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Oct 18, 2024

14 Best Meal Delivery Services 2024, Tested by Bon Appétit Editors | Bon Appétit

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. Sometimes even the easiest recipe isn’t easy enough. That’s where the best meal

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Sometimes even the easiest recipe isn’t easy enough. That’s where the best meal delivery services come in. Yes, even people who are obsessed with food and cooking as much as we are like cooking from meal kits. We turn to meal kits to get some external recipe inspiration and to gain some tips for working smarter rather than harder in our home kitchens. But not all meal kits are not created equal—nor are they designed to meet the same set of cooking needs. For this reason, we wanted to make sure that we rigorously tested all of the major meal delivery services available, so you can get a recommendation for the best meal kit for your needs. After trying every major meal delivery service available over the course of several years, we’ve got answers: You can go directly to our top picks to order your weekly meals, or skip down to learn more about how our editors tested these kits.

Our tester, BA contributor Hilary Cadigan, noted that Home Chef offered a wider variety of meal options than competitor kits and was particularly great at catering to dietary restrictions—overall this delivery service offers a lot of great customization opportunities. For this reason, this kit could work well for home cooks whose dinner needs change day to day and week to week.

For weeks where you’re particularly busy, there are oven-ready meals that come with their own tin and grill-ready meals that arrive in a foil bag. There are the more traditional preportioned 30-minute meal kits, prepped 15-minute meal kits, and the Fast & Fresh option, a fully prepared meal you just have to stick in the oven or microwave. “I am not a mom to anyone besides two cats who eat out of cans, but if I were a parent to human children, I imagine these options would feel like blessings,” Hilary says.

But on weeks where you have more time to spare, and are genuinely looking to gain recipe inspiration and even learn some new cooking skills, Home Chef’s “Culinary Collection” offers some more advanced recipes. Tester Hilary made blackened mahi-mahi with lemon dill cream, sautéed asparagus, and Parmesan potato pressé—”a dish that turned out to be a bit too advanced for yours truly because I don’t own a muffin tin,” she said.

Hilary liked that Home Chef also offers snack, dessert, and breakfast options like maple brown sugar oatmeal bites from GoOats. “I will be buying these again because who doesn’t want to eat oatmeal that tastes like doughnut holes?” if you’re looking for family-friendly meals to feed picky eaters, you will find a lot to appreciate here.

What our tester didn’t like about Home Chef

The packaging could feel gratuitous on Home Chef meals (a chronic problem with meal delivery services), and after a few weeks receiving this meal kit for testing, Hilary found that the flavor profiles didn’t blow her away and became monotonous.

Hungryroot is a great option for people who want the occasional meal kit, but are also in the game for cutting down on grocery shopping time. It’s essentially a virtual grocery store with hundreds of recipes built around the food on its digital shelves. If you’re interested in getting help with your meal planning, this meal delivery service is a great place to start. You get a weekly set of recipes based on special diets and dietary preferences (vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, diabetes-friendly, etc.), and they’re usually very simple, nutritious, and easy to assemble: grain bowls, salads, burgers, plates featuring meat and/or veggies. You can also order a selection of stand-alone groceries, including organic produce and an array of sweet and savory “healthy” snacks you’d likely find in a hip media company’s pantry, like dried mango jerky, organic Medjool dates, and almond chickpea cookie dough. “After using Hungryroot for half a year, I eventually grew bored of the recipes, which were basically permutations of a core set of foods and ingredients—the same sesame ginger sauce applied to different styles of bowls and salads, for instance. But I became deeply attached to several grocery items, such as the prepackaged garlicky herb chickpea duo, a dish I loved mixing into quinoa or farro for a quick and refreshing lunch,” our tester, culture editor Karen Yuan said. Hungryroot is best if you’re in discovery mode and want to poke around grocery aisles for hidden gems without ever leaving your apartment.

Downsides to Hungryroot

Like Karen noted above, the recipes are extremely simple for Hungryroot. This can be advantageous of course—great for cooks who are learning or people who feel really stressed and just want to be given simple solutions. But multiple staffers who tried this kit noted that the recipes were so simple that they veered more toward the territory of emergency meals they could have already thought of themselves. There’s not a lot of innovation in the recipe or meal ideas here. Hungryroot is great as an online grocer, but it’s not going to change the way you cook.

