Meal box kits: a comparison of the 5 most popular subscriptions

There are a few meal box services out there now, so we're comparing five of the most popular – HelloFresh, Gousto, Mindful Chef, Green Chef, and Planthood – from nutritional content and taste, to the all-important value for money.

During my tests I tried eight meals per company. While that's a reasonable sample, taste is very subjective, and your experience may vary depending on your dietary requirements and what you order. So take the reviews below with somewhere between a pinch and several good grindings of salt.

• Hop between meal boxes for endless discounts. All the companies we've looked at offer 40-70% discounts for new customers, and often offer them for lapsed customers too. In my experience, you usually don't have to wait more than a month after cancelling for an offer to re-join.

• Subscribe to emails for discounts. Make sure you're opted in so you don't miss out on the discounts they use to try and lure you back.

• Work out the best value per portion. Read our discounted meal box comparison below to see the per-portion prices.

• Save as much as 30% by ordering in bulk. With almost all boxes, you get a much better price per portion if you order more meals for more people. Even if there are only two of you, ordering meals for four (and saving half for the next day) means spending fewer nights cooking.

• Select your meals (and cancel) in good time. The company needs time to assemble your ingredients and prep your box, so you usually need to give five to seven days' notice before your next delivery date if you wish to change your meals or cancel your subscription.

Which box offers the most value for money?

Taste may be subjective, but how much you spend on each box is not. I've looked at how much you actually pay for what you get on your plate, and found ordering more per box can work out cheaper in the long run.

Intro discounts range from 30 to 70%

If you follow our meal box MoneySaving tips, and you're flexible, you should be able to max the discounts offered on boxes. The biggest discounts for each meal box are always on the first box, usually with decreasing discounts for the next several boxes (though our current MSE Blagged deal with Gousto bucks that trend by giving you 50% off each box throughout your first month).

Here I've compared the meal box prices based on the highest levels of discounts I saw for the first box during our research (and based on four meals for four people, which we found to be the best-value). The discounts vary depending on whether you're a new or returning customer, and fluctuate frequently, but generally the discounts you get offered should come within 10% of the maximum ones we found.

For per-portion pricing in that heavily discounted first box, Gousto leads the way. However, HelloFresh is not far behind and, in my tested sample, on average it offered more generous portions. It's a fine margin though, and at those kinds of discounts both Gousto and HelloFresh can compete with shopping for ingredients at the supermarket price-wise.

Green Chef and Planthood are neck-and-neck when factoring in their top first box discounts, while Mindful Chef comes in most expensive.

Obviously, those steep discounts don't stay, but across the first four boxes, the discounts for all companies still average out between 30 and 40% off. See below for the average box pricing based on the maximum discounts you're likely to get for each box.

Save up to 30% by buying in bulk

Each of the meal boxes offers some degree of saving when ordering for more people, so even if there are only two of you, getting bigger boxes and more meals can save a fair bit of money per meal (and time too, as whether you're cooking for two or four people, you can cook most dishes up in one go).

Here's how the prices per portion compare when ordering four meals for four people instead of two.

Gousto offered the best value when scaling up to four people, saving you about 30% per portion. HelloFresh and Mindful Chef are not far behind, while Planthood and Green Chef offer far less generous discounts when you order for more people.

On top of that, HelloFresh and Gousto also offer small per-portion savings when you order more meals per week (about 5% to 15% per extra meal, assuming four people), while Green Chef, Planthood, and Mindful Chef portion prices remain largely the same no matter the number of meals you order.

Which box offers the biggest portions?

So Gousto was cheapest in my tests for per-portion pricing, but that wouldn't count for much if each portion amounted to little more than a tablespoon.

I therefore compiled the nutritional data for hundreds of meals across all five companies in a given week and calculated the average value of each nutrient per meal (rather than just using my selected and delivered boxes).

