The Cheapest Prepared Meal Delivery Service

The Cheapest Prepared Meal Delivery Service

Cheapest Vegan


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Winner


Cheapest Prepared Kids


Meal delivery services save precious time and make life easier, but they can be hard on the budget. With the prices of groceries rising, being budget-minded is more important than ever. Fortunately, there are some great prepared meal delivery services that won’t break the bank, and they offer great tasting and nutritious quick and easy meals.

Whether you’re looking for comfort-food style dishes, have a young picky eater at home, are following a special diet, or just really want some great grab-and-go snacks, we have our choices for the top prepared meal delivery service in several categories.

Freshly

WINNER

Freshly Alternatives

Freshly is everything you’re looking for in a meal delivery service at an affordable price. Freshly offers an extensive menu of fresh meals, meaning they’re prepared and delivered to you fresh and never frozen. This makes Freshly meals taste like delicious, home-cooked meals instead of the freezer-burn-after taste common in meals from your local grocery store’s freezer section.

Freshly meals can best be described as comfort foods. The flavors are ones that most people are familiar with, and they’re designed to be liked by even picky eaters and kids. Freshly offers more than forty meal options and protein add-ons each week. A few examples of Freshly meals include Steak Peppercorn with mashed potatoes, Chicken Parmesan with broccoli, and a Veggie Loaded Burrito Bake.

Freshly offers very flexible meal plans, and you can choose to have as few as four meals or as many as twelve meals delivered each week. As far as pricing is concerned, it doesn’t get any more affordable than Freshly prepared meals, especially when considering the quality of the fresh food you’re getting.

If you choose the smallest meal plan of four meals, Freshly costs a little over $11 per serving, which is standard in the meal delivery industry. The big savings come in when your order a larger meal package. If you order twelve meals, the cost per serving comes in at a little over $8.

Benefits of Freshly

  • Great variety on the menu
  • Some vegetarian options are available
  • Sliding price point, with a discount for ordering more
  • Meals are fresh, never frozen
  • Great tasting and like by picky eaters
  • Flexible meal plan options

Splendid Spoon

CHEAPEST VEGAN PREPARED

splendid spoon noodles

A plant-based diet is an amazingly healthy way to fuel and support your body, but the time spent on meal planning, grocery shopping, and prepping is a deterrent to many that want to follow the plant-based lifestyle. Splendid Spoon makes doing this easy and affordable with their prepared meals that are 100% plant-based.

Splendid Spoon offers chef-prepared meals that a nutritionist designs. Each meal is well-rounded from a nutritional standpoint. Splendid Spoon’s meals cover four main categories – smoothies, soup & grain bowls, noodle bowls, and light soups. They also offer a few extras like cold-pressed juices and wellness shots.

The smoothies and meals are all prepared and ready to eat. The most you have to do is open a top or maybe heat it in the microwave for a few minutes. The ingredients and taste are fresh and delicious, and their menu offers lots of great choices.

For smoothies, we recommend the Pineapple Passionfruit, Hidden Greens, and Raspberry Cacao smoothies. For bowls and soups, we really like the Green Tomatillo Chili Soup, Coconut Curry Rice Bowl, and the Dan Dan Noodles.

But, the question you really want to be answered has to do with Splendid Spoon’s pricing structure. Splendid Spoon offers several different plans. You can choose breakfast or lunch, or any combination of the two, plus dinner. They also offer plans for their reset program and an on-demand box.

The largest plan, which includes a total of twenty meals, costs less than $9 per serving. Prices are more for the smaller boxes, and prices vary with the on-demand box, depending on what you order.

Benefits of Splendid Spoon

  • All meals are vegan, dairy-free, and gluten-free
  • Organic ingredients are used for items on the Dirty Dozen List
  • Vegan meals require no prep and are gran-and-go
  • Reset program to help you lose weight
  • Light plant-based meals with no heavy ingredients
  • Bright, fresh flavors in each of the nutritious meals
  • Generous discounts for new subscribers

Yumble

CHEAPEST PREPARED KIDS

Yumble packaging

For busy parents and caregivers, Yumble is one of the cheap meal delivery services that you can trust to provide not just meals that your kids will eat but also meals that are packed with nutrition. Yumble is great for quick meals on busy nights or if you need to send a meal to daycare or to the grandparent’s house for a sleepover.