If you’re in the meal kit game for inspiration rather than to save time, this is your kit. Meet Marley Spoon, a.k.a the easiest way to get Martha Stewart’s most beloved recipes onto your dinner table. This meal kit collaboration between the American lifestyle icon and the popular Berlin-based meal company offers a plethora of classic, family-friendly meals. With more than 100 dishes to choose from every week, they have one of the biggest menus we’ve seen from a traditional meal kit service. “I enjoyed the red chili beef enchiladas, where all of the flavors from the tomatoes, bell peppers, and chorizo chili spice melded together deliciously. I was also a fan of the pastrami-spiced burger with homemade thousand island dressing,” said Tiffany, who also tested this meal kit.

This is the kit that offered the most genuine inspiration and taught our testers the most new cooking techniques. And for the days when you’re short on time or don’t want to clean a bunch of dishes, they offer some faster, “tray bake” meals (like this alfredo chicken and gnocchi) that don’t require as much prep.

Downsides to Marley Spoon

However, this is not the kit to go for if you’re looking for easy meals: “I liked that all of the dishes came with pre-portioned ingredients and pre-made spice blends, but I should note that there’s still a lot of prepping you’ll have to do—whether that’s chopping zucchini, snipping herbs, cutting chicken breast into 1-inch cubes, or making a tomatoey caramelized onion sauce from scratch,” Tiffany says. These recipes take a little more time and effort, and they also require you to have some of your own pantry ingredients on deck. In many cases, you’ll need to have your own butter, garlic, and red wine vinegar to make the meals. These recipes aren’t a pour-and-stir situation, instead they actually require a good amount of attention. That said, Marley Spoon is a great option for people who want a meal kit that still allows them to cook, as opposed to one that does all of the cooking done for them.

Of all the premade meal delivery services I’ve tried, CookUnity is my favorite. All of the recipes are crafted by award-winning chefs (many of whom we’ve featured here at BA, like Taïm’s Einat Admony, Teranga’s Pierre Thiam and Mokbar’s Esther Choi). Unlike its competitors, CookUnity doesn’t primarily focus on special diets, weight loss, or a “health” aspect, which tester Tiffany appreciated—"Sometimes, I just want a delicious meal and I’m not worried about if that meal is low-carb, high-protein, or if it has an ideal serving of fiber," she said.

That said, CookUnity offers a huge variety of options. “It has one of the most robust weekly menus I’ve seen, and you can definitely find meals that’ll fit any kind of dietary preference, like vegetarian, dairy-free, gluten-free, and so on.” Tiffany found most of the meals she tried to be hearty, flavorful, and well-seasoned, especially compared to other premade meal kits on the market. Some favorites of the meals she tried? The grilled chicken yassa with jollof rice and plantains, the short rib with herb mashed potatoes, and the ginger salmon cakes with miso-sriracha sauce. For the best results, you’ll want to reheat the meals in the oven, but you can also reheat them in the microwave if you’re short on time. If you’re interested in a solid meal delivery service that does all of the meal prep and cooking for you, CookUnity is worth it. Just play around and try a bunch of meal options to learn what you like best.

Downsides to CookUnity

Fully prepared meals are never going to feel as fresh as their meal kit counterparts that require actual cooking. These meals are great for times where you're really in a pinch, and want something elevated from what the frozen dinner aisle at the grocery store has to offer.

While many food delivery services emphasize 30-minute home-cooked meals, Gobble advertises entrées that take half that amount of time to prepare from start to finish. And they make do on that 15-minute promise. “With meals like Tuscan pork sugo with peppers and aloo matar with marble potatoes, I’d say this is the best meal kit service if you want hearty dishes with bigger portions,” BA contributor Tiffany Hopkins said when she tested this meal kit. “In my experience with other meal kit services, portions tend to be small, so you really get your money’s worth here.” Tiffany’s favorite meal was the chicken burger with sriracha aioli and yuca fries. “The recipe was easy to follow; the sauces, dressings, and spice blends were premade; and the burger was juicy with lots of flavor thanks to the Cajun seasoning, spicy aioli, and honey-Dijon slaw.”

The weekly menu includes roughly 15 easy-to-make dinners, but Tiffany especially appreciated were all the optional add-ons. Gobble offers various à la carte salads, soups, and flatbreads that make it easy to plan a meal with multiple courses. I recommend getting one of the soups to have on hand for a quick lunch—Tiffany particularly loved the chicken tortilla soup when she tried it. They even have the option to add on breakfasts (like Belgium waffles and bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches) and desserts (like premade chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate lava cake). While Gobble does offer meals for more specific diets—including low-calorie, dairy-free, plant-based, and vegan—that’s not the primary focus. This is the place to go when you’re just looking for tasty, satisfying meals that pretty much anyone would enjoy.

