The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services of 2026

The wallet-friendly HelloFresh has become one of the most recognizable names in meal kit delivery services, and it’s easy to see why. Big portions, affordable prices, and straightforward recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner make the service our top recommendation.

HelloFresh also offers a large variety of add-ons from desserts and snacks to side dishes and charcuterie boards. The service has expanded over the years and we've tried many of the offerings with great success.

For those who are uncertain in the kitchen, we found that meals marked 'Quick & Easy' delivered the kind of frustration-free experience people look for in a meal kit delivery service.

If you're looking to learn new recipes or kitchen skills, there are many classic and premium choices, but they'll require a bit more time in the kitchen (so choose them if you enjoy the cooking process). We were especially impressed with the variety of international flavors on offer.

Recipes we've requested multiple times include the za'atar-crusted grilling cheese served with lemony couscous and roasted veggies, and the bánh mi burger, which puts an American twist on the classic Vietnamese sandwich with lightly pickled veggies and sriracha mayo.

Our main gripe about HelloFresh is the relative inaccuracy of the recipe timing—we found that HelloFresh recipes were rarely on the table in the amount of time the recipe cards promised. However, we were consistently impressed by the flavor, which often made the extra time worth it.

While HelloFresh offers a wide variety of dishes, it still lacks many vegan offerings. But it does offer a variety of meal options for other specialty diets, like vegetarians and pescatarians. HelloFresh has made strides over the years to improve its variety as well as its ordering interface. With so many choices, meals are categorized effectively and you can use either the website or the app to change your meal selections, add items, skip deliveries, and manage your account.

Our only ongoing complaint with the ordering process is that you have to pay close attention to your email, or schedule your own reminder, so you don't miss the deadline to customize your order each week. If you do miss it, HelloFresh sends you its selections for you according to the preferences you set in your account.

If you set those preferences with intent, you should always get meals you'll like, but it's still nice to tailor your selections to your mood or plans for the week.

Its packaging is some of the most sustainable on this list in that it’s largely recyclable, which is a plus. We love the clearly labeled, recyclable paper packaging used to contain each meal. But you'll still have to dispose of the large ice packs and cardboard boxes each week.

• Favorite meal: Za’atar-crusted grilling cheese with sumac roasted veggies over couscous
• Cost: Visit HelloFresh (available at HelloFresh) for updated pricing. When we tested, meals ranged from $8.99 to $11.99 per serving depending on the number of meals and servings selected per week. You can choose your combination of desired servings and recipes each week. There is also a $10.99 shipping fee for each delivery.

The valuable convenience of most meal kit delivery services come at a price—but not at Dinnerly. This meal kit service offers meals that start at just $4.99 each, which is less than half the price of most competitors.

But cutting down on price doesn't mean cutting down on quality. When we tested Dinnerly, we were taken aback by the flavor and portion sizes of each meal. Dishes with global flair like chicken satay and Moroccan-spiced chicken soup felt akin to ordering takeout from an international restaurant.

Better yet, Dinnerly is devoted to simple, fuss-free prep. That means every recipe has just five steps or less, and uses minimal pots and pans so post-dinner clean-up is a breeze. And a lot of the dishes we tested were actually ready faster than the estimated recipe time.

There are a few minor downsides we found, though, like disorganized packaging and fewer included ingredients. The ingredients are not organized according to each recipe, which means you'll have to sift through a pile of produce and packaged spices before cooking each meal. Dinnerly also doesn't deliver printed recipe cards, so you'll have to refer back to your email as you cook.

We also found that you may need to have some staples on hand before your package gets delivered, like fresh garlic and apple cider vinegar. But don't worry: Dinnerly will send you a list of ingredients via email before the box arrives.

Despite these minor hiccups, we think Dinnerly delivers major value for the price, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better meal delivery service with such excellent value.

• Favorite meal: Soy-ginger pork tenderloin with garlic rice and green beans
• Cost: Visit Dinnerly for updated pricing. When we tested, meals started at just $4.99 per serving, depending on the number of meals and portion sizes selected. Subscriptions can serve two or four people, and you can choose anywhere from two to six meals per week.

Read our full Dinnerly review

Like its name suggests, Home Chef provides customers with the tools necessary to become true masters of the kitchen.

From Home Chef’s fresh, high-quality ingredients to well-written recipes, everything about this service made us feel like we were preparing restaurant-worthy (or at least guest-worthy) meals without too much fuss.

Home Chef also offers Oven-Ready meals (which come with their own cooking trays) and the option to swap out proteins, making it appealing to an even wider swath of busy cooks.