Yumble meals are designed to be kid-friendly, so you can count on lots of flavors that kids are familiar with and love, except they’re boosted with extra nutrition. For example, the butternut pasta that’s made with a butternut squash sauce rather than a traditional marinara. Yumble has added meals with bigger portions to their weekly menu for older kids and also little bento-style snack boxes that are packed with all sorts of kid-approved yumminess.

On average, Yumble offers more than sixty meals and snacks on its weekly menu. All meals are delivered to you fresh, so all you have to do is heat and eat. No meal prep is involved, saving busy parents tons of time.

Yumble’s price per meal depends on how large of a box you order. Their smallest box is just under $10 per meal. Their largest box, which is twelve meals, comes in at just under $7 per meal, plus you get free shipping.

Benefits of Yumble

  • Meals designed specifically to appeal to children
  • Nutritionally balanced
  • Some vegetarian meals and dairy-free options
  • Great variety on the weekly menu
  • Free shipping on larger orders

Eatology

CHEAPEST PREPARED PALEO

Eatology Meal Delivery

Eatology is a prepared meal delivery service that’s devoted to offering its customers healthy food that’s crafted into delicious meals. Their no-prep meals taste homemade and are almost a little too decadent to be healthy, but they are! In other words, Eatology makes healthy eating and the paleo lifestyle something that’s easy and delicious, and they manage to do it all at a very reasonable price.

Eatology offers gluten-free meals, along with meals that can be tailored to certain dietary restrictions. They offer lots of flexibility with their meal plans. You can order meal bundles and have them delivered once a week, once a month, or once every three months (although you’re going to want to have lots of freezer space if you order the three-month bundles – the largest is 252 meals!). You can also order meals a la carte and create your own weekly or monthly box.

Eatology offers appropriate meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and vegetarian options for the non-carnivores out there. Family meals with multiple portions are also available.

Most Eatology meals cost about $12.50 per serving if you’re ordering a la carte. This is about average across the board for meal delivery services. However, they almost always offer some sort of discount incentive to keep you ordering their meals. Taking 25% off of a la carte meals is a popular discount, and also, meals are cheaper if you purchase them in bundles.

Eatolgy Benefits

  • Great for paleo and gluten-free diets
  • Good selection of weekly menu options
  • Meals are filling, taste great, and have a home-cooked taste to them
  • Flexible with plans and a la carte ordering
  • Fully prepared meals are great for when you’re on the go
  • Can order large bundles to cover three months of meals

Trifecta

CHEAPEST ORGANIC PREPARED MEAL DELIVERY

Trifecta review

An organic meal company on a list of the cheapest meal delivery services? It must be a mistake! Fortunately, for all of us, it’s true. Trifecta Nutrition offers affordable organic meals that fit your healthy lifestyle.

Their healthy meals are offered in several categories. These include clean eating, vegan meals, paleo, keto, classic meals, and meal prep. While their low-carb meals are higher in calories, there are also plenty of low-calorie meals on the weekly menu if you’re looking to lose weight. Trifecta is also equipped to handle certain food allergies in their kitchen.

Trifecta meals are free of gluten and GMO ingredients. They use organic produce and have a commitment to ethical ranching and farming.

Like most meal delivery services, Trifecta prices its meals depending on how many meals per week you order. Still, it’s possible to pay in the $8-$10 range for Trifecta meals, which is an incredible deal for quality healthy meals.

Trifecta Benefits

  • Great options for choosing a weekly meal plan
  • Meals are chosen for you, so there’s no picking through the menu
  • A la carte meals are also available if you want more control
  • Meal prep plans with pre-portioned ingredients are available
  • Caters to many different dietary lifestyles
  • Good for people with allergies or intolerances

Key Takeaways

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Freshly is our top choice for meal services that won’t break the bank, but there are other services that we enjoy just as much. Many meal delivery services offer a great variety of meals per week, and in most cases, you can choose your own meals. Never pick up a subpar meal frozen meal from the grocery store again, and discover what these cheapest meal delivery services have to offer instead.

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