Most prepared meals either arrive frozen or can be frozen after unboxing. That means it's less of an issue if you order too many meals on your first go around. Most services allow you to change the number of meals or servings in your plan even after you've started.
Our meal delivery experts have logged more than 5 years of cooking more than 75 meal kits and tasting more than prepared meals from various services to help land on our list of the best healthy meal subscriptions in While everything else has got more expensive, meal kit subscriptions seem to be getting cheaper.
The absolute cheapest meal kit is EveryPlate , and with consistently tasty meals -- we've tested it three times now -- that take as little as 20 minutes to cook, it's an easy pick for the best cheap meal service for Read more: Are Some Meal Kits Cheaper Than Buying Groceries?
I Did the Math. If you're looking for inexpensive vegan meals by mail or an affordable meal kit service that includes steak and seafood in the standard plan, we have picks for those, too.
The takeaway? Being budget-friendly certainly doesn't mean the food has to suck. If you're looking to eliminate a few weekly tasks -- grocery shopping, meal planning, prep, cooking -- without squeezing your budget, we tested more than 10 top wallet-friendly services to find the best cheap meal delivery for The bottom line : EveryPlate's meal kits were all solid and easy to make.
EveryPlate meal kits are easy to prepare and I loved everything I made in multiple rounds of testing. You won't find a lot of foofy, upscale cuisine or complicated recipes, but you will get a lot of satisfying comfort food, such as hoisin meatloaf with mashed potatoes, cheeseburgers, umami pork chops and sweet potato quesadillas.
I tested EveryPlate and was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the meals. Having tested all of the leading prepared meal delivery service options, Fresh N Lean ran away from the competition, ticking more boxes than any other. The food is healthy, thoughtfully prepared, tastes fantastic, looks appetizing and is fairly affordable, depending on the plan you select.
Fresh N Lean has five meal plans to help keep folks on track with their specific nutrition goals, including low-carb, vegan, paleo and protein-plus options.
The food I tried was all made exceptionally well, made from simple, whole ingredients. This is the perfect service for families with picky eaters trying to eat well on a budget. Much like EveryPlate, Dinnerly has a lot of comfort foods such as ravioli with spinach and parmesan sauce, carne asada tacos and chicken pad thai.
Dinnerly has an enormous menu of recipes -- typically more than 60 to choose from in a given week. The bottom line: This plant-based meal delivery service had some of the best, healthy prepared meals of any service we tried. I sampled about nine of Mosaic Food's plant-based prepared meal offerings and the vegetarian prepared meal delivery service had an astoundingly high hit rate.
Mosaic uses bold and interesting global flavors and employs creative use of meat substitutes such as tofu, jackfruit, cauliflower and vegan sausages to create tasty and satisfying vegetarian meals -- even for this omnivore.
There are some vegan meals, but many of them use dairy products, so vegans must choose their Mosaic meals more carefully. The bottom line: Blue Apron is a classic example of a quality meal delivery service.
One of the original providers of this service, it also stands out for eco-friendliness. Blue Apron is one of the original meal kit services and it's also one of the best. In fact, Blue Apron topped our list of best meal delivery services for with a wide range of excellent recipes, all for an affordable price.
It's true, you can order bistro steaks and roasted trout dinners with Blue Apron's standard plan, where many services charge extra for those premium proteins. In addition to solid meal kits, Blue Apron is the most eco-friendly service of the major players, according to a recent study.
The heartier meals are great too, like the cauliflower rice and pesto harvest bowl with cashews and spinach.
You won't need more than a saucepan, toaster or blender to prepare most of the meals, and most can be made in as little as 5 minutes. When I tried Daily Harvest , I loved the interesting smoothie combos such as a chocolate blueberry smoothie with greens, banana and almond butter.
The bottom line : It doesn't get much easier than HelloFresh. This service has tons of cheap meal kit options, more than 50 per week, and allows you to add proteins or extra servings to keep the whole crew fed and happy.
HelloFresh has as many as 25 dinner meal kits per week, so it is nearly impossible not to find something you'll like. HelloFresh also has five or six plant-based recipes a week, making it the best cheap meal kit service for vegetarians.
Over the past few years, we've tested nearly every meal kit delivery and prepared meal delivery service we could get our oven mitts on, and that includes the best budget meal delivery services.
Many of the menu options for the meal delivery services we've listed include nutritious plant-based food or high-protein recipes with lots of veggies and lean meats. To test each cheap meal delivery service, I tried at least four and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service.
I always choose a range of meals from the various menu and meal plan offerings. For instance, if a meal subscription service offers vegan or vegetarian meals I was sure to try at least one. I also mixed up the cuisine types to include pasta, meat dishes, bowls and other various styles offered by the brand.
To test the best cheap meal kits, there was another set of standards and protocols to adhere to. Here's more on how we test meal kits at CNET. The first big decision you'll make is whether you want meal kits, which require some prep and cooking, or a prepared meal service that sends fully cooked meals ready to heat and eat.
