2026’s Best Meal Delivery Services Worth Your Money

Introduction

Over the past three years, Bon Appétit has tested 21 popular meal kits and delivery options for every kind of home cook—and for people who don’t want to cook at all. This guide was published August 3, 2026.

I love to cook—which comes with the territory at Bon Appétit. But the reality is that most weeknights I arrive home at 7 p.m. to a sad, mostly empty fridge and settle for frozen dumplings or boxed mac and cheese. That’s where meal delivery services come in. The best ones make cooking weeknight meals seamless, stress-free, and fun, without the need for a weekly meal-planning session or a trip to the grocery store. They can also introduce you to new techniques, ingredients, or hacks that inform your home cooking more broadly—something boxed mac and cheese, for all its merits, could never do.

Top Picks at a Glance

• Best meal kit overall: Marley Spoon
• Most customizable: Home Chef
• Best for families: HelloFresh
• Best prepared meal delivery service: CookUnity
• Most affordable: Dinnerly
• If you hate grocery shopping: Hungryroot
• Best healthy meal kit: Sunbasket
• Best organic meal kit: Green Chef
• Best plant-based: Purple Carrot

New in this update: We named Sunbasket our recommendation for the best healthy meal kit.

Our Top Picks, Reviewed

Best Meal Kit Overall: Marley Spoon

Commerce writer Alaina Chou, initially skeptical, was won over by how much Marley Spoon felt like actual cooking—vegetables arrive whole, techniques are real, and ingredient pairings are thoughtful. It’s the kit for people who love to cook but hate to grocery shop. Chou found that cooking from it felt like her normal cooking experience—as if some kind soul had collected all the ingredients and pre-portioned the spices beforehand. A recipe might have you searing a steak or roasting chicken thighs, and the order of operations always made logical sense. It also introduced clever riffs, like chicken parm made simpler with meatballs instead of cutlets, and if a recipe uses cilantro leaves as garnish, chances are it’ll have you use the stems elsewhere in the dish.

While Marley Spoon does offer some heat-and-eat options—great for an easy office lunch—that’s not where this service excels. It’s best suited for people who are genuinely interested in cooking but want the process to be easier and more attainable.

Ordering process: Select a dietary preference (Gluten-Free-Friendly, Low Calorie, Picky Eater Approved, Quick & Easy, or Vegetarian) or opt for Everyday Variety. Choose serving size and cadence—two or four servings, anywhere from two to six meals per week—then pick from a rotating menu of close to 100 recipes. It’s easy to adjust servings, scale meals up or down, or skip weeks when life gets busy.

Unboxing: Everything arrives in an insulated box with a large ice pack at the bottom, and it stayed nice and cold even after sitting on a stoop for a few hours. Ingredients are well-packaged in minimal plastic compared with many kits: whole vegetables arrive free of plastic wrapping, though spices and sauces come in packet form.

Specs:

• Type: Meal kit
• Typical prep and cooking time: 30 to 40 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes
• Average meal price: $9 to $13
• Additional shipping fee: $11.99 per order

Pros: Variety of delicious recipes; feels like real cooking; high-quality ingredients. Cons: Requires a decent amount of prep work; comparatively time-consuming recipes.

Most Customizable: Home Chef

Thanks to its variety of recipes and customization options—it’s particularly great at catering to dietary restrictions—Home Chef is sure to please most palates and lifestyles. You can easily select the proteins, number of deliveries, and portion amounts on a week-to-week basis. This flexibility makes Home Chef a fit for households where one or more people might not be home each night for dinner, says a former associate commerce director.

“Home Chef sent me recipes I wouldn’t have thought of myself, which taught me techniques I genuinely wouldn’t have tried on my own. Chicken breasts in premade pastry might feel a little ’90s, yes, but are also delicious—and cooking them reminded me there’s an arsenal of dated-but-delightful meals from mom worth resurrecting,” says one tester.

For busy weeks, Home Chef offers oven-ready meals that come with their own tin and grill-ready meals that arrive in a foil bag. Or you can choose more traditional preportioned “express” 30-minute meal kits, prepped 15-minute meal kits, or the Fast & Fresh option, a fully prepared meal you just stick in the oven or microwave. A contributor noted that the estimated cook times were pretty accurate for each meal tested, whether of the “express” or “classic” variety.

On weeks with more time, Home Chef’s “Culinary Collection” offers more advanced recipes. “I liked pounding a pork chop thin and covering it in breadcrumbs—the result was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and the kind of thing I’d never think to make when cooking for one,” says the tester. She also likes that Home Chef offers snack, dessert, and breakfast options like from GoOats.

Ordering process: Like many meal kits, Home Chef starts with a quiz that outlines your dietary preferences, meal planning needs, and more. It’s easy to sign up and get meals that fit your lifestyle delivered to you.

Unboxing: Home Chef meals come in individual plastic bags that contain everything you need; it’s satisfying and perfectly organized. However, the packaging can feel a bit wasteful.

Specs:

• Type: Kit with pre-portioned ingredients; prepared meals
• Plan options: 2-6 recipes per week; 2, 4, or 6 servings per recipe
• Average meal price: $6.99 to $9.99 depending on number of meals per order
• Additional shipping fee: $10.99 per box
• Typical prep and cooking time: 15 to 30 minutes
• Meal types: Lunch, dinner; breakfast, snacks, and desserts are extras
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes

Pros: Meal variety; organized packaging. Cons: Recipes and flavors feel traditional; packaging can feel wasteful.

Best for Families: HelloFresh

With more than 100 recipes rotating onto its menu each week, HelloFresh makes it surprisingly easy to feed a household with different tastes. Its dedicated Family-Friendly recipes are designed to appeal to kids and picky eaters alike, while larger-format Big Batch meals can feed up to eight people or provide plenty of leftovers. Multiple Bon Appétit staff and contributors have tried HelloFresh over the years, and our testers have all been happy with the large portion sizes, fresh ingredients, and add-on options, which include stand-alone proteins (chicken breasts, steaks, etc.), smoothies, snacks, and desserts. The recipes were crowd-pleasing and satisfying for every age.

A contributor was struck by the breadth of the menu: over 100 dinners, with dishes like coconut shrimp and cabbage curry, smashed black bean tostadas, and bavette steak with creamy truffle polenta. The sweet and spicy shrimp lo mein “tasted vibrant and saucy, and it hit the ideal balance of heat, sweet, and sour. The preparation was about as basic as it gets: cook noodles, sear shrimp and veggies, stir in sauces and seasonings, then garnish. It was clear that the recipe itself had been developed and tested by professionals, because it actually worked.”