Aside from classics like the farmhouse fried chicken with mashed potatoes, green onion gravy, and corn, Home Chef also offerings meals that are diverse enough to include healthy meal options.

It also accommodates almost any dietary preference, including vegetarians and vegans. The menu offers at least 25 dinner options per week, as well as a handful of Oven-Ready meals. There are also some lunch and snack choices as add-ons to its main menu.

What we love most about Home Chef is its organization. Ingredients are divided per meal into labeled bags that easily slide into the fridge, recipe instructions are consistently clear, and time estimates are always accurate. Plus, the website is easy to navigate, allowing you the freedom to choose what you want and skip delivery weeks at will.

One of its only downsides is the lack of variety on the weekly menu. We would describe most of Home Chef's recipes as American-style, with a few Italian or Mexican-inspired options each week. HelloFresh, on the other hand, offers a wide range of dishes with international flair every week, like Peruvian chicken and Indian-inspired curry. Home Chef would be also wise to incorporate more biodegradable packaging into its existing model.

• Favorite meal: Farmhouse fried chicken with mashed potatoes, green onion gravy, and corn
• Cost: Visit Home Chef for updated pricing. When we tested, meals started at $9.99 per serving, including the $10.99 shipping fee. Subscriptions can serve two, four, or six people, and you can choose anywhere from two to six meals per week.

Read our full Home Chef review

Hungryroot brings together grocery delivery and meal kits into one streamlined service. Whether you want quick and easy meals with most of the prep already done, or you need groceries to make lunches and dinners for a family, Hungryroot can accommodate.

The meal kit section is well-organized and easy to navigate to select meals that work for your tastes or dietary restrictions. And the grocery section makes shopping through the app quick and easy. You can search for what you need, or browse by category.

Every meal kit we ordered through Hungryroot was truly quick and easy to make, usually with less than 20 minutes of prep or cooking time. Many of the ingredients come prepared, which saves so much time when you need to get dinner on the table.

Hungryroot makes many of its own products, and we can't get enough of the sauces, pantry staples, and fresh-cut veggie blends. You can choose meals that include the ingredients you like best, or load up your cart with individual items to create your own meals.

We also love that Hungryroot doesn't repackage most of the food for meal kits into branded packaging. The service simply creates meals based on available groceries, and gives you the quantity you need for the recipe in its original packaging.

Hungryroot uses a credit system when you add items to your cart, and this can be a bit confusing. Credits don't easily translate to dollars because the amount of credits you get depends on the amount you're signed up to spend each week. You can do the math, but it's not as easy to keep track of how much you're spending on products as when they have an actual dollar amount attached.

Still, we feel that Hungryroot is an excellent value for the high-quality products it offers and the ease of having meal kits and groceries delivered in one weekly box. It's also incredibly easy to skip or modify orders in the app or on the website.

Unlike Home Chef, which can require chopping, the ingredients in Gobble’s meal kits are almost entirely pre-prepped.

That means your box will contain pre-portioned ingredients, pre-made sauces, and partially-cooked starches that require simple reheating, plus pre-sliced, -diced, and -minced veggies. We were pleasantly surprised by the ingredients' freshness, and found that everything survived a day or two in the fridge before cooking.

Every Gobble meal we tested came together in 15 minutes or less, as promised by the brand’s website. The recipe cards for each dish include fun facts about the dish, supplies to gather, what’s included in your dinner kit, calorie information, and easy-to-follow cooking instructions. We appreciated how the ingredients are bolded within the instructions, so it’s easier to spot these at a glance if you’re reading whilst cooking.

Our biggest qualm with Gobble is that not all recipes are created equally. While some dishes were inventive, balanced, and super flavorful, others had us wishing we tweaked some of the ingredients ourselves. That said, most of what we tried was very tasty and we would definitely make most of the dishes again.

Gobble’s packaging is almost entirely recyclable, which is amazing! But because Gobble preps most of the veggies for you, there's unnecessary (albeit recyclable) packaging for things like chopped onions, which means more stuff for you to dispose of.

• Favorite meal: Paneer and cauliflower tikka masala with garam masala basmati rice
• Cost: Visit Gobble for updated pricing. When we tested, meals were $12.99 per serving for two people, $11.99 per serving for four people, for four meals per week. Different plans are available, including Classic, Vegetarian Only, and Lean & Clean.

Read our full Gobble review.

Although we found some flaws with this fully vegan meal delivery service a few years back, our second time testing proved most (if not all) of our issues had been remedied.