It’s worth noting that each provider offers enough weekly choice for you to select meals that deviate significantly from the averages. So if you're someone who likes to go over nutritional information with a fine-toothed comb, you should be able to find meals to match your preferences in all boxes. If you don't bother with that stuff and just pick meals that look nice, then you're more likely to be affected by these averages.

I compared calories and weight, which between them paint a fairly good picture of how much you get on your plate (we couldn't show Planthood's average portion weight, as the company doesn't provide 'per 100g' nutritional information).

So while Gousto represents good value for money, I found it also had the smallest average portion sizes of all five meal boxes. The other four boxes were much more closely matched, with HelloFresh having the highest average calorie count per portion, and Green Chef the highest average portion weight.

However, the averages don't quite align with my personal experience, as I found Planthood was up there with HelloFresh when it came to overall food quantity. Green Chef has the second-highest average calories (which again, didn't align with my experience of its portion sizes). It also edges out Mindful Chef for highest average portion weight, though calories tend to matter more than food weight.

I spoke with Registered Dietitian Ro Huntriss, who explained: "The main contributors to calories are the macronutrients: fat, carbohydrate and protein. These provide energy, whereas other components of food add weight without significantly increasing calorie content. Water is the largest of these; for example, cucumbers are around 96% water, which increases their weight and volume without adding calories."

Now we know the average size of the portions, the associated value-for-money picture changes a bit, with HelloFresh undercutting Gousto when we look at price per 100g of grub (taking into account average discounted price across the first four boxes, with four meals for four people).

Gousto - cheapest, but tends to have small portion sizes

The cheapest of all the food boxes (at least when I was doing my research), with the biggest introductory discounts, it’s hard to argue against Gousto's value for money. It also has the biggest weekly selection of meals, with seasonal options when occasions like Christmas roll around.

The trade-off is that the portion sizes are, on average, quite a bit smaller than those of other meal boxes. With around 200 meals to choose from each week, you can still easily find more calorie-dense ones.

My Gousto review

My introductory offer was 40% off, followed by three boxes at 30% off. At four meals for four people, this brought the per-portion price to £2.31 and £2.76. You can save even more with the MSE Blagged offer.

The first thing you’ll notice upon opening the box is that the ingredients for each meal are all mixed together, rather than sorted into a different bag per meal (the horror!). This does mean less packaging, but also a lot of loose veg, sachets, and other bits for you to organise. 

It's definitely a contrast to Mindful Chef. Instead of brown rice-based pasta twisted into fancy shapes, it’s white pasta; instead of trout and crab it’s the (IMO) humble basa fish – a light yet nutritious catfish. But, to keep things in perspective, this comes in at comfortably under half the price of Mindful Chef, especially when factoring in steep introductory discounts.

The vast choice means that in one week I had slow-cooked beef & cashew Massaman curry, Brazilian-style chicken rice, and a nice spinachy gnocchi, and it all tasted lovely. Gousto's low price is certainly not reflected in the flavours or variety of its food. Taste-wise, I felt it didn't match Mindful Chef or (my personal favourite flavour-wise) Planthood, but nor was it eclipsed as you might expect given the big price difference.

If you're not too fussed about complex carbs or posh ingredients, then Gousto is a decent shout.

HelloFresh - big portions, low prices

Probably the most recognisable name on the meal box scene, HelloFresh also offers some of the cheapest prices and steepest introductory discounts, a large weekly variety of meals, and (as my value-for-money comparison will show) most energy-dense meals on average.

You'll have access to 70+ recipes each week, and can filter by dietary preferences and meal types (such as 'Flexitarian', 'Vegetarian', 'low salt' and 'low carb'). Recipes have included fun themes such as 'Ireland's Crispy Chicken Burger' to celebrate the Six Nations tournament and 'A Taste of France' featuring French Style Chicken Blanquette and Garlic Rice, among other things. There's also a 'Cooking with Kids' label if you want to get your kids involved.

My HelloFresh review

HelloFresh meals, much like Gousto, can be best described as 'honest grub' – affordable, carby, hearty.