Ordering process: The ordering process is straightforward and can be done from the HelloFresh website or app. First, personalize your plan by selecting how many people you’d like to feed and how many meals you want per week. Then choose from six dietary plans—Meat and Veggies, Veggies, Family-Friendly, Fit and Wholesome, Under 20 Minutes, and Pescatarian—selecting as many as you wish. After that, pick your week’s meals from the extensive rotating menu.

Unboxing: Deliveries arrive in a well-insulated box with heavy-duty ice packs, so there’s no need to stress if you’re not home when it arrives. Ingredients are separated into labeled paper bags by recipe, making it easy to grab what you need when it’s time to cook.

Specs:

• Type: Meal kit
• Typical prep and cooking time: 30 to 40 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes, including premium ingredients
• Average meal price: $9.99
• Additional shipping fee: $10.99 per box

Pros: Convenient; fun, easy-to-follow recipes suitable for beginner cooks; could be a great learning tool. Cons: Recipes are heavy on carbs and sugar, light on fresh vegetables; relatively expensive; ingredient quality was inconsistent in testing.

Best Prepared Meal Delivery Service: CookUnity

CookUnity isn’t your average prepared meal service. Its chef-crafted, ready-to-heat meals are designed to deliver restaurant-worthy dishes that you might not have the time or energy to make on a weeknight. With over 350 options rotating weekly and culinary talent like chefs José Garces and Esther Choi, CookUnity is the prepared meal delivery service for people who have high standards but low bandwidth.

Senior commerce editor Olivia Tarantino, who reviewed the service, was skeptical going in, but CookUnity changed her mind: “If you properly plated some of my CookUnity meals, they could pass as something I’d order at a restaurant. The quality, cook, and flavor of each dish make it clear that they’re developed by real chefs.”

Meals arrive fresh, not frozen, and can be eaten straight from the fridge (like Tarantino did with a tofu poke bowl) or heated in the microwave in about two minutes. Modified atmosphere packaging keeps everything fresh for four to seven days, so you can have a spontaneous dinner out and your meals won’t go bad. Portion sizes impressed Tarantino, particularly the amount of protein per dish, which she found more generous than most other services she’s tried.

She ordered two shrimp dishes to see how CookUnity’s seafood would hold up to microwaving: “I peeled back the plastic film and was met with the hypnotizing scent of coconut curry smothering perfectly cooked shrimp. The shrimp were plump with just the right amount of snap. Even fried dishes like crab cakes held up in the microwave—although air-frying had better results.”

Ordering process: The hardest part, according to Tarantino, is “narrowing down what you want to eat.” At her testing, there were more than 400 meals available in a given week, spanning breakfast, lunch, dinner, sides, snacks, and even protein-only options. The menu touches six continents’ worth of cuisines, from Ghanaian to Italian to Indian to Mexican. Most meals are regularly available, with new ones rotating in and out. Premium options—like Maryland-Style Crab Cakes or Lobster Tail & Steak Surf & Turf—cost a few dollars more. Each dish carries a user star rating and customer comments, a feature Tarantino found useful. If you miss the weekly cutoff, CookUnity will autofill your box based on your preferences or past orders.

Unboxing: You can select your preferred delivery day and choose between an a.m. or p.m. window. Everything arrives securely packed in a reusable cooler bag with ice packs, fresh and ready to go straight into the fridge.

Specs:

• Type: Prepared foods delivery service
• Typical prep and cooking time: 15 to 20 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes
• Average meal price: $11 to $15 per serving
• Additional shipping fee: $10 per box

Pros: Wide variety of professionally cooked options; super convenient; good quality ingredients. Cons: Premade meals will never compare in freshness or flavor to a meal kit that requires actual prep; sauces sometimes lose optimal consistency because of temperature fluctuations.

Most Affordable: Dinnerly

Owned by the same company as Martha Stewart’s Marley Spoon, Dinnerly is marketed as a budget-friendly meal kit service for unfussy weeknight dinners. Where Marley Spoon meals average $11 per serving, Dinnerly’s come in at just $8—and selecting “saver” recipes can reduce the price a bit more. It’s the best cheap meal kit for intermediate home cooks who don’t mind chopping and prep, couples, and small households. The brand also has an extensive marketplace full of prepared meals, cook-and-eat options, and “meal shortcuts”—a couple of ingredients easily combined into a meal or snack without a recipe.

Each recipe comes with core ingredients—proteins, produce, unique spices—along with a recipe card. Basics like cooking oil, vinegars, and garlic are not included, so having a stocked pantry is key. Tester Elise Portale found Dinnerly’s instructions generally easy to follow, though some recipes were more labor-intensive than they appeared. One standout example: Chicken and Stuffing Waffles, which required a waffle maker and “probably used half the pans in my kitchen to make.” The dish itself—pan-seared chicken breast, stuffing, cranberry relish, and pan gravy—was delicious.

Overall, Portale found Dinnerly’s recipes hit or miss—one of the trade-offs for the low price tag. The Cheesy Ravioli Enchilada Bake delivered on the one-pan promise but not on flavor, its enchilada-inspired sauce amounting to “a gloppy and flavorless concoction of tomato paste, water, and Tex-Mex spices thickened with flour.” There were real winners too, including a spinach salad with lentils and roasted carrots. Her takeaway: Dinnerly can work as an affordable weeknight solution, but recipe selection matters. “I’d just recommend choosing your weekly recipes wisely and metering your expectations. A basic sense of cooking intuition will also help you get the most out of your meals.”

Where Dinnerly truly shines is its marketplace, which sits somewhere between a meal kit and a grocery delivery in the best way—perfect for “the busy professional on a budget.” Highlights included a Mediterranean Falafel Wrap that was cheap, flavorful, and oven-ready; a Bacon and Egg Breakfast Sandwich Meal Shortcut that came together with minimal effort; and a prepackaged apple kouign-amann from KRMA Foods that held up nicely alongside an afternoon coffee.

Ordering process: Dinnerly prepacks a box with a trio of meals that can be edited. The selection is vast: recipes geared toward kids, vegetarians, the calorie-conscious, and allergy-sensitive eaters, all clearly labeled with cost-per-serving and dietary info. Delivery reliability was another story: over three weeks of testing, Portale encountered hiccups—a delayed box around Thanksgiving with no clear timeline, and an accidental extra week charged due to unclear cutoff communication. “My third week was actually an accident: I ended up committing to an extra week of this service during testing purely because there was little to no communication about the deadline to skip/edit my next box, a date that was different than the week before.”

Unboxing: Boxes were well-insulated, with produce, spice packets, and dry ingredients on top and proteins closest to the ice pack below. Most ingredients traveled well, though one bag of peas arrived squished and spilled. Packaging was minimal and recyclable—just the box, cardboard-based insulation, and ice pack.

