The Cheapest Meal Delivery Services That Are Actually Worth Ordering

Finding the cheapest meal delivery service isn’t always as straightforward as it should be. That’s because the low prices that keep popping up in your feed or on those giant mailers are usually based on some, er, fuzzy calculations.

For starters, those per-serving costs are typically introductory offers that expire after a few weeks or months. Or they might be based on a minimum weekly order that’s far more food than your household would actually consume, and most tack on an additional shipping cost. Also, how do they determine what counts as a portion size? Your six-foot-tall, athletic husband and a company’s consulting dietitian might have very different opinions on that subject. And let us not forget that time is money; if an entrée requires too much prep time, this particular home-cooked meal model might not be worth it for you in the end.

So if you found your way here in an attempt to figure out whether that seemingly affordable meal kit is actually, well, affordable, you’ve come to the right place. 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.

• 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

While it’s true that advertised meal kit pricing is often deliberately opaque, it’s still entirely possible to get delicious meals, organic produce, and even kid-friendly snacks at or below grocery store prices. Even some luxe and wellness-focused options are competitively priced.

It’s also worth noting that, even if they end up being a bit more than the grocery store, meal kits and prepared meal delivery services will still be cheaper than takeout, even after the introductory offer has expired. They also cater to a variety of dietary needs and restrictions to make meal planning around those factors simpler. Many are very generous with substitutions too. 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.

If you’re looking for a filling, budget-friendly meal kit and you don’t have too many dietary restrictions or preferences, EveryPlate is a good option. With meals priced at just $5.99 a serving, its the best cheap meal delivery service for busy, budget-minded home cooks and couples without too many dietary restrictions.

As I write this update in July, EveryPlate’s promotional offer boasts meals as low as $1.99 a serving, but even at full price, this is the most affordable meal kit service we recommend—and one of the most affordable meal delivery services out there.

Add-ons include proteins like steak, ground beef, bacon, and salmon, plus veggies like broccoli and sweet potatoes. 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 set your weekly order. Recipe cards come with each insulated kit, and they’re also available online.

Contributor April Benshosan tried EveryPlate this summer and was overall pleased with the meals, especially considering the low price. The recipes aren't the most exciting, and you do need to have basic staples on hand, but they're filling and easy to prepare.

Dinnerly

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Dinnerly

Dinnerly is the affordable sister brand to Marley Spoon (our favorite meal kit for people who like to cook). 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. It's the best cheap meal kit for intermediate home cooks who don’t mind chopping and prep, couples, and small households.

Each meal can supposedly be prepared in five steps or less. That said, as my colleague Wilder Davies and I have experienced, both Dinnerly’s and Marley Spoon’s steps often include quite a few separate tasks. These often aren’t one-dish dinners either, so if you’re hoping that part of the meal kit lifestyle is washing fewer dishes, be sure to peek at the recipe steps when selecting your weekly meals.

Dinnerly allows you to filter recipes by cuisine or dietary preference, and you can also 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.

Dinnerly subscribers can also choose from a wide variety of add-ons, which offer the same great variety as the Marley Spoon Market and include proteins, produce, pastries, pizza dough, shortcut meal kits, premade meals you can heat and eat, desserts, and goodies from brands like Roberta’s Pizza, Spicewalla, Mike’s Hot Honey, and more. Contributing social media manager Elise Portale recently tried Dinnerly and had mixed feelings about the recipes she selected, but she really enjoyed the Market selection.

Presumably, to make shipping more sustainable, ingredients are all packaged together and not divided by kit. You can opt out of printed recipe cards and cook from the online recipe or Dinnerly app if you want to reduce the materials that get shipped to you.

Home Chef

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Home Chef

Cooking for a crowd and looking for a variety of meals including traditional meal kits and fully prepared meals? Then Home Chef’s Family Menu might be the best affordable meal delivery service for you. With a price of $6.99 per serving, this is a great cheap meal delivery service for families or households of 4 who want a kit a few nights a week, as well as for beginner home cooks.

Of course, price is only part of the equation when it comes to finding the best affordable meal delivery services. So to get a better sense of Home Chef’s value, contributor Adam Campbell-Schmitt tried it at home for two weeks.