My introductory discount was 50% (with a pair of GU Pot desserts included in each box). This came to £36.23 for the a four-person, four-meal box, or £3 per portion.

Each meal is packed into its own brown bag, with a recipe card. For our first delivery however, they forgot to include the recipes. The QR codes to access the online instructions didn't work, and I didn't have access to my partner's HelloFresh account, so I had to cross-reference the contents of a meal bag with HelloFresh's dozens of online recipes to deduce which one I was cooking... 20 minutes well spent.

The lamb pasta dishes were a hit in my household (lamb and mushroom rigatoni with slices of bell pepper, red wine lamb ragu and linguine), and the Tuscan-inspired chicken stew with dippy ciabattas was rich and the right amount of salty.

As expected from the box with the biggest average portion sizes, these were usually generous with enough left over for seconds.

That wasn't the case with all dishes however. The salmon poke bowl, for instance, had quite small slices of salmon and we had to get an extra bit of sweet potato to round it out. In my experience, this felt like a theme when 'fancier' ingredients were involved: small amount of that ingredient (such as salmon), then extra rice, pasta, or other carbs to make up for it.

But that reflects the fact that HelloFresh is another one at the budget end of meal boxes, and if you stick with cheaper proteins (such as chicken and basa fish) then I felt the meals tended to be better rounded.

Mindful Chef - healthy but pricey

Mindful Chef* is the priciest food box in this comparison, but it does have a few key selling points: it uses no palm oil in its ingredients as of 2025, its meat is 100% UK-sourced and it’s healthy too, with a promise of no refined carbs, no refined sugars, and every meal being gluten-free.

The menu changes every week, with a choice of around 30 dishes, all of which are a bit more distinctive than your usual spag bol or burger-and-chips. The menu includes things like pan-roasted duck breast with butter bean cassoulet and tenderstem broccoli, wild venison ragu and prawn coconut curry with wholegrain pilau rice.

Mindful Chef compares itself on its own site to rivals Green Chef, Gousto, and HelloFresh, pointing out (with sources) how they don’t meet the same standards. Though, as I've said above, all those boxes are as much as 50% cheaper.

My Mindful Chef review

Mindful Chef offers tasty meals with unique ingredients and a commitment to healthier eating. You pay a premium price but, in my experience, the quality matches.

I got 30% off my first and second Mindful Chef boxes, which came to £76.44 for four meals for four people (£4.78 per portion). Each Mindful Chef meal arrives in its own numbered paper bag, along with a booklet containing all the recipes for that week.

The meals were nice and filling, but not in a bloat-inducing way. It's all complex carbs here, so things like quinoa and brown rice instead of pasta and white rice.

Why are complex carbs better? Dietitian Ro Huntriss explains: "Complex carbohydrates, such as wholegrains, legumes and vegetables, are digested more slowly and are typically higher in fibre. This leads to a steadier release of energy and helps you feel fuller for longer."

When I looked up how they made things like gnocchi and pasta, it turned out they use brown rice flour instead of wheat flour. I'd never have noticed this, and to me this tasted better and lighter than wholewheat.

The crab and chilli gnocchi and wild venison ragu were highlights, and most dishes had a little dash of luxury thanks to less common ingredients like crab, cavolo nero, samphire, pine nuts, and venison. 

While the four-person boxes fed my partner and I for two meals each, there was rarely much left for seconds; hardly a crime, given it still fed four as advertised, but not as generous as HelloFresh or Planthood portions, where many of the meals left enough for seconds (and tupperware lunches at MSE Towers).

Green Chef

Alongside Planthood, Green Chef sits in the middle in terms of pricing: more expensive than the budget options HelloFresh and Gousto, but cheaper than Mindful Chef.

You may encounter some confusion regarding whether or not Green Chef is organic. The UK Green Chef site states in its FAQ that "some of our ingredients may be organic, however, we're not an organic food delivery service.” So, if you're looking for that completely organic experience, this won't suit.