Specs:

• Type: Meal kit
• Typical prep and cooking time: 25 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes, and the marketplace is exceptional
• Average meal price: $7.99 per serving
• Additional shipping fee: $11.99 per box

Pros: Budget-friendly; plenty of recipe options with allergy/dietary labeling; family-friendly concepts; great marketplace. Cons: Inconsistent expectations for effort, cleanup, and cookware; prepackaged ingredients vary in quality; delivery and communication weren’t always reliable; doesn’t supply all essential ingredients.

Best for People Who Hate Grocery Shopping: Hungryroot

Hungryroot sits somewhere between a grocery delivery service and a meal kit—and that’s precisely what makes it work. If you add “recipes” to your weekly order, your box includes a recipe card with suggestions for combining the provided ingredients into quick, easy meals. Thanks to its semi-homemade nature, a Hungryroot dinner can go from fridge to table in about 10 minutes, and it feels like you’ve cooked even though you’ve really just dumped some precut veggies in a pan and microwaved some parcooked rice.

Senior commerce editor Olivia Tarantino found Hungryroot’s flexibility to be its biggest strength. Unlike services with fixed weekly menus, Hungryroot lets you mix and match across three categories: recipe kits (like a Southwest Chopped Salad with Beyond Patties and Cheddar or a Craveable Chorizo Street Corn Grain Bowl), prepared meals (microwave-friendly bowls, soups, sandwiches, and salads), and à la carte grocery items (snacks, yogurt, juices, bread, and more). Your weekly plan determines how many credits you receive; recipe kits run around 11 credits, while snacks cost one to three. “I appreciated being able to pick exactly what I wanted without feeling locked into a specific meal plan,” Tarantino says. Individual recipes can be edited: if you already have cheddar cheese at home, you can remove it from your order and spend those credits elsewhere. She also found herself repurposing ingredients freely—ordering a Marinara Ricotta Ravioli with Baby Mushroom dish, for instance, and using the mushrooms in an omelet instead.

That looseness extends to timing too. “If I couldn’t cook one night, I wasn’t frantically worrying about my meal kit expiring before I could get to it,” Tarantino notes. Because most recipes are essentially collections of grocery staples, there’s no pressure to cook on any particular schedule.

Ordering process: When you sign up for Hungryroot, you complete a pretty lengthy survey to help the system learn your dietary preferences and quantity/nutrition needs. Your answers help determine the amount you’ll spend each week. That plan fee is translated into credits, and each grocery item has an assigned credit value. You shop with credits, not dollar values, though you can adjust, pause, add to your plan, and roll over unused credits. It sounds a little convoluted, but it makes sense as soon as you sign up and start filling your cart.

Unboxing: Everything is packaged really securely and layered by temperature—with the coldest/frozen food on the bottom.

Specs:

• Type: Virtual grocery store with quick-and-easy meal prep options
• Typical prep and cooking time: 10 to 15 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes
• Average meal price: $9 to $11
• Additional shipping fee: $6.99 for orders under $70; free for orders over $70

Pros: Lots of variety/grocery items; super-easy recipes; kid-friendly snacks. Cons: Selecting your groceries is labor-intensive.

Best Healthy Meal Kit: Sunbasket

Sunbasket operates similarly to most other meal kit services—pick weekly meals, receive a box of preportioned ingredients organized by dish, and cook as directed. While words like “clean” and “healthy” feature prominently in its website copy, what really sets it apart is a focus on high-quality, certified organic produce—though that promise comes with some caveats.

Commerce writer Alaina Chou found the weekly menu more exciting than most meal kit fare, spanning a broad range of cuisines and ingredients—think Afghan-Style Butternut Squash Stew with Garlic Yogurt, Chicken Breasts with Olive-Leek Sauce and Sautéed Kale, or Mexican Street Tacos with Tomatillo Chicken, Salsa, and Lime Yogurt. She also appreciated being able to preview full recipe steps before ordering, including which steps kids could help with.

The meals themselves were easy and fast to make. “The Chicken Pozole Verde with Tomatillos and Green Chiles was one of my favorite meals I made, tied, perhaps, with that Red Lentil and Chickpea Dal (with the nonorganic butternut squash),” says Chou. Some dishes felt a bit all over the place, like the Green Beans Almondine and Zucchini with Your Choice of Protein. “The pairing of vegetables seemed random to me, as did the green goddess dressing that I poured over the meat and balsamic-dressed green beans. The dish tasted perfectly fine, but it’s not a combination I’d put together again on my own.”

Sunbasket also offers heat-and-eat meals. Chou tried a riff on chicken and dumplings, which “just didn’t have a ton of flavor… It felt a bit like eating airplane food.” A premium Chef’s Table scallop dish with roasted sunchokes and caper-raisin tapenade was delicious, but at $30-plus per serving, it’s restaurant money for a meal you’re cooking yourself.

Two hiccups worth flagging: in her first order, the organic butternut squash in the Dal was substituted with nonorganic without a price adjustment, and a missing recipe card was replaced with a note citing printer issues. She found the meals consistently tasty and nourishing but wasn’t wowed enough to justify the $13–$15 per serving price tag. It could be worth a shot if the organic focus and adventurous menu appeal to you—just go in with calibrated expectations.

Ordering process: You can order online or through Sunbasket’s app. Choose between various dietary preferences (Carb-Conscious, Gluten-Free, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Mediterranean, Diabetes-Friendly, Paleo, or Keto-Friendly) or go the general route. After entering payment details, select meals from a weekly menu of 18 or so dishes, with the option to add on premade meals and market items. There is a $45 minimum for each week’s order.

Unboxing: Orders arrived on time and neatly packed, with each meal’s ingredients in its own brown paper bag and proteins stored at the bottom directly beneath an ice pack. Sunbasket will occasionally swap ingredients based on availability, sometimes substituting organic produce for nonorganic, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the slips of paper tucked into each bag.

Specs:

• Type: Meal kit
• Typical prep and cooking time: 30 to 40 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes
• Average meal price: $13 to $15 per serving
• Additional shipping fee: Not specified in this review

Pros: Good variety of recipe options; meals felt relatively healthy with a good amount of produce. Cons: Organic produce can be substituted for nonorganic; on the pricier side depending on what you get.

Best Organic Meal Kit: Green Chef

Green Chef, owned by HelloFresh, offers (mostly) organic, seasonal produce, with an emphasis on sustainably sourced protein, whole grains, whole fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, and low to no-added sugars. It’s the kit to try if buying organic is important to you, or if you want recipes that meet criteria for certain diets (keto, Mediterranean, high-protein, etc.). To streamline prep, Green Chef ships all sauces, stocks, and herb blends premixed, with some vegetables precut. Add-ons are plentiful, from meat and seafood sampler packs to smoothie kits, frozen desserts, packaged ramen, and dumplings.