What our tester didn’t like about Gobble

This is not the meal kit to turn to for a specific focus on healthy eating—the meals can feel heavy after a while. Because Gobble places so much emphasis on speedy meal preparation, a lot of the work is done for you, but that can mean that meals feel less fresh than competitors like Marley Spoon or Purple Carrot. It’s great if you need a quick meal, but not if you want to really prepare something fresh for yourself or your family.

If you’re looking for both ease and affordability, then Dinnerly could be another meal kit delivery service for you. It proclaims it’s “The Affordable Meal Delivery Service,” and at $8 a meal it does come in cheaper than most competitors. “I liked that there were many dinner options to choose from (28 a week, to be exact) and that every meal came with an easy-to-follow recipe card with only five steps. I went with the pastrami-crusted steak, orange chicken, and Thai red curry stir-fry—all good, all fuss-free,” said tester and BA contributor Rachel Gurjar. The flavors were on point but mellow, so to take them up a notch, Rachel added more seasoning. “For the orange chicken I doubled the orange juice and soy sauce and also added honey and chile flakes.” Rachel recommends not sticking to the recipes exactly (though you certainly can), but she genuinely liked that they offered a good base to play around with flavors you like, and tweak them to your own satisfaction.

Downsides to Dinnerly

As noted above, our tester Rachel viewed Dinnerly's meal kits more as templates. She felt like she needed to up the ante on the base flavor profiles by increasing the seasoning. If you need inspiration, but don't mind riffing on the original recipes, this is the kit for you.

Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit for vegans and people who just want to eat more vegan meals (wannabe-gans?), who like to cook but prefer to skip picking out recipes and grocery shopping. Our tester, contributor Sarah Jampel, noted that the kits didn’t save me much time in the kitchen—”there are plenty of vegetables to peel and chop, and in my experience, multiple pots and pans (and even a blender) to clean after the cooking is finished.”

Still, Sarah liked that she could skip the trip to the store and the endless scroll through recipes. Purple Carrot also offered a number of the dishes that felt genuinely innovative: “There were recipes with ingredients I wouldn’t ever think to combine (crisped gnocchi with furikake and a miso-tomato sauce? Color me skeptical-curious).” She liked the bold and bright flavors in a Thai tempeh khao soi that took about an hour but tasted like it took four—”and I even learned a technique or two (like sprinkling tempeh with sugar for the last few minutes of cooking so that the crumbles caramelize) that I’ll use when I’m riffing in the kitchen without the friendly guidance of a meal kit.” Purple Carrot, like Marley Spoon, is a meal kit for learning new techniques and getting genuine flavor inspiration, but not for saving time. That said, they do offer the option of ease with a few fully prepared meal options.

What our testers didn’t like about this meal kit

This is not a meal kit you turn to for easy recipes or easy cleanup—everything Sarah made dirtied multiple pots and pans.

If you’re interested in sustainability and cooking with organic ingredients, then you’ll appreciate Green Chef—the first certified organic meal kit. It offers a weekly menu of 30 meals to choose from and caters to a variety of diets, including Mediterranean, keto, vegan, and gluten-free. When Tiffany tested this meal delivery service, she liked the the variety of flavors the menus offered. “With options like salmon with creamy chimichurri, creamy mushroom and meatball soup, and Italian roasted carrots with barley and ricotta, I found it easy to stay satisfied without getting bored.” One of her favorite meals she tried was the enchilada-spiced ground turkey bowl. Not only was it tasty—smoky and savory with a pleasant crunch thanks to toasted pepitas—but also the premade enchilada sauce and ready-to-use paprika-cumin blend helped keep the prep and cook time down to 25 minutes total. This isn’t the meal delivery service for one-pot recipes, but it is your best bet if you want high-quality, fresh ingredients from local farmers and eco-friendly packaging that’s made from recyclable, reusable, or compostable materials.

Downsides to Green Chef

Tiffany didn’t like that there was a lot of cleanup involved in these recipes. “While all of Green Chef’s recipes are simple and easy to follow, most of them require using multiple pots and pans (at times, too many for my liking).”

