The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services of 2023

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 'Fast & Fresh' or '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 for updated pricing. When we tested, meals ranged from $7.99 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 $9.99 shipping fee for each delivery.

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.

We were impressed by the depth of flavor in the yang-yang beef with shishito peppers, a lighter alternative to traditional American Chinese food, and loved the hot honey salmon with zucchini and tomatoes for its summer simplicity.

What we love most about Home Chef is its organization. Any experienced cook knows that preparation is half the battle, and this company knows it too. 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.

This clarity and organization made for faster fridge-to-table times than a lot of the competition. It also saved us the stress of forgetting ingredients and re-reading recipes four times over.

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.

Read the full Home Chef review.

Favorite meal: Farmhouse fried chicken with mashed potatoes, green onion gravy, and corn

Cost: Visit Home Chef for updated pricing. When we tested, meals were $11.25 per serving, including the shipping fee. Subscriptions can serve two, four, or six people, and you can choose anywhere from two to six meals per week.

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-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. Read the full Gobble review.

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.

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, high-protein 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 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. We were happy enough to take them to work on in-office days.

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. Read the full Purple Carrot review.

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.

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 delivers fresh, fully prepared meals directly 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. Read the full CookUnity review.

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.