Senior service editor Kelsey Jane Youngman found the meals easy to cook. Each labeled bag comes with a full-color recipe card with clear instructions and photos of every major step. Green Chef is upfront about what’s not included (salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and oil), but everything else you need is in the box. A beginner cook could follow along, though cook times may vary. Most meals required at least two pans and leaned into smart, simultaneous cooking techniques—boiling bulgur while squash roasts, or searing a pork fillet on the stovetop. These are not one-pan meals.

“The food was, in general, good,” says Youngman. Her favorite was the Italian Turkey Stuffed Squash Boats—well-seasoned ground turkey bulked up with nutty bulgur and tender kale, spooned over golden-brown roasted zucchini and topped with a creamy pesto riff. The geometry was a little off (one zucchini was tiny, one enormous), but the taste more than made up for it. Her least favorite, the Spiced Salmon with Mango Salsa, came down to ratios and personal preference rather than any fundamental flaw: the salmon was fresh, well-seasoned, and perfectly cooked, but the hash skewed heavily toward purple sweet potato with barely any bell pepper, and the Cotija felt like an odd pairing with the fish. Overall, the recipes were reliable if occasionally repetitive, and the ingredients were consistently fresh—a solid pick for people who want to cook without spending hours in the kitchen or at the grocery store.

Ordering process: Signing up is simple, and new customers are typically offered a first-time discount. After entering payment info, select a dietary preference (Protein Packed, Plant-Based, Mediterranean, Gluten-Free, Keto, Calorie Smart, Quick & Easy, and Gut & Brain Health), which filters your top recipe picks, though you can browse all 80-plus weekly options regardless. Skipping a week or adjusting a delivery date is easy and won’t disrupt your subscription.

Unboxing: Everything arrived properly packaged and cold, with each meal’s ingredients grouped together in a labeled brown paper bag. Individual items, down to half a bell pepper or a single diced onion, came in their own plastic bags, and premade sauces and flavor bases added to the plastic count. Proteins were stored separately at the bottom, directly on top of the ice packs, to prevent cross-contamination. The ice packs are commercially recyclable (not curbside), and the rest of the packaging is recyclable cardboard. Youngman would have liked to see less plastic overall, though she notes Green Chef offsets 100% of delivery emissions and has partnered with Plastic Bank to address ocean-bound plastic.

Specs:

• Type: Organic meal kit service
• Typical prep and cooking time: 30 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes
• Average meal price: $11.99
• Additional shipping fee: $10.99 per box

Pros: Premade/precut ingredients make cleanup easy; clear pictures and instructions; very high quality meat and fish; creative vegetarian options. Cons: Produce selections felt repetitive and oddly out of season after a few weeks; could use more “Protein Packed” vegetarian or vegan meals.

Best Plant-Based Meal Kit: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot is one of the few meal kit services that’s entirely vegan—and one of the best arguments for plant-based cooking, whether or not you follow a vegan diet. The weekly menu spans around 20 meal kit options, covering a wide range of cuisines and dish types, plus ready-to-eat meals and a grocery section stocked with snacks, dips, and pantry staples. It’s a strong pick for anyone looking to cut down on meal planning, explore plant-based cooking, or simply break out of a weeknight dinner rut.

Commerce writer Alaina Chou, a self-described lifelong meat and dairy eater who has tested over 10 meal delivery services, came away genuinely impressed. She appreciated the variety and found herself struggling to narrow down choices each week. “I had a pretty outdated perception of what vegan food could be, and Purple Carrot helped squash that stereotype.” The meals weren’t lightning-fast—most took 30 to 40 minutes, in line with listed cook times—but they were well-composed, balanced, and packed with flavor. Standouts included a Winter Squash Soup spiced with shichimi togarashi and served over quinoa-speckled rice, a light and refreshing Zaru Soba, and BBQ Burnt Ends made from a mushroom-based protein that Chou says “could’ve fooled me into thinking it was meat.” Many dishes introduced new ingredients and techniques she plans to carry into her regular cooking.

A few caveats: more than half the meal kit options were sold out when Chou went to place her first order on the cutoff date, so selecting meals well in advance is advisable. Both weeks she tested, she received an email notifying her that one chosen meal had been replaced due to ingredient quality issues, with no input on the substitute. One week she received a premade meze platter instead of the falafel bowl she’d selected; another week, a pesto risotto that would have taken 60 minutes to make. Some recipes could have been more streamlined—a Winter Squash Soup that dirtied three cooking vessels instead of two—and a few prep steps were listed in the ingredient section rather than the instructions, making it worth reading each recipe thoroughly before starting.

Ordering process: You’ll start by choosing between Meal Kit, Ready-to-Eat, and Mix & Match options, then select dietary preferences, serving size, and number of meals per week. Purple Carrot autofills your first box based on preferences, but you can swap meals freely before the order cutoff, which falls six days before delivery. Skipping a week or changing delivery date is easy, and you can redirect a skipped week’s box to another address if you’d like to pass it along. The weekly menu page is clean and easy to navigate, with filters for gluten-free, high-protein, low-calorie, sodium-smart, and less-prep preferences.

Unboxing: Orders arrived on time in insulated cardboard boxes with ice packs at the bottom. Most ingredients were packed in clear plastic bags grouped by recipe, with each bag’s outer pocket holding the corresponding recipe card—a small but useful organizational detail. Larger loose items like kale and Chinese broccoli were packed separately at the top. Produce arrived in great shape across both weeks, with nothing wilted or blemished.

Specs:

• Type: Meal kit; heat-and-eat meals available as add-ons
• Typical prep and cooking time: 25 minutes
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes
• Average meal price: $13 per serving
• Additional shipping fee: Free shipping on orders over $100

Pros: Quick, easy, healthy meals that actually taste good and cost less than a delivery habit; variety of difficulty levels including fully prepared options. Cons: Some meals get a little boring; everything is vegan, which isn’t for everyone.

Other Meal Kits We’ve Tested

There are things we liked and things we’d leave about each of the kits below. But hey—everyone’s different! So one of these might be best for you.

Blue Apron

Founded in 2012, Blue Apron is one of the OG meal kit companies. The brand underwent a rebrand that includes a refreshed ordering experience and a business model geared toward busy people. In addition to original kit-style meals, Blue Apron now offers Dish (heat and eat) and Assemble and Bake (less prep and fewer dishes). Contributor Lizzy Briskin sampled a meal from each category and found them all quite good.

The Chili Crisp Beef Bao Buns were “involved but not stressful.” Besides heating premade buns, tasks included searing shishito peppers, slicing cucumber, mixing spicy hoisin mayo, and shaping/cooking beef patties. The four-step instructions suggest using the same skillet for the shishitos and patties to minimize dishes. The grass-fed beef was excellent—juicy, flavorful, and high-quality even with minimal seasoning—and the whole meal took under 30 minutes. The quick-pickled cucumbers were a bright, acidic counterpoint to the rich buns. The Coconut Korma Chicken (heat and eat) and Sheet Pan Shrimp Panzanella (Assemble and Bake) were hits too; the panzanella required very little prep and was ready in just 20 minutes, with very fresh produce.