Prepared meals require almost no time and energy, other than what it takes to actually eat the food, but typically run a few dollars more per serving.
If you're keen on eating low-calorie, low-carb, plant-based or pescatarian food, certain meal kits and meal delivery services are better than others. Our list of the healthiest meal delivery services for is a good place to find the most nutritious options.
With almost every service, the more meals or servings are in your order per delivery, the cheaper it becomes per meal. Ideally, you'll want to determine exactly how much food makes sense for your household. That means it's less of an issue if you order too many meals on your first go-around.
Services like Daily Harvest and Splendid Spoon have meals for similar prices but are focused more on grain bowls and smoothies and might be better for breakfast or lunch versus dinner. When it comes to meal kits, your options are many, and most services provide weekly recipes that are low on calories but still filling.
HelloFresh has the most recipes per week of any meal kit service, so that might be your best bet for finding consistent meals that keep your diet goals on track. But all services list the calorie content for each recipe, along with carbs, protein, sugar and sodium.
Depending on your weight loss goals, a healthy prepared meal delivery or meal kit service can help.
Fresh N Lean, Pete's Real Food and Daily Harvest all have low-calorie meals to choose from. Some of the services listed here are healthy prepared meal delivery services , sending fully cooked meals -- often frozen or partially frozen -- and ready to eat when you receive them.
Others include health-focused meal kits with premeasured ingredients all boxed up and ready for easy weeknight cooking. There's a stark difference between meal kits and meal delivery, but both make dinnertime easier and can translate into healthier eating choices for you in Plus, we sussed out the best healthy meal services for those on special diets like keto or paleo or for those who wish to eat organic prepared meals and meal kits.
Wellness Nutrition. Written by David Watsky. Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission.
Reviews ethics statement. David lives in Brooklyn where he's spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. Since earning a BA in English from Northeastern in Boston, he's toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom.
Right now, he's likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or researching the best way to make bacon. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week. Expertise Kitchen tools, appliances, food science, subscriptions and meal kits. See full bio.
Why You Can Trust CNET. Table of Contents Top. Cheapest Meal Delivery Services of What's the best cheap meal delivery service? Cheapest meal delivery services for Cheapest prepared meal services compared. How we test meal kits and meal delivery services. Factors to consider when choosing a meal delivery service.
Why you should trust us. Mix apple and chia seeds into the oatmeal. Daily Totals: 1, calories, 55 g protein, g carbohydrates, 47 g fiber, 74 g fat, mg sodium.
To Make It 1, Calories: Omit the apple at breakfast and the almonds at the P. To Make It 2, Calories: Add 3 Tbsp. chopped walnuts to the A.
snack and add 1 whole avocado to dinner. Daily Totals: 1, calories, 80 g protein, g carbohydrates, 38 g fiber, 66 g fat, 1, mg sodium.
To Make It 1, Calories: Omit the apple at breakfast and change the A. To Make It 2, Calories: Add 1 medium apple to the A. snack and add 1 serving Guacamole Chopped Salad to dinner.
Daily Totals: 1, calories, 57 g protein, g carbohydrates, 39 g fiber, 66 g fat, mg sodium. snack to 1 medium apple. To Make It 2, Calories: Add 20 unsalted dry-roasted almonds to P.
snack and add 1 avocado to dinner. To Make It 1, Calories: Omit the apple at breakfast and omit the peanut butter at the A.
snack plus add 1 avocado to dinner. Daily Totals: 1, calories, 89 g protein, g carbohydrates, 45 g fiber, 57 g fat, 1, mg sodium. snack to 1 medium orange. snack, and add 1 serving Guacamole Chopped Salad to dinner.
Daily Totals: 1, calories, 69 g protein, g carbohydrates, 51 g fiber, 41 g fat, 1, mg sodium. To Make It 2, Calories: Increase to 2 Tbsp. peanut butter at A. Daily Totals: 1, calories, 84 g protein, g carbohydrates, 35 g fiber, 73 g fat, 1, mg sodium.
To Make It 1, Calories: Omit the apple at breakfast, change the A. To Make It 2, Calories: Add 20 unsalted dry-roasted almonds to A. snack, add 1 large apple to P.
snack, add 1 serving Guacamole Chopped Salad to dinner. Use limited data to select advertising. Create profiles for personalised advertising. Use profiles to select personalised advertising. Create profiles to personalise content. Use profiles to select personalised content.
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Newest Budget Friendly Meal Prep · Chicken Stir Fry · Egg Muffins · Air Fryer Chicken Breast · Southwest Lentils And Rice Skillet · Sheet Pan Chicken Sausage Cheapest meal kits compared ; 50+, Vegetarian, keto, paleo, gluten-free, diabetic, pescetarian, $9, $9 ; 16, Vegetarian, low-calorie, gluten-free Here's How I Stretch A $ Weekly Grocery Budget To Feed 5 People And Cover Nearly Every Meal. Chicken, berries, and milk were on sale this
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