Which Meal-Kit Services Give You the Best Ingredients?

When you're planning a meal, do you want the highest-quality ingredients, or is low price more important?

When it comes to meal-kit delivery services, research conducted by financial-insights site TopDollar shows that it's hard to have both. In data collected in August and September, TopDollar collected recipes from most of the services in the US and the UK for standardized boxes with ingredients for four two-person meals (eight portions). It then compared the ingredient prices against the prices for the same delicious components at a local supermarket chain for each country. Then, the site calculated the cost of ingredients versus the cost of the actual box.

At PCMag, we've reviewed many meal-kit providers, including favorites Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, and Green Chef, each of which earned a rating of 4.5 and an Editors' Choice award. And we're happy to note that the report shows those three, plus the vegan Purple Carrot (which earned a rating of 4) are at the top of the list when it comes to the value of ingredients. Blue Apron leads with an average value of $39.68.

But being valuable doesn't translate to saving money, of course. The comparisons continued with a close look at the difference in the value of the ingredients versus the actual price consumers are charged for the box. Here, kits from companies EveryPlate and Dinnerly led the way. Both promise $4.99-per-serving meals, usually comfort food. They're not rated as highly as PCMag favorites because the finished food simply isn't as enticing, but you get what you pay for.

EveryPlate is the best meal kit for savings—the difference between its ingredients's prices compared with supermarket prices is less than $13. Discounting $8.99 of that as the shipping fee, you're almost at cost.

The differential for top brands Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, whose ingredients cost about $30 or more over store prices, are pretty average for meal kits. The most expensive in terms of overall value is the vegetarian version of SunBasket, which has a price difference of over $65 between store ingredients and box ingredients. You might as well go to a restaurant.

To do a quick comparison using TopDollar's interactive table that lets you narrow down the country and regular-versus-vegan meal-kit options, check out its full report.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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