Ordering process: Blue Apron has switched to an à la carte experience—no lengthy signup, just choose as many meals as you’d like and place the order. Briskin found the expansive menu a little overwhelming; currently you can only filter by cooking time (5, 15, 30, 45, and 60-plus minutes) and protein type. She’d love filters for allergens or other dietary preferences.

Unboxing: The order arrived well-packed with plenty of ice packs; proteins were at the bottom right on top of the ice. Assemble and Bake and Meal Kit meals come in labeled clear plastic bags. There is a lot of packaging, though that’s sort of par for the course with most meal kits.

Pros: Quality ingredients; reliable recipes; easy-to-follow recipe cards. Cons: A lot of packaging; meals can take a while to prepare.

Factor

Factor positions itself as a nutritious, dietitian-approved meal delivery service with fully prepared, never-frozen meals designed around specific wellness goals. The menu spans around 65 options per week, with dietary preference filters including Keto, High Protein, Calorie Smart, Carb Conscious, GLP-1 Support, and Fiber Filled. Meals follow a simple formula—a protein with one or two sides—and are approved by a team of registered dietitians.

Commerce writer Alaina Chou, a skeptic of microwave meals, came away more impressed than expected after two weeks and 12 meals. The chicken breast in the Green Chile Chicken was “shockingly juicy,” the pasta in the Cavatappi and Meatballs retained a bit of bite, and the brussels sprouts in the Homestyle Turkey and Gravy avoided getting mushy. Every dish was well-seasoned enough that she never reached for extra salt or pepper. Portions felt balanced and satisfying, typically a protein with one carb and one vegetable side. The one notable miss was a pork chop that came out tough and unenjoyable.

Things to know: vegetable sides can get waterlogged or squeaky after microwaving (broccoli and green beans in particular); rotating produce can feel repetitive; the menu is thin on plant-based options; sodium runs 700 to 1,000 milligrams per meal; and while the food is dietitian-approved, Factor doesn’t offer much transparency about ingredient sourcing. Chou sees it as best for a few weeks at a time—ideal for busy stretches, less so as an everyday replacement for home cooking. It’s far cheaper than ordering in, but more expensive than grocery shopping and cooking.

Ordering process: Select up to three wellness goals, choose dietary preferences, pick how many meals you want per week (anywhere from six to 18), and browse a rotating menu of around 65 options. Each meal is clearly tagged with dietary labels, and clicking in reveals a full description, nutrition label, ingredient list, and allergen info. Factor preselects meals, but swapping them out is easy before the weekly cutoff.

Unboxing: Deliveries arrive in an insulated, recyclable cardboard box lined with ice packs. Each meal comes in a segmented plastic tray sealed with plastic film and sleeved in cardboard printed with the meal name, ingredients, and heating instructions. Most materials are recyclable, though Chou notes the individual cardboard sleeves feel like an area where packaging could be trimmed down.

Pros: Easy and cheaper than takeout; flavorful and satisfying; nutritious options. Cons: Gets tiring eating food microwaved in plastic containers; some meal portions were on the smaller side.

Tovala

Tovala is an anomaly: its premier product isn’t just a meal delivery service, but a smart oven that pairs with one. Each meal consists of raw proteins and uncooked produce on a tray that only needs to be popped into the Tovala oven for cooking. Preparing a Tovala meal is as easy as assembling some preportioned ingredients in trays and scanning a QR code, after which the oven takes care of the rest. There are no standard cooking instructions, so you will need that special oven to make the service worthwhile—but, while not free, it comes at a 77% discount ($69) if you order meals six times over the course of six months.

Senior commerce editor Noah Kaufman usually takes issue with prepared meals, citing their tendency to “fall somewhere between a better-than-normal Lean Cuisine and an ‘it’s edible, I suppose’ MRE.” But Tovala’s semi-prepared fare impressed him. “Using a mixture of steam baking, convection roasting, and broiling, the Tovala oven turned out delicious meals in 20 minutes (including cooking time) with juicy chicken, flaky salmon or creamy sweet potatoes time after time,” he writes.

Ordering process: To place your first order, sign up and order your smart oven. Then pick meals—a minimum of four meals a week comes with a preset menu, but the Tovala app makes it easy to swap with one of more than 30 options, all labeled with dietary specifications like “vegetarian,” “high protein,” or “GLP-1 balanced.”

Unboxing: Orders arrive in insulated, ice-pack-lined cardboard boxes. Most meal components—single-serve condiments, small plastic bags of breadcrumbs or sauces, and aluminum trays filled with prepared ingredients—are separated into small cardboard boxes for each meal, save for the proteins, which are packed separately in vacuum-sealed bags.

Specs:

• Type: Semi-prepared kits
• Typical prep and cooking time: 1 to 2 minutes of prep, 20-minute cook time
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Limited
• Add-ons available: No
• Average meal price: $12.99 per serving
• Additional shipping fee: $10.99

Pros: Food has excellent texture and flavor; prep takes less than 90 seconds; high-quality ingredients. Cons: Requires getting the Tovala oven.

Sakara

Founded by Danielle DuBoise and Whitney Tingle, who were seeking solutions to their own health issues, Sakara specializes in plant-based, gluten-free prepared meals that prioritize nutrient-rich foods. The brand touts “9 Pillars of Nutrition,” from “eat the rainbow” and “eat your water” to “leafy greens” and “good fats.” Its Signature Nutrition Program lets you choose between three or five days of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, or just lunches and dinners.

All meals director of cooking Emma Laperruque received were “straightforward and quick to prepare.” Many required no heating at all (a parfait for breakfast, a salad for lunch), and those that did could often be microwaved instead of following oven instructions, with perfectly good results. “There were a few heating recommendations that I adjusted to speed things up; for example, instead of reheating a taco in a 350° oven for five minutes as suggested, I just zapped it in the microwave for a minute, and that worked great.”

Breakfasts skew sweet, with muffins, scones, parfaits, and granola. They aren’t cloyingly sweet; Laperruque found them well-balanced, especially the pumpkin pie parfait with maple-cinnamon granola and the coconut praline granola with cacao mylk. Sakara’s salads are excellent—generously portioned, thoughtfully designed with textures (leafy greens, crunchy veg) and colors (quinoa dyed with turmeric and blue spirulina). She especially enjoyed the beet salad with cashews and carrot-ginger dressing, and the Technicolor quinoa salad with pumpkin-seed tofu and cashew-tamari dressing.