We tried Purple Carrot for two weeks—trying meals from both the meal kit menu and the prepared meals section—and were impressed by the results.

Previously, we found the brand to suffer from confusing recipes, bland flavors, and unsatisfying portions. This time around, we were excited by the menu's international variety, protein-packed ingredients, and overall tastiness.

Standout plant based meals included the tamarind cauliflower with gingered fried rice and cashews, which was addictively tasty, and the buffalo tempeh quinoa bowl, which had a satisfying balance of heat and freshness.

We also tried the brand's single-serve prepared meals, which arrive ready to eat after a few minutes in the microwave. These meals weren't to the same level of deliciousness as the freshly made stuff, but they were still hearty, balanced, and decently tasty.

Subscribers to Purple Carrot can choose between either two or four servings a week for a meal kit subscription, or three or four meals a week for a prepared meal subscription. (You can also add prepared meals to your meal kit subscription for an additional cost—that's what we did.)

There are about a dozen meals to choose from each week, and several are conveniently labeled for folks with dietary restrictions, like Gluten-free or Nut-free. There are even a few Less Prep options, which feature pre-mixed sauces, pre-cut veggies, and recipes that require fewer pots and pans.

The service also offers breakfast and lunch dishes, plus add-ons (think snacks and pantry staples) from the cleverly named Plantry.

There were still a few minor hiccups during testing, like an unusual recipe card format and slightly inaccurate cook times. But once you get used to this learning curve, it's not a dealbreaker.

Whether you're a longtime vegan or just someone looking to add more plant-based ingredients into their life, we recommend subscribing.

• Favorite meal: Tamarind cauliflower with gingered fried rice and cashews
• Cost: Visit Purple Carrot for updated pricing. When we tested, meals were $13.25 per serving for two people, $11 per serving for four people, for three meals per week. Prepared meals were $13 per serving.

Read our full Purple Carrot review

What a Crock sends vacuum-sealed frozen meals of all kinds that can simply be dumped into a crock pot and left to cook. That’s it. Cut open a bag, dump the contents in the crock pot, turn it on, and there’s dinner (in a few hours).

There’s a good variety of food types, from soups and meatballs to dips and desserts. Most meals also have instructions for alternate cooking methods, so many can also be cooked in the Instant Pot, boiled in the bag, grilled, or microwaved.

Meals can be filtered by dietary preferences, so folks who eat gluten- or lactose-free won’t have trouble finding safe meals at What a Crock. Meals are sold in generous portions, so four portions of the Spanish chicken and rice fed Sarah’s family of five (including a teenage boy) with plenty of leftovers.

The only downside we found during testing was that the plastic packaging can be tricky to open—especially if you have limited mobility —as it often sticks to the food. But this was easy to remedy with a little extra effort.

If you’re looking for convenience in your meal subscription, What a Crock is right up your alley.

• Favorite meal: Spanish chicken & rice
• Cost: Visit What a Crock for updated pricing. Most dishes serve 1-2 people and start at $8.99 per meal. You don't even need a subscription to order; you can order individual meals or sign up for regular deliveries.

CookUnity has taken over Freshly's previous title as the best pre-made meal kit delivery service, after our Kitchen & Cooking staff writer fell in love with its chef-crafted meals. Unlike the other services in this roundup, CookUnity offers fresh, fully premade meal delivery right to your door—no cooking required.

CookUnity wowed us from the moment we created an account and started browsing the hundreds—yes, hundreds—of meal options that are offered in any given week. Each dish on the website is curated by one of CookUnity's featured chefs, who typically specialize in a certain style of cooking.

Subscribers can choose to filter the overwhelming number of offerings by anything from diet type (think vegan and keto), ethnicity (think Mexican, African, or Mediterranean), or by featured chef (once you become familiar with them).

When we tested these meals, it felt like we were dining at a restaurant. Each dish was flavorful, fresh, and enticing; they felt like they had been cooked fresh—but the prep took mere seconds.

The meal packaging prompts you to choose between a typical pre-made meal preparation (read: microwave) or a chef-suggested preparation. The latter requires popping the tray into the oven or transferring the food into a pan. (We opted for the chef's suggestions—and it was worth it.)

A few of the dishes we tried had smaller portions and left us craving more of a balance of protein, carbs, and veggies. But this issue can easily be avoided by reading the in-depth meal guides on the website to see what's featured in each dish and what its nutritional information is.

• Favorite meal: Sesame-ginger tofu poke bowl
• Cost: Visit CookUnity for updated pricing. When we tested, meals ranged from $11.09 to $12.29 per meal.

Read our full CookUnity review