-made category. Conversely, Blue Apron is a service committed to helping you learn to cook.
Best Meal Delivery Services for 2020
The service diversity is remarkable. We haven't had an opportunity to test them all, but if their unique hooks sound appealing, consider doing more research. Sakara Life’s pricey subscription features a highly curated wellness plan that includes meals that purportedly improve whatever issues you have, such as making your skin clearer or increasing your energy. You can find kosher or halal meal kits.
Some services, such as Snap Kitchen or Vegetable and Butcher, only deliver to their local communities. However, most other services deliver anywhere in the United States, except for Alaska and Hawaii, in about one week.
How to Choose Food From a Meal Delivery Service
Before you sign up for a meal delivery service, you should preview the menu for the upcoming week and future weeks. In our experience, this is the most important part of choosing a service.
It's a little like choosing a restaurant. The menu and presentation, including pictures of the food and how the company describes it, determine whether it speaks to your taste buds. Just look at the difference between Daily Harvest's stark images of vegetables in a bowl, compared to HelloFresh's colorful plates brimming with warm meals and a scattering of fresh herbs or toasted breadcrumbs on top.
When previewing menus, check two things: 1) Are there enough menu options each week that meet your dietary requirements, including allergen concerns? 2) Can you see the recipe and instructions, and do they line up with how much work you're willing to do? The recipes indicate what equipment and ingredients you need. It might be nothing more than a skillet, wooden spoon, and salt and pepper. It helps to have olive oil, vegetable oil, and sometimes butter on hand, too. Depending on the service, you might see recipes that call for a slow cooker, though it's easy to avoid them if you don't have one.
In a few rare cases, companies make it hard to see detailed recipes until after you pay. We like companies that show you everything in advance so there are no surprises after payment.
Once you sign up, you choose which meals you want each week from a rotating selection. If you forget to pick meals, the company automatically selects some for you.
A few companies let you pick substitutions, or offer add-ons and upgrades. Some Home Chef meals let you substitute, say, chicken for shrimp, or pay extra for organic or antibiotic-free meat. Sunbasket sells snacks, breakfast items, and other standalone groceries. Hungryroot is a slightly unusual meal delivery service that's part online grocery store and part meal-kit service, letting you choose both kits and groceries in every order. Gobble sells add-ons, too, like a two-pack of cookie dough or an extra container of marinara sauce.
How Many Meals Do You Get From a Meal Delivery Service?
Some meal delivery services offer a la carte purchases, but most require a subscription. When you sign up, you agree to regularly receive a shipment of meals or meal kits, usually weekly. On average, you must commit to a minimum of three meals per week that serve two people each, or six servings total. A few companies let you scale down to as few as two meals for two people per week.
All plans let you skip a week at any time or indefinitely pause your subscription. You typically have the option to skip multiple weeks at a time. The best companies let you do this directly from your account.
When you first sign up, the meal delivery service's site will typically ask for a few details about you and your food needs. How many people will be eating with you? Do you have allergies or dietary restrictions? A top-notch service only shows you the meals that meet your needs. Watch out, because not all companies do this. Some services require you to vet each meal as you choose your orders.
What Is the Cheapest Meal Kit Delivery Service?
The going rate for a meal delivery service is between $8.99 and $14.99 per serving. Delivery fees typically hang in the range of $9.99 per shipment, but you can often find better deals. Purple Carrot charges $0 in delivery fees for all but the smallest orders. The same goes for Hungryroot.
Note that meals are priced per serving. Most (but not all) companies calculate the price of your kits on a sliding scale, based on how many servings you order. It's the old "the more you buy, the more you save" idea. A box of three meals per week with two servings each has a higher per-serving price than a box containing four meals per week with four servings each—even though the larger box has a final higher cost. Prices can even vary within an individual service. Mosaic has options as cheap as $5.99 per serving.
Which Meal Kit Delivery Service Has the Best Packaging?
When you receive a meal kit order, you must deal with packaging, and sometimes a distressing amount of it. Some services (mostly in the prepared meals category) reduce the materials or have moved toward compostable materials (Daily Harvest does a good job). That said, no nationwide company is a paragon of environmentalism.
In our testing, we noticed two options for keeping the shipment cold. The most common is a gel pack. It's a frozen block of non-toxic liquid wrapped in heavy-duty plastic. They are a pain to dispose of properly. You can refreeze them, or let them thaw, snip a corner of the plastic, and then dump the watery contents into the trash. The gel is not suitable for your plumbing. Then, you must thoroughly rinse the remaining plastic and hope that a recycling center accepts it.
Option two is dry ice. Dry ice works well with fully frozen items, but not fresh produce. If it evaporates before you open the box, that's ideal. If the ice is still intact, you must be extremely careful not to touch it, as dry ice can burn your skin. You might not want to risk it around curious children and pets.
Can I Send a Meal Kit as a Gift?
If you want to convert your friends to the meal kit lifestyle (without sending them a mysterious box of raw food), you're in luck. Many services let you purchase gift cards. Referral programs often make your subscription costs cheaper if you get friends to sign up.
What Is the Healthiest Meal Delivery Service?
The main draw to any meal delivery service is convenience. Many meal kits also have a health angle, but most home-cooked meals are better for you than the average delivery meal (if only because you can control the amount of salt that goes into them). Certainly, you can use them to get more plant-based meals into your diet, too. If you subscribe to WW (formerly Weight Watchers), you can find meal plans that tell you how many points your meals are worth. Blue Apron displays the menu options that are WW approved, and Splendid Spoon has a help page that highlights its meals' point values. Veestro offers a weight loss subscription plan. Trifecta pairs its healthy meals with a free fitness app and a food-logging database.
You might also consider a fitness tracker, fitness apps, and other helpful tools, such as a smart bathroom scale or a heart rate monitor.
Variety Is the Best Meal-Kit Spice
There are far more meal delivery services than these top picks, including choices for nearly every cuisine, specialized diet, or cooking skill level. We'll be looking at more services from time to time, too. For more information on meal delivery services, please visit our dedicated meal kits page, our guides to the best vegetarian and vegan meal kit delivery services, and the best prepared meal delivery services. Read our Blue Apron vs. HelloFresh comparison to see two of the best meal-kit delivery services face off.
For even more on improving your culinary life through tech, check out the best meal planning apps and best grocery delivery services.