Dinners were enjoyable (“I’m still thinking about Sakara’s ‘chile-kissed’ pinto beans and wishing I had them canned”), though portion sizes leaned small for bigger eaters. The gluten-free baked goods—such as a “chocolate love muffin”—were more hit or miss, creatively conceived but sometimes a significant departure from their inspiration; they’ll appeal most to those who are actually gluten-free.

The main downside is price: at $140–$465 per week (per person!), depending on plan, it’s the priciest option on this list. If you prioritize wellness and see food as nourishment and healing, you’ll like what you get. It’s also a great option for people who are gluten-free or vegan.

Ordering process: Sakara rolls out set menus each week. In the Signature Nutrition Program, you choose lunch and dinner, or breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The five lunches for the week are the five lunches for the week, with no substitutions. For a service designed to simplify your life, that’s more feature than flaw: all planning and curation is handled for you. You can order on a weekly subscription or prepay for one, four, eight, or twelve weeks at a time.

Unboxing: The kits were packaged securely and everything arrived fresh and cold.

Specs:

• Type: Prepared meal delivery service (with some assembly required)
• Typical prep and cooking time: Just a few minutes of prep
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes; Sakara also makes packaged snacks and supplements
• Average meal price: Plans start at $140 per week
• Additional shipping fee: Free when you subscribe

Pros: Healthy, nourishing meals; appealing to vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free eaters; curated menu takes care of planning. Cons: Premium price point might not fit into a lot of people’s budgets.

Thistle

Thistle’s prepared meals are created in collaboration with nutritionists to ensure all recipes are nutrient-rich. The entire menu is gluten- and dairy-free (great for people with sensitivities or allergies), you can choose whether or not to include meat, and all dishes are high-fiber (10 to 20 grams) and high-protein (20 to 40 grams). This takes the guesswork and prep work out of healthy eating for people serious about nutrition goals but short on time or energy.

Senior commerce director Abbey Stone found that Thistle’s meals taste about as healthy as they are—which, depending on your palate, could be a pro or a con. She didn’t find them lacking in flavor, but they all shared a similar profile, likely due to overlapping ingredients. “This meant I grew tired of the meals over the course of the week I tested them,” she said. All entrées were bowl-style dishes—pastas, grain bowls, salads—which Stone found more suited to lunch than dinner. As a lunch option, they hold their own against any fast-casual spot, and at $11.50 per serving, undercut the price of, say, a Dig Inn bowl. One catch: many recipes require stovetop heating, making them tricky to prepare in a typical office kitchen.

Ordering process: Enter your zip code to confirm delivery. Thistle is available only on the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Nevada) and in the Northeast (Boston, New York, Philly, and DC). Choose dietary preferences (vegan, vegetarian, or some meat), number of meals, and delivery frequency (once or twice a week). You can select a delivery window and Thistle will send text updates.

Unboxing: Each meal is packaged in a plastic container with a label showing nutrition info and ingredients. In a nod toward sustainability, the insulated bag and cold packs are reusable. Leave them outside your door, and Thistle will pick them up when delivering your next shipment.

Pros: Dairy-, gluten-, and refined sugar-free; affordable; option to add on juices and elixirs. Cons: All meals are bowl-style; only available in limited East and West Coast zip codes.

Gobble

Many meal kit services emphasize 30-minute home-cooked meals, but Gobble cuts that promise in half, advertising entrées that come together in 15 minutes—and largely delivering on it. Dishes move quickly because Gobble does a lot of prep upfront: sauces arrive fully made and vegetables come already broken down.

A former associate commerce director found it the go-to service for hearty, generous portions: “In my experience with other meal kit services, portions tend to be small, so you really get your money’s worth here.” Her favorite was a chicken burger with sriracha aioli and yuca fries: easy recipe, premade sauces/dressings/spice blends, juicy burger thanks to Cajun seasoning, spicy aioli, and honey-Dijon slaw. Other standouts included Tuscan pork sugo with peppers and aloo matar with marble potatoes.

The weekly menu runs about 15 dinners, and add-ons earn extra points: à la carte salads, soups, flatbreads, breakfasts (Belgian waffles, bacon egg and cheese sandwiches), and desserts (chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate lava cake) make it easy to round out a full meal or stock up on quick lunches. The chicken tortilla soup was a favorite office lunch option. Gobble does offer meals for low-calorie, dairy-free, plant-based, and vegan diets, but that’s not the primary draw. This is the service to turn to when you want satisfying, crowd-pleasing meals with minimal fuss.

Ordering process: Answer questions about specific dietary preferences and lifestyle, then pick from weekly menu options.

Unboxing: Each meal is packaged together and individually packed over ice, so everything arrives very fresh.

Pros: Quick cook times; low effort; large portions. Cons: Lack of variety.

Forkful

Forkful is a prepared meal delivery service with a focus on healthy eating. It uses organic ingredients and caters to eight different diets, including gluten-free, plant-based, keto, and high-protein. All meals are cooked by chefs without seed oils (although the research on the dangers of seed oils is dubious) and delivered fresh, not frozen. In a nutshell, Forkful provides a tasty solution for busy folks looking to get a nutritious meal with no time or effort.

You can filter by dietary preference, input allergies, and see nutritional information for each meal, including calories, carbs, and other macros. Senior commerce director Abbey Stone tried Forkful with plant-based eating in mind and said, “Forkful meals provide easy, fully vegan options for things like office lunches that will leave you feeling full without need to constantly order out.”

Quality varied from dish to dish; some featured flavorful sauces and good seasoning, while others were bland (like under-salted broccoli) or texturally unappealing (chicken, in particular, didn’t fare well to microwave heating). Forkful offers dozens of meals each week, but many are similar—pastas, protein with a side of rice or potatoes, kids-menu favorites like chicken nuggets. These work best for lunch, and being microwavable makes them easy to heat at the office. Because the full menu shares a similar flavor profile, it’s easy to tire of them after a couple in one week.

Ordering process: Select the eating plan you follow and the number of meals each week (from six to 20). Enter payment info, select the Monday you’d like your first box delivered (deliveries are only made on Mondays), and pick meals. You have until Wednesday each week to select meals for the following week.

Unboxing: Meals are packaged in a plastic tray and covered with plastic film, stacked into a cardboard box with recyclable cardboard padding and cool packs.

Specs:

• Type: Prepared foods delivery service
• Typical prep and cooking time: 3 minutes in the microwave; 25-35 minutes in the oven
• Gluten-free options: Yes
• Plant-based options: Yes
• Add-ons available: Yes; primarily desserts
• Average meal price: $9 to $13 per serving
• Additional shipping fee: Varies by location

Pros: Generous portion sizes; meals delivered fresh, so they heat up in less than 3 minutes; full nutritional info available. Cons: Quality of proteins varies, especially when microwaved; little flexibility in delivery date or time; recipes are mostly comfort food classics.