Overall, he liked the service and found that the dishes were simple and kid-friendly, though they sometimes bordered on too simple. While picky eaters might prefer more basic presentations and flavor profiles, more experienced home cooks might want something more. The premium and “Culinary Collection” offerings like brown butter sage gnocchi and maple-glazed trout were more exciting to cook and eat, but they also cost up to $4 more per serving.

The standard meal kits can often be prepared in 15 or 30 minutes and include preportioned ingredients. You can also choose from fully cooked meal options that are oven-ready and grill-ready, and add-ons include proteins, snacks, soups, salad kits, desserts, and more.

HelloFresh

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HelloFresh

HelloFresh is one of the OG meal delivery services (despite any claims you might see to the contrary, it’s been around longer than Blue Apron), and though its price tag is on the higher end of what I consider “cheap,” it offers far more meal options than its comparably priced competitors. It's good for smaller households who want at least three kits a week. And in addition to the different meal kits, you can order a variety of add-ons like proteins, snacks, desserts, and smoothies from the HelloFresh Market.

Bon Appétit staffers who have tried HelloFresh at home have reported that the portions are large and plentiful; they’ve praised the fresh ingredients, including the meat. But Maria Paz Mendez Hodes, former director of creative development who tested HelloFresh earlier this year, found that the kits were light on produce and heavy on carbs.

Contributor Betty Gold Kider tried Hello Fresh this summer and was overall impressed with the recipe selection and quality, though the meals took a little longer to prepare than the advertised 30 minutes.

Hungryroot

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Hungryroot

If you don’t like grocery shopping and don’t want to do much in the way of meal prep, Hungryroot may be the meal delivery service for you. Well, except for the fact that it isn’t technically a meal delivery service; it’s more of a high-end grocery delivery service that comes with suggestions for how to easily combine its items into quick-and-easy meals. It's great for home cooks in small households, snackers, and grazers.

Because it’s an online grocery store, Hungryroot has plenty of options for your dietary restrictions (dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, tree-nut-free, peanut-free, egg-free, shellfish-free, vegan meals, vegetarian meals, pescatarian meals, high-protein and paleo options, diabetes-friendly meals, etc.) and dietary preferences (sweets or no sweets? That is the question! Or at least one of them). Your answers are logged at sign-up via a thorough survey, though you’ll always have the option to adjust your weekly selections.

Even if you don’t end up making the suggested recipes, you’ll still be stocking your kitchen with a variety of prepared foods, packaged staples, nutritious snacks, produce, and fresh meat (if you choose—there are plenty of meatless options too). I tend to lean on the service for quick-and-easy breakfast items and snacks for my kids, but the beauty of Hungryroot is you can mix and match whatever you need any given week.

If you love the ritual of chopping and prepping, this may not be the meal kit for you. But if you’re more of a snacker and you have a hard time getting yourself to the grocery store, you’ll probably love it.

Our editors and contributors are constantly ordering and preparing a wide variety of meal kits and prepared meals to stay current on the best meal delivery services in general. When considering any meal kit company, our testers look at the menu and dietary preference variety, quality of the ingredients inside the boxes and their sourcing, 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 kits, I looked at the average price per serving and selected only the options that are available for $10 or less per serving.

But I didn’t stop there.

Some companies are very transparent with their pricing. For example, the vegan meal kit service Purple Carrot makes it easy to figure out that their lowest price per serving is $11 (without any introductory discounts) before you hand over your email address, so they didn’t make the cut for this list. That kind of transparency has historically been the exception, not the rule, though. So when I first put together this list of the cheapest meal kits, I had to at least begin the subscription process to get real numbers.

In addition to relying on my own experiences ordering 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 meals 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’m pleased to report that as I write this update in July 2025, I’ve noticed more and more meal kit companies being equally transparent with their pricing. It’s not yet an industry standard, but it’s a start.

What else you won’t find on this list: Services that come 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 for two months. 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.

Additional reporting and meal kit testing by Adam Campbell-Schmitt, Wilder Davies, Carina Finn, Rachel Gurjar, Karen Yuan, Alma Avalle, and Hilary Cadigan.

Read more shopping stories on Bon Appétit

• The Best Fully Prepared Meal Delivery Services for When You Need Dinner Now
• The Best Healthy Meal Delivery Services for Easy, Feel-Good Food
• The Best Meal Kits for Hassle-Free Home Cooking