Are meal kits cheaper than bulk grocery shopping? I did the math to find out

Meal packages make dinnertime a breeze, but are they a good deal in 2024? If you’re considering Blue Apron, HelloFresh or another convenient meal subscription service to save time and effort, we crunched the numbers to see how expensive – or cheap – these subscriptions really are in 2024.

I have tested all available meal box services and I have my favorites in terms of taste and ease of execution. In this exercise, I analyze the value of three popular services compared to buying the same groceries at a local supermarket.

In order to Real meal kit costs, I calculated the price of the same groceries you need to make meal kits from three of my favorite services: HalloFresh, Blue apron And Every boardNext, I looked at the cost of the groceries needed to make each serving, compared to what those services charge you for them.

It turns out that meal kits don’t just consist of affordable in 2024but some are actually cheaper than to go shoppingThis is especially true depending on the service you sign up for.

How I Did the Math

To see how much it costs to make meals from Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and EveryPlate, I listed the ingredients for two real recipes included with a standard subscription.

When choosing groceries, I used the cheapest version of the same or similar ingredient that I could find at Shop-Rite, a budget-friendly grocery store in my area. Since meal kit recipes only include the amount of ingredients called for, I prorated the cost based on how much you would actually use for a recipe, not the full price of the bottle, jar, box, or bag.

I have chosen basic products that are not organic, unless otherwise stated on the recipe card of the meal box or on the website.

How I chose the recipes

If you are looking for meal packages such as value propositionyou need to be smart about which recipes you choose. Steak, chicken, and fish are generally more expensive to cook at home than plant-based meals, so I specifically chose recipes that feature those proteins. (I also recommend taking advantage of them if you sign up for a service.)

Not all services offer steak recipes without a surcharge, but HelloFresh and Blue Apron do. Blue Apron usually offers at least one reasonably high-quality cut of beef, such as sirloin steak at no extra cost.

HelloFresh offers one or two beef recipes per week, but it’s usually a cheaper cut like chuck steak. The seafood options are limited with a basic HelloFresh, but I found a recipe for barramundi on this week’s menu, next to the ranch steak with caesar salad.

Budget-friendly services like EveryPlate typically don’t offer steak or seafood, which is how they keep consumer prices low. For my EveryPlate analysis, I used a cherry beef meatball And pork chop recipe.

Blue Apron offers the best value

Blue apron has the most high-end recipes of the three I chose to analyze. I chose a recipe with entrecote and another with fresh trout fillets.

When I calculated the grocery costs to make these meals, they came to $11.26 and $8.23 respectively, with an average price of $9.75 per serving. Both meals turned out to be more expensive to buy at the grocery store than the $8 per serving for the largest (cheapest) Blue Apron subscription.

As great as that sounds, Blue Apron’s largest plan is a whopping five meal kits per week with four servings each, and probably isn’t practical for most people. If you opt for a more reasonable plan—say, three meal kits with four servings each—the price per serving jumps to $9.50. That’s still cheaper than the cost of buying groceries, but only by a little bit.

Add in the $11 weekly shipping fee, and Blue Apron edges over the cost of buying groceries, but only slightly. Considering how convenient a meal kit is, it’s hard to argue that Blue Apron isn’t a good value in 2024.

HelloFresh was the worst value of the three

HalloFresh is perhaps the most popular meal kit service, but it was also the worst of the three. I chose a barramundi recipe and a chuck steak meal kit to compare with local supermarket prices.

According to my calculations, HelloFresh meal kits would only €6.55 per serving to buy the groceries and make the meals yourself. That’s about $3.50 cheaper than HelloFresh’s cheapest meal plan of $10 per serving, and that’s before you factor in your weekly delivery fee of $11. If you split that delivery fee between two or three meal kits, the actual cost per serving is more like $11 to $12.

HelloFresh may have one of the largest weekly meal kit menus and an easy-to-use ordering interface, but it turns out the popular service doesn’t offer as good value for money as some other meal kit companies in 2024.

EveryPlate is a good deal, about the same as buying groceries

EveryPlate two meal kits cost $4.98 and $5.82 if purchased a la carte at the grocery store, which averages out to €5.40. That’s just 60 cents less than the per-serving price of EveryPlate’s meal kits, which cost $6 per serving regardless of which plan you choose.

If you add in the $10 per box shipping cost, the price of the meal kit does increase a bit, but it’s still about the same as if you did all the grocery shopping yourself.

EveryPlate’s meal kit menus don’t include a lot of steak or seafood, so you can expect more budget-friendly proteins like chicken, ground beef, and pork chops. EveryPlate’s meals are also easy to make and satisfying, making it our top pick for the best cheap meal kit service in 2024.

To get the most out of your meal delivery business, read my guide on how to hack a meal delivery subscription in 2024.