Territory

Territory pitches itself as a healthy meal delivery service that works with local chefs and restaurants to supply individually packaged meals. Meals come fully precooked, with reheating instructions on the label, and according to the website, none contain gluten, dairy, or refined sugars. Each meal arrives in a shallow plastic tray to be reheated in the microwave with the lid off or peeled back halfway.

Senior Test Kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic, a first-time meal kit user, was initially charmed by the concept—precooked, preportioned food in the fridge, ready to reheat with virtually no cleanup. But that novelty wore off quickly. “My curiosity quickly fell off when I realized the food tasted mostly the same (underseasoned) and felt mostly the same,” she says, describing a recurring formula of “something stewy with something dry, like rice or quinoa, plus a few token vegetables.”

Standouts were few but notable. The mocha overnight oats impressed with their texture—“not too runny, and with none of the slippery feel that overnight oats are susceptible to”—topped with a sweet, creamy coconut yogurt. The Beef Burger with Mushroom Topping and Sweet Potato Wedges fared better once Uskokovic ditched the microwave instructions and finished it in a hot skillet with olive oil, though she wished there had been significantly more mushroom sauce.

The misses outweighed the hits. The Butter Chickpeas with Cauliflower and Squash suffered from dry rice, chewy cauliflower, and a sauce that tasted mainly of clove. The Red Lentil Soup with Apricot was “too smooth, too plain, too predigested.” The Chipotle Black Bean Bowl—quinoa, black beans, corn salsa—was “shockingly flavorless.” Uskokovic wouldn’t order Territory again, though she acknowledges it could work well for someone with specific nutrition goals like high-protein, gluten-free, or paleo eating.

Ordering process: Easy and straightforward: scroll through options and add to cart. You can get food delivered twice a week, and each time you can order up to 12 meals (or up to 24 meals per week).

Unboxing: The outer packaging is a large insulated bag with two ice pack bricks. Each meal comes in its own clearly labeled plastic tray sealed with plastic film or a lid. Territory claims to collect and reuse the insulated bags on subsequent deliveries.

Pros: Great for nutritional goals; super convenient with little cleanup. Cons: Pretty flavorless; everything is stewy, without crisp textures or deeply browned/caramelized flavors.

Cumin Club

Unlike the other meal delivery services on this list, Cumin Club’s offerings include shelf-stable plant-based Indian dishes—think curries, lentils, and rice, all dehydrated and requiring just water and heat. You can mix and match packets to make a dinner that comes together, in most cases, in less than 10 minutes.

Meal service details:

• Plan options: 5, 10, or 20 meals delivered on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis
• Average meal price: $6–$8 depending on plan
• Shipping fee: Free
• Meal types: Lunches, dinners

Example meals: Masala Bhindi, Palak Paneer, Paneer Tikka Masala, Vegetable Biryani.

Tester Joe Sevier, senior SEO editor, found Cumin Club best for people looking for meal starters rather than full-fledged meals. The meals couldn’t be simpler: boil water, empty the packet, let it sit, and serve. His favorite was the cumin rice: “I would absolutely buy it again if it was available in stores. I’m shocked that an instant rice product had such great texture, plus a wonderfully buttery and cumin-forward flavor.” He also used the packs to build meals: browning ground meat, deglazing with water, adding the dehydrated powder and vegetables, and simmering until tender; or browning chicken legs, transferring to a baking dish, whisking cold water with the dehydrated paneer butter masala pack, and roasting until cooked through.

What they’d leave: the packs work best as meal starters rather than full-on meal kits. “I did not care for them as meals on their own—I found that I needed to bulk them up with extra ingredients, and that many of the curries seemed wildly lacking in heft.” The ordering process: choose plan size (5, 10, or 20 meals) and delivery frequency (weekly, biweekly, or monthly), then select meals; add on recommended sides like roti and rice for $4 each.

Pros: Very easy to make; great as bases around which to build meals. Cons: Not filling enough to be a whole meal themselves.

Tempo Meals by Home Chef

Launched in 2023, Tempo is the first new brand under the Home Chef umbrella. It specializes in single-serve heat-and-eat meals designed with balance and nutrition in mind—the home page proudly states the meals are “Dietitian-Approved.” Alaina Chou tested Tempo for two weeks and sampled a range of dishes and protein types. She was pretty impressed: each meal was well-seasoned, and both looked and tasted fresh, especially for microwave food in a plastic tray. The meals were balanced, with ample portions of vegetables that left her feeling nourished.

Some favorites: the Chipotle Chicken Tinga Rice Bowl (tender, shreddy chicken, seasoned rice, corn and black bean mixture that didn’t get mushy); a chicken breast with salsa verde that was juicy and flavorful; and cavatappi with Italian sausage, in which the pasta held up impressively to the microwave.

Ordering process: Select goals, enter dietary preferences, input delivery and payment info, and pick from a list of 20 meals. Add-on options—breakfast, snacks, dessert, drinks—are limited, with just a few (or sometimes one) product per category: think La Colombe canned lattes, ready-to-bake skillet cookies, or frozen breakfast sandwiches.

Unboxing: Meals arrive packed into a box lined with insulation and sandwiched between ice packs.

Pros: No prep or cooking necessary; meals feel balanced with plenty of veggies. Cons: Meals can feel repetitive; not a ton of add-on options.

Fresh Meal Plan

Fresh Meal Plan is a fully prepared meal delivery service specializing in “chef-crafted” and “dietitian-approved” microwavable meals. There’s a definite health and macros-counting bent to the brand, with Lean and Mean and Keto among the most prominent meal types after the standard Traditional. While it feels marketed to the gym-bro, eat-to-live archetype, tester Alaina Chou was pleasantly surprised. “The meals tasted fresh, were well-seasoned, and had an impressive amount of protein (we’re talking 30-plus grams for most dishes),” she says. She appreciated that there were 60-odd menu items each week and that each meal had ratings and reviews—a feature she’d only seen before with CookUnity.

There was one major miss in Chou’s order (a tough, fishy-tasting cod paired with green beans that were on their last legs), but several hits: a juicy lemon thyme chicken with perfectly cooked asparagus and sweet potato, and an Argentinean steak with a very tasty plantain mash.

Ordering process: Choose your plan—an order minimum of 6, 10, or 14 meals per week on subscription, or a onetime order of at least 8 meals—then scroll through the menu and add whatever you like to your cart. The main menu page shows photos and basic macronutrient info, but you can click in for a full description, nutrition info, and reviews. You can make any meal XL for an extra $3.

Unboxing: Meals arrived on time in an insulated box lined with ice packs; each meal comes in a labeled plastic microwavable tray.

Pros: Lots of high-protein options; option to make meals XL; reviews for each meal. Cons: Most dishes are simple and lack creativity; quality was hit or miss.