When I tested Blue Apron against other meal delivery services, I found that it offered way more variety, and some genuinely interesting recipe ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of myself. A lot of these kits can rely on the same ingredients and even produce (I’ve never eaten more green peppers than I did during the couple of months I spent testing meal kits) but Blue Apron changes up their ingredients and flavor profiles. There’s a downside there: The recipes take longer for this meal kit than the others I tried. This is not the meal kit you turn to when you’re looking for an easy dinner solution (might I suggest some of our top selections for the best prepared meal kits to solve that particular problem?). But it is the meal kit to turn to when you’re looking for genuine inspiration and variety in your diet—maybe you’re in a rut with the same five weeknight recipes.

Blue Apron is also a great option for people who want to learn new cooking techniques; their out recipe instructions are incredibly detailed, and they are laid out in a way that really sets you up for success. —Emily Johnson

I’m a big podcast listener, so I’ve been hearing about Hello Fresh—and its many, many coupon codes—for a long time. It has a lot going for it: There are plenty of options to choose from, the shipping is quick, and the meals are super easy to cook. I sometimes eat meat (the cuts of beef and pork I received were tasty, fresh, and high-quality) but was happy to see plenty of vegetarian and plant-based options to choose from, like black bean and corn tacos and bulgur grain bowls. My only caveat is that there was a lot of sameness to many of the meals I tried—repeat ingredients or the same seasonings used across disparate international cuisines. Still, portions were large, leftovers were plentiful, and I really enjoyed the convenience of knowing dinner was taken care of. Stick to more classic options—I loved the beef tenderloin with truffle mash—and you won’t be disappointed. —Alma Avalle, digital operations associate.

Even the best home cooks can get a little tired of making dinner post-holiday cooking season. If you want to eat meals that are nutrient-dense but dead easy to prepare, Factor is probably the way to go. Factor is a little like a fancier, dietitian-approved TV dinner. It’s a prepared-meal delivery service that takes cooking completely out of the equation. Here are the steps: Take the meal tray out of its paper sleeve, poke holes in its plastic lid to let air out, and pop the tray in the microwave for two minutes. I’ve tried a variety of meat dishes, such as Creamy Tomato Pork Chop and Garlic Herb Salmon, but the real stunner was the Indian-Style Vegetable Rice, a richly seasoned vegetarian meal. The carnivorous dishes became a little repetitive, to be frank: Many of them consist of a small slab of meat sitting on a bed of some purée, accompanied by a couple dollops of different greens. But it's precooked by “real chefs,” as Factor’s website puts it, and a prepackaged meal with generous portion sizes, so I can’t really complain. The meals are filling for a single person, the ingredients are whole and simple, and the nutritional information per serving is broken down on the label of each dish (and if you’re concerned about following a particular set of dietary restrictions or are carb-conscious, there are paleo, low-carb, and keto-friendly meal options too). All in all, a solid choice when you want to eat a cooked meal while watching a half-hour sitcom but don’t want to order takeout or do any of the cooking yourself. —K.Y.

EveryPlate is all about affordability, and that’s a really good selling point for a meal kit, especially when some plans end up costing you about the same as a mid-range restaurant meal. Here a single-serving shakes out to about $5, with added discounts for students. Not bad for a ponzu chili steak bowl with charred snap peas and ginger rice. Meals marked as “premium” will run you an extra $3.99 a serving, but these typically include pricier proteins like scallops. Dishes aren’t revelatory but are tasty and relatively simple to put together, and the ones marked “30 minutes or less” made good on their promise. I appreciated the ease with which a surprisingly hearty chicken sausage and kale soup came together, though a little packet marked “chicken stock concentrate” was certainly pulling a lot of weight. I also appreciated the relatively low level of packaging with this kit, and the fact that there were plenty of comfort foods and vegetarian options. That said, healthy eating is not necessarily the name of this game: a dish of scampi-style scallop linguine included 4 Tbsp. butter for two portions and no vegetables save for a single shallot. But maybe that’s what I get for picking the scampi. —H.C.

Territory Foods, another brand that solely provides premade meals, began in 2011 as a meal delivery service targeted at the cult of Paleo adherents. Now it’s expanded, thanks to a $22 million investment, into a more diet-agnostic but still Paleo-minded platform. The name “Territory” presumably references the fact that the company works with local restaurants and independent chefs in each of its markets—a cool feature. Because of that structure, menu options vary widely across locations and change frequently, though everything is always free of gluten, dairy, and refined sugars. If that sounds limiting, it really isn’t: In the three weeks that I sampled Territory, I didn’t notice those omissions until I read the fine print. Choose your delivery schedule (once or twice weekly) and number of meals (at least four per week). Each meal is priced individually, and you can skip weeks without penalty as often as you need to. I like how many filtering options there are when choosing dishes: Customers can limit by diet (Paleo, of course, but also vegan, vegetarian, keto, Whole30, low-fat, and more) or even specific macro amounts. Of all the different meals, miso pesto ramen with shrimp was my mainstay—the shrimp were large and tender, and the brown rice-and-millet ramen was delicious both hot and straight from the fridge. I also found myself returning to the Springbone chicken and rice, which came close to the halal cart I used to frequent near my office. The best part about all of them? The preparation doesn’t require any cooking, all you have to do is reheat them in the oven or microwave. Meals arrive in an insulated cardboard box. Except for the included ice packs, all the packaging is recyclable; the Paleolithic people would be proud. —Amanda Shapiro, contributor