Green Chef offers around 40 meals each week, with filters based around specific dietary preferences like keto, vegan, high protein, low-carb, and pescatarian. Within the above pricing you'll find dishes like duck breast in a creamy Dijon sauce, West African inspired chicken curry, and lamb steak with peppercorn sauce.

My Green Chef review

Green Chef has some interesting dishes and keto-friendly cauliflower-based spins on mash and rice, but I found it disappointing flavour-wise. I felt the dishes on offer were very similar to ones in the much cheaper HelloFresh and Gousto boxes.

The first box I ordered from Green Chef was 40% off (£62.49 for four meals for four people, coming to £3.91 per portion).

More than once my partner and I found we bought extra bits separately, like naan bread or extra pasta, for our overly meaty creamy pork pasta dish, to balance the meals out a bit.

Across eight meals, my overall impression was that the food was a bit bland. Even naturally fragrant dishes like the chicken thigh korma didn't quite pack enough punch, though I do need to give a shoutout to the seared duck breast in red wine jus, which was melt-in-the-mouth delicious. So, a little bit swings-and-roundabouts.

Planthood

As the name suggests, Planthood is the vegan option of the bunch, but you'll find no Quorn or Linda McCartney sausages here. It focuses on fresh veg, combined with proteins like lentils, tempeh, and tofu. The boon here is that the meals come with ready-made chef-prepared sauces, curries, and garnishes, which makes prep times shorter than most of its competitors.

Planthood claims 'the majority of its proteins' are organic, though proteins make up only a small portion of each meal anyway, so this doesn't really tell us much. Planthood is aiming to be 100% organic in the future, but for now it's not. So, again, it's not your completely organic food delivery.

Planthood has the smallest weekly menu of all the meal boxes, but it changes every week, and I felt it offered a lot of thoughtful and unique dishes, making its rotation feel carefully crafted.

My Planthood review

Planthood offers a tasty and beautifully-presented meal box that I felt showed vegan food can not only match, but surpass, meaty dining. Quality stuff, though also on the pricier end.

I took advantage of the 30% off first two boxes offer to get four meals for four people for £72.80 (£4.55 per portion).

All the ingredients are packed in separate bags for the respective meals and all the menus are accessible on your phone via a QR code. I'm not a fan of this decision, because swiping a phone screen with messy cooking fingers is no fun, and neither is trying to keep the screen on (there's an option on the recipe pages that forces your screen to stay on, but I had mixed results with this).

But the digital recipe can be forgiven if the food is good, and - with Planthood - it really is. As an easygoing omnivore, I've never been one to get weird about not having a hunk of meat on my plate, but eating Planthood for about three weeks, I didn't even miss animal produce.

As someone who's eaten curry in a sleepy cafe on a rainy day in Osaka, I can say with a sliver of authority, that the tofu katsu was excellent, with plenty of nice chunky veg and a rich ruby-red hue (rather than the dour brown that more basic variants can have).

Across two boxes, I had two dals: a black dal, as well as a cream coconut dal with roasted cauliflower and kale. The verdict? Dal-icious. I was a tad underwhelmed by the bland lentil pasta bake and the over-citrussy pearl barley and greens 'risotto', but six of my eight meals were excellent.

The quantities were also impressive. Most of the four-person meals comfortably gave my partner and I two meals (with seconds) each. Of all the meal boxes, this is the one that gave me most leftovers (despite the average portion size stats).

Being the health-oriented veggie option, Planthood has some of the biggest deviations from the rest of the pack (apart from Gousto, whose lower numbers are explained by its smaller portions). Planthood has the least protein per portion (attributable to the lack of meat), but leads the way by some margin in terms of fibre thanks to a plentitude of vegetables and lack of refined ingredients.

Here's why fibre matters, in the words of dietitian Ro Huntriss: "Fibre contributes relatively few usable calories while helping you feel fuller for longer, which can support weight management. It also supports digestive health, heart health, and helps regulate blood sugar levels."