Gardencup

Gardencup offers salads and bowls packaged in jars, designed to be easy to take on the go. When it’s time to eat, simply add your dressing, give the whole thing a shake, and enjoy. The menu feels familiar but crowd-pleasing—think Caesar, Cobb, Southwest chicken, and wedge salads. Commerce writer Wilder Davies notes that “they are generous with the meat, with the salads averaging around 30 grams of protein, which left me feeling full by the time I finished eating.”

Despite a couple days in transit, Davies’s Gardencups arrived fresh—and even his last salad five days after delivery was still in pretty good shape. Since crunchy toppings and dressing are in their own packaging, you don’t have to worry about things getting soggy. “I think Gardencup appeals to anyone desiring convenience, familiarity, and consistency in meals. The menu isn’t extensive,” he says, noting only 13 salads and six Powercup bowls were available the week he tested. “But I think that’s enough variety to keep things a bit mixed up throughout the weeks without getting too bored.” He notes that while Gardencup has vegetarian and vegan options, these felt significantly less substantial than the meat-containing offerings.

Ordering process: Placing an order is easy. Unlike many meal delivery services, Gardencup doesn’t require you to enter your address and payment info before seeing a menu. Choose the shipping frequency and number of salads (six or nine), add your selections to your cart, and proceed to checkout. Additional items like soups or snack cups each take up half a salad’s worth of slots in your order.

Unboxing: Gardencup ships orders from Texas using UPS Second Day Air. Each order is packed in an insulated cardboard box with a large ice pack at the bottom, and Gardencup will refund your order if the cold pack is completely thawed on arrival.

Pros: Fresh ingredients; generous protein in meat-containing meals; convenient for on-the-go lunches. Cons: Vegetarian/vegan salads don’t feel as substantial; cups can be hard to adequately shake up without transferring to a bowl.

How We Tested These Services

At any given moment, Bon Appétit editors are probably testing a meal kit—this process runs perpetually to stay familiar with ever-changing options and monitor quality and consistency over time. For the last three years, editors from across the Bon Appétit team have integrated meals from the companies above into their daily cooking repertoires. We also frequently have staff members retest meal kits that are new to them, so we get a variety of perspectives.

Ordering Process

Editors select meals from each company, ensuring a wide variety of meal options that demonstrate everything the kit has to offer. We pay close attention to how easy it is to sign up, whether it’s possible to filter by dietary needs, and what options are available in terms of serving size, frequency, and cuisines.

Receiving and Unboxing

We note any delivery mishaps or delays. After receiving the kit, we unbox it and examine how well items were packed, checking for damage or lost freshness and noting how much packaging waste is involved. We compare ingredient quality to what we’d find at the grocery store or in competing kits, then put items away until ready to use.

Cooking and Eating

We follow instructions closely, noting unclear steps or inaccurate cook times. Many recipe-developing editors also test kits in their home kitchens as part of normal routines, to see how they hold up on busy weeknights. We plate each meal as directed, then taste, paying attention to flavor, satisfaction, and whether portion sizes feel ample.

Long-Term Testing

Our reviews don’t stop after a single week. We regularly return to services with fresh eyes—often assigning them to editors who haven’t tried them—to account for changes in menu availability, ingredient quality, and overall experience. Services can shift significantly over time, and when we notice meaningful differences, we update our reviews.

Who Is This Meal Kit Right For?

Different meal kits meet different needs. Some offer packaged ready-made meals as easy as fast food but with more nutritional value. Some involve just as much chopping, sautéing, and cleanup as a regular recipe. The first might be great for a busy family looking to fill a few weeknight dinners with cook-free options; the second might be perfect for someone who genuinely loves to cook and is looking for new recipes and techniques. We judge kits against one another, but also assess them based on how well they serve the specific user needs they’re designed for.

What Makes a Good Meal Delivery Service

Packaging and Freshness

A good meal kit arrives on time and well-packaged, with ingredients that are undamaged and still fresh. The best kits keep packaging waste to a minimum, steering clear of excess single-use plastic, and include ingredients on par with a well-stocked grocery store, or better.

Recipe Quality

A good meal kit comes with recipes that are clear and efficient, with accurate cook times and instructions precise enough to deliver consistent results, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced cook. The best recipes hold up under real-world conditions, like a hectic weeknight when dinner needs to come together fast.

Taste

Taste is the most important factor. The best kits deliver well-balanced, flavorful dishes in portions that feel satisfying rather than skimpy.

Price

A good meal kit offers enough value—through convenience, ingredient quality, or ready-made ease—to justify its price relative to grocery store costs, takeout, or other kits. Meal kits carry a premium no matter what, so the best ones make that premium feel worth paying.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best meal delivery service?

The best meal delivery service depends heavily on your personal needs and preferences. If you’re looking for a traditional box-of-ingredients-style kit, Marley Spoon is a great place to start—our top choice for most people thanks to its diverse menu, extensive customization, and flexibility in accommodating dietary needs.

What kinds of meal kits are there?

There are three main types. Some, like Hungryroot, are curated grocery boxes that come with recipes you can choose to make—or not make. Others come with specific preportioned ingredients designed to make one recipe for two to four people. Finally, there are fully premade meals that need to be popped into the oven or microwave. Some kits are designed for specific dietary restrictions, and some services allow you to mix and match all of the above.

How do you choose the best meal kit for you?

All styles have pros and cons, and the right one depends heavily on your lifestyle at the moment you’re shopping. Whether you need a subscription that meets specific dietary needs, prioritizes high-quality ingredients and truly fresh meals, or offers a good selection of budget-friendly healthy meals, you’ll find your match above. We tried to assess kits against the problems they were trying to solve rather than straightforwardly pitting them against one another. A premade meal is never going to be as fresh as one you make from a kit—but it will be a lot easier. We have yet to find an affordable option that compares to the higher-end kits, but our top budget pick (Dinnerly) is still a good option for those who are budget-constrained but interested in trying a meal delivery service.

Is there a difference between meal kits and meal delivery services?

A meal kit is to a meal delivery service as a square is to a rectangle—every meal kit is a meal delivery service, but not every meal delivery service is a meal kit. Meal kits typically refer to boxes of ingredients that need assembling, whereas meal delivery services also encompass premade meals.

How much do meal delivery services cost per serving?

Cost varies service to service, but the ones on this list range from $8 per serving to around $30.

How easy is it to cancel or skip a week?

Most services give you the option to pause before that week’s order cutoff date. Meal delivery services are notorious for making cancellation difficult, but there is always a way: look for a cancel button in your account settings, or contact customer service—those buttons can really be buried sometimes.

Are meal delivery services worth it?

They ask you to pay a premium for convenience. If the time and energy saved—both mental and physical—by not needing to meal plan or grocery shop feel worth the extra dollars per serving, then subscribing is absolutely worth it. They may also be worth considering if you have dietary restrictions that make weekly meal planning harder.