Best No Subscription Paleo
Winner
Best No Subscription Plant-Based
Meal delivery services can be great, but not so much if you end up committed to a plan you don’t want long-term. No subscription meal delivery services offer the perfect middle ground of having prepared meals or meal kits delivered to your door, but with no recurring shipments and with only getting the meals you want – when you want them.Â
Our overall winner for the best meal delivery service without a subscription is MealPro. The quality and taste are top-notch, and no subscription is required, ever. Others, like Paleo on the Go and Splendid Spoon, also earn high accolades.
When you’re ready to try out a meal delivery service without a commitment, here is how the top six stack up.
MealPro
WINNER
Meal Pro wins the top spot as the best meal delivery service without a subscription. For starters, they never require a subscription from any of their customers, but you can opt-in to recurring orders if you decide that’s what you prefer.
The difference between MealPro and other meal delivery services that offer a no-subscription option is that MealPro defaults automatically to the no-subscription mode when you order meals. Others make you opt into non-recurring orders, which can seem a bit deceptive.
MealPro does offer some nice perks if you do decide to sign up for recurring deliveries of weekly meals. Including the ability to earn rewards points that can be redeemed toward free MealPro meals.
Now, let’s talk about the other reasons that MealPro has won our hearts and the top spot. First, they offer a large menu of made-from-scratch meals that are prepared in a state-of-the-art facility and designed for healthy eating.
Their meal plans include keto for the carb-conscious, body-building for increasing muscle mass, and several options for medical meals. MealPro medical meals are designed for individuals who need meals for
- Diabetes
- Renal Support
- Low Sodium
- Heart Health
- Crohn’s Disease & Ulcerative Colitis
- Celiac Disease
- Low Cholesterol
- Anti-Inflammatory Meals
This is especially beneficial to individuals who have been directed by their doctor to follow a special diet but don’t want to spend the time and resources needed to sign up for a meal delivery subscription to meet their special dietary needs.
If none of these options work for you, MealPro offers to allow you to create your own healthy meal options from scratch. They’re the only large-scale meal delivery service that we know of that does this. You choose a protein, two sides, and a topping, and they make it for you. This is an amazing level of customization.
MealPro meals vary in price but start at around $13 and go up to about $20 per serving.
Key Benefits
- Fully prepared, ready-to-eat meals
- Choose ala carte meals or meals from one of their specialized dietary menus.
- Create your own custom, healthy meals
- No commitment is required, but you can opt into a subscription service
- Even if you subscribe, it’s easy to skip weeks or cancel
Paleo On the Go
BEST NO SUBSCRIPTION PALEO
Paleo On the Go is one of the few prepared meal delivery services for the paleo diet that doesn’t require a subscription. Not only do they cater to followers of paleo, but also to those following the AIP (autoimmune protocol) diet.
The goal of both paleo and AIP is to eliminate food triggers that cause inflammation, indigestion, and other food-sensitivity-related symptoms. The meals are all free of dairy or other highly inflammatory and triggering foods.
Paleo on the Go offers healthy prepared meals that require you to just heat and eat. The oven-ready meals can be on the table quicker than fast food but are much healthier for you. Paleo on the Go is a frozen meal delivery service, so you can either keep the meals in your freezer or thaw them in the refrigerator.
Paleo on the Go is primarily a subscription meal delivery service, but they offer customers the opportunity to order a box of their favorite nutritious meals whenever they want, without any further obligation.
The minimum order for an on-demand box is eight of the company’s healthy, prepared meals. Meals range from about $17-$23 per serving, but the more you order, the more you save.
For some, this might seem a bit on the pricy side for frozen premade meals, but quality and nutrition are on point, and if you’re looking for convenience, it’s easy to argue that they’re worth the price.
Key Benefits
- Nutritious meals designed for paleo and the AIP diet
- Frozen meal delivery means there’s no hurry to eat meals before they go bad
- Choose a meal plan or an on-demand box of ready-to-eat meals
- The more frozen meals you buy, the more you save
- The menu includes entrees, snacks, broths, and more
Splendid Spoon
BEST NO SUBSCRIPTION PLANT-BASED
Eating healthier but wanting easy, grab-and-go meals shouldn’t come with needing to commit to an expensive meal plan. Fortunately, Splendid Spoon is one of the best meal delivery services for plant-based meals, and they allow customers to order meals and extras from their marketplace without a subscription.
Sometimes, you want to eat breakfast, but you just don’t have time. Splendid Spoon has a smoothie for that. Or maybe you’re craving homemade comfort food but have no energy to cook. A vegan shepherd’s pie with sweet potato and other goodness is just one of the perfect prepared meals that Splendid Spoon offers.
All of Splendid Spoon’s pre-made meals are plant-based and gluten-free. If you want to enjoy these nutritious meals without a subscription, you can go to Splendid Spoon’s marketplace and order directly from there. Still, there are a couple of differences between their meal plans and marketplace meal options.
First, you don’t have access to all the meals that Splendid Spoon offers, but you do have access to their best sellers. Free shipping is offered on orders of $99 or more with a subscription, but you have to spend at least $150 for free delivery without a subscription. There are also additional perks and savings for those who subscribe.
If you value nutritious, plant-based fresh food, then Splendid Spoon may be a great fit. Try them out with their marketplace, and then decide if you want to take the plunge and subscribe to save on future orders.
Key Benefits
- All meals are plant-based and gluten-free
- Splendid Spoon’s meal delivery system allows both one-time purchases and meal plan subscriptions
- Great, fast options for eating healthier
- Healthy meal options range from smoothies and noodle bowls to grain bowls and juices
- Ala carte meals start at about $10 per serving
Silver Cuisine
Silver Cuisine is a meal service that’s created for people aged 50 and older, but honestly, anyone