I tried four meal kit services over two months — one week each. The short answer: meal kits are cheaper than restaurants but more expensive than grocery shopping. The long answer depends on what you value.

The Contenders

HelloFresh: Nine to twelve dollars per serving. Widest variety, most reliable delivery. Portions generous — leftovers for lunch. Downside: too much packaging.

EveryPlate: Five to seven dollars per serving. HelloFresh’s budget brand. Simpler recipes, less packaging. For half the price it is solid value.

Blue Apron: Eight to eleven dollars per serving. More adventurous recipes — miso-glazed salmon, za’atar chicken. Best for learning cooking techniques.

Home Chef: Eight to ten dollars per serving. Most customizable — swap proteins, double portions, oven-ready meals. Best for picky eaters or families.

Who Should Use Meal Kits

Meal kits make sense if you spend more than one hundred dollars a week on takeout, are learning to cook, or hate meal planning and grocery shopping enough to pay a premium. Time savings: about two to three hours per week.

Who Should Not

If you already cook regularly, meal kits are an expensive convenience. If you have strict dietary restrictions, options narrow. If feeding more than four people, per-serving cost barely beats takeout.

I kept HelloFresh about four months, then canceled. By then I had built enough cooking confidence that I did not need training wheels anymore. Best outcome — use meal kits as a bridge, not permanent.