Looking for the cheapest meal delivery service isn’t as straightforward as it seems; looking at the price per serving listed on the meal kit’s site can feel deliberately opaque. What is a serving anyway? Portion sizes vary. And prices can go up and down depending on the number of meals you order per week. If you ended up here in search of meal kits, I’m guessing you don’t have time to cook your way through all of the affordable options to find out what’s worth ordering and what’s not.
The best affordable meal kits according to Bon Appétit editors:
- Lowest price per serving → EveryPlate, $5.99/serving
- Best for intermediate cooks → Dinnerly, $7.99/serving
- Best for families → HomeChef, $7.99–$9.99/serving
- Best selection → Hello Fresh $9.99/serving
- Best for snackers and grazers → Hungryroot, $9–$11/serving
Truthfully, the meal kit market is a bit oversaturated right now, which means that even some luxe options are competitively priced. But the absolute cheapest meal delivery service might not be right for you if it doesn’t offer the quality or selection you want.
You’ve come to the right place, though, because it’s literally my job to try these things and report back, and I’m not alone. Bon Appétit’s editors, writers, and recipe developers also test meal kits and we have plenty of notes. Receipts too—because that promotional pricing that keeps popping up all over social media isn’t necessarily indicative of what you’re going to end up paying after receiving your first few boxes.
The best and most affordable meal kits will be cheaper than takeout even after the introductory offer has expired—and they cater to a variety of dietary needs and restrictions. So if you’re on a specific diet or you want more options for quick and healthy meals at home—and you don’t want to blow your entire food budget on a pricey kit—keep reading to learn more about the cheapest meal delivery services Bon Appétit editors actually recommend.
In this story
How we tested the most affordable meal delivery services
Our picks for the most affordable meal kits
How we tested and selected the most affordable meal delivery services
Our editors and contributors are constantly ordering and preparing a wide variety of meal kits and prepared meals in their own kitchens to ensure that our main best meal delivery services story is always up to date. When recommending services, our testers consider menu and dietary preference variety, quality of the ingredients once the boxes arrive at our doors, the portion sizes, the clarity of the instructions, the overall value, and of course, the taste of the meals.
For this list of the cheapest meal delivery services, I looked at the average price per serving of our overall top picks for the best meal kits, and selected only the options that are available for $10 or less per serving.
But I didn’t stop there.
In addition to relying on my own experiences with these meal kits—and the thorough testing and reporting my colleagues do year-round—I signed up or reactivated my account at each service to understand how the numbers really add up. If a service promoted $8.99 meals but I couldn’t get a standard order to reflect that number, you won’t see that company on this list. At Blue Apron, for instance, you have to order at least four meal kits a week for two or four people to get the price per serving below $9.99 and four kits a week feels like… a lot.
I also didn’t include any services that came in under the $10 per serving threshold only during the promotional period. Many brands offer deep discounts or free meals on your first order or a certain percentage off of your first few boxes. GreenChef, for example, is currently offering new customers 50% off the first box (taking the price per standard serving down to $5.99), and then 20% off of your next eight boxes. But after the end of the promotional period, you’d be paying $11.99 for each serving. For this list, I only included kits with consistently low prices.
EveryPlate
If you’re looking for filling, budget-friendly meal kits and you don’t have too many dietary restrictions or preferences, EveryPlate is a great option.
On average, EveryPlate costs just $6 per serving, making it one of the most affordable, actually-good meal delivery services out there. The 27 family-friendly weekly meal options offer a decent variety for such a budget-friendly service. Think: chicken sausage and kale soup, griddled onion burgers, ponzu chili steak bowl, sweet and spicy ponzu pork meatballs, or curry in a hurry chickpea flatbreads.
Like most meal delivery services, the default order is two servings of any given meal, and if you’re looking for single-servings, there’s also a “meal kits for one” plan—but if you read the fine print, it’s still the plan for two with a suggestion to use the second serving as leftovers.
Add-ons include proteins like steak, ground beef, bacon, and salmon, plus veggies like broccoli and sweet potato. You can also get rice, pasta, soups, sauces, and salad kits, plus a limited selection of desserts.
While EveryPlate doesn’t cater to specific dietary restrictions or preferences, allergen and nutritional information is included with every recipe, so you’ll know exactly what ingredients are in each kit before you specify your weekly order. Recipe cards are shipped with each insulated kit and they’re also available online.
EveryPlate discount programs
EveryPlate offers a student discount, which is 75% off of your first box and 15% off of every box thereafter for a year. The same pricing is available for the “hero discount” (verified medical professionals, first responders, military and vets).
Dinnerly
Dinnerly is Marley Spoon’s more affordable sister brand. Where Marley Spoon meals average $10.99 per serving, Dinnerly’s come in at just $7.99—though selecting the “saver” recipes can reduce the price a bit more.
While Dinnerly doesn’t have Martha Stewart’s official stamp of approval, the Dinnerly recipes are developed in the same Marley Spoon test kitchen, and each meal can supposedly be prepared in five steps or less (though as my colleague Wilder Davies and I have experienced, both brands’ steps often include quite a few separate tasks).
Each week, the menu includes 28 standard dinner options with meals like Sofrito tofu tacos, keto-friendly chipotle tilapia with roasted broccoli and lime, brown butter steak with Lyonnaise sweet potatoes, glazed teriyaki salmon with sesame cucumbers and jasmine rice, and a Mediterranean spiced chickpea mezzo bowl.
Dinnerly doesn’t allow you to filter recipes by cuisine or dietary preference, but you can view the attributes of each (low-calorie, kid friendly, keto-friendly, low-carb, under 30 minutes, vegetarian, dairy free, etc.) before clicking through to the recipe. When you do click through, you can peek at the ingredients and steps, nutrient and allergen information, and what staples you’ll need to have on hand before you make your weekly menu selections—which you can do up to three weeks in advance.