Whether you’re looking for an introduction to Indian regional cuisine or an easy way to put dishes you grew up with on the table, Cumin Club offers low-effort meals while delivering big on flavor. The company’s three cofounders, all of whom hail from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, were looking for easy ways to get a taste of home. What I love about this meal kit service is that it’s basically an “add water, heat, and serve” type of situation. It’s great for days that I want a full meal but don’t have the time to make it from scratch. All the dishes are vegetarian, and I often use them as a base for my dinners or add a quick-cooking veggie—like frozen peas and carrots to the service’s upma—to call it a day. (You could also add meat.) My favorite meal was the dal makhani. It’s made from a short list of simple ingredients, has all the creamy richness you'd expect from the dish, and it takes seven minutes to prepare as opposed to overnight in the slow cooker. I ate this with a dollop of yogurt, chopped cilantro, and premade rotis. I also appreciate that Cumin Club offers dishes from distinct places of origin, like Kolkata and Chennai—both regions that represent my cultural identity but that often get overlooked when it comes to Indian food in the US. All the meals, which do not shy away from spice, come out to just under $5 a pop, which makes them relatively affordable even though it’s a subscription-based service. —Urmila Ramakrishnan, associate director of social media.

Of all the meal kit delivery services I’ve tried, Sunbasket is perhaps the most premium. They predominantly focus on health and sustainability, striving to use 100% organic fresh produce, responsibly raised meats, and wild-caught or sustainably raised seafood. Here, you’ll find an abundance of delicious meals—like Korean rice bowls with sticky-sweet BBQ chicken skewers and kimchi, Burmese chickpea and tomato soup with lemongrass, and seared tuna and black rice with roasted sweet potato and nori—that extend beyond the more basic, “greatest hits” recipes you’ll find at other meal kit services. All of the dishes I tried were flavorful and well-seasoned, and I enjoyed the unmatched diversity of ingredients. Looking through the menus, I would routinely come across a dish or ingredient I’d never cooked before—like these hominy fritters, which are very much speaking to me. That’s why I’d recommend this meal kit service to anyone who could use a little inspiration in the kitchen. Not to mention, all of the meals are quick and easy. I appreciated that the sauces and dressings were premade (and actually tasted good) and that the protein choices for the meals were customizable. For example, when ordering the BBQ meatloaf with garlicky greens and potatoes, you can select either ground beef, ground chicken, or ground turkey. For other meals, you can even choose your preferred cut of steak or chicken. They also offer weekly fully prepared, microwave-ready meals (I can vouch for the turkey chili mac with cheddar). So, if you’re looking for culinary creativity and lots of flavor, Sunbasket might be the best meal kit for you. —T.H.

BA’s commerce editor Carina Finn called her time testing Sakara Life’s healthy prepared meals her “week of wellness-girlie cosplay.” At $420 for 5 days worth of meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), this is one of the more outrageously expensive meal kits on the market. And the brand is definitely positioning itself in the luxury health space: It has been endorsed by a whole host of wellness influencers, and also, crucially, by Gwyneth Paltrow—so you get what you’re dealing with here.

Despite her skepticism, Carina really enjoyed these meals. The breakfast options were almost entirely sweet, so she warns in her review that if you tend to be an eggs and avocado kind of breakfast person, you might be disappointed with the offerings. They also can have painfully twee names, like the “Yoga Bunny” breakfast she tried, which consisted of a gluten-free carrot muffin with carrot coconut butter and an extremely small apple (perhaps perfect for an actually bunny?). Once she got past the name, the muffin was nutty and delicious, with a fluffy texture you don’t often get with gluten-free baked goods—a lot of meals also come with gluten-free breads that were impressive in both flavor and texture. Carina also tried protein waffles and a sweet potato and coconut yogurt parfait that she loved as part of the breakfast offerings.

Lunches from Sakara are, predictably, rainbow plates of vegetables and leafy greens, but Carina was pleasantly surprised by how filling they were thanks to lots of added seeds, beans, and whole grains. Dinners included the most variety, and a few of the offerings didn’t even seem dairy-free or suited to dietary restrictions—Carina double-checked the ingredients on an eggplant parm dish that was so rich and creamy, it was hard to believe there was no dairy involved.

Overall, if you’re eating with particular dietary restrictions or an overall focus on healthy foods with zero effort, Sakara is a genuinely delicious option, even if it comes at an outrageous price. Carina was inspired to recreate many of the meals on her own, so if you want to splurge on your own week of wellness-girlie/Gwyneth Paltrow cosplay, you can use it as a jumping off point to inspire your own healthy cooking down the line.

At any given moment, BA editors are probably testing a meal kit—we keep this process going perpetually to ensure that we test the ever-changing meal options the kits offer and to monitor quality and consistency over time. For over a year, we’ve integrated meals from all of the companies above into our daily cooking repertoires. Editors select meals from the company, ensuring that they choose a wide variety of meal options that will really demonstrate everything this particular meal kit has to offer. We test and retest the kits, dividing them up among staff members, so that we get a variety of perspectives. We also periodically test meal kits that are new to the market, or ones we haven’t tested yet. Here are the factors we consider when we’re testing:

We unpack the meal kits carefully, paying attention to the way the ingredients arrive. We want packaging that ensures freshness, but we also keep an eye out for waste—to avoid things like single-use plastics as much as possible. We look at the individual ingredients offered in each meal kit, and assess their quality comparative to ingredients at our local grocery stores, and, of course, in comparison to their competitors.

Many of the editors who test our meal kits work on developing and cross-testing recipes, so they are experts at assessing whether the instructions are clear, the steps are efficient, and whether the recipe offers the best possible cooking results. But we also deliberately test these kits in our home kitchens, as part of our normal cooking routines, so we can gain genuine insight into how they perform when we’re quickly cobbling dinner together after a busy day of work, or trying to feed our families. After all, this is the reason many of us seek meal kits out in the first place.

This one’s obvious! We take tasting notes while we’re testing, and we consider this the most important metric upon which we judge the best meal kits.

Different meal kits are designed to meet different needs. Some offer packaged ready-made meals that are as easy as fast food, but offer more nutritional value. Some involve just as much chopping and sautéing and cleaning up afterward as a regular recipe. The first might be great for a busy family looking to fill a few weeknight dinners with cook-free options, while the second might be perfect for someone who genuinely loves to cook and is looking for new recipes and to learn new techniques. We do judge these meal kits against one another, but we also assess them from

There’s no way around it: Meal kits are expensive. But you pay this premium for the convenience of having the meals delivered to your door, access to original recipes, and, in some cases to have ready-made meals. We compared the price per serving on meal kits and tried to find the best quality for the price, or to ensure that the factors named above offered enough of a benefit to outweigh the increased cost.

When we talk about there being a variety of meal kits that serve a variety of home cooking needs, we mean that some meal kits, like Hungryroot, are designed curated grocery deliveries that come with recipes that you may choose to make, or not to make. Other meal kits come only with the specific pre-portioned ingredients designed to make one recipe for two to four people. And finally, there’s a burgeoning market of fully premade meals that essentially just need to be popped into the oven or microwave. Of course, some meal kits are designed specifically to fit certain dietary restrictions.

All of these styles of meal kits have their pros and cons, and the right one for you is probably about your lifestyle at the given moment that you’re shopping. So whether you’re looking for a subscription service that meets specific dietary needs, prioritizes high-quality ingredients and truly fresh meals, or offers a good selection of budget-friendly healthy meals, you’ll surely find your match in the options above—we tried to assess the meal kits against the problems they were trying to solve for home cooks, rather than straightforwardly pitting them against one another. Because a premade meal is never going to be as fresh as one you make from a kit—but it will be a lot easier, if that’s what you’re looking for. If you're looking for more specific meal kit requirements, read our list of the best vegetarian meal kits, the best healthy meal kits, the cheapest meal kits, and the best prepared meal kits.

While the list you just read details our favorite meal kits across the board, we also do more specific testing to figure out the best meal kits for particular needs and lifestyles. Below, check out our coverage of the best vegetarian meal kits, the best fully prepared meal kits for those nights when you just need dinner on the table without thinking about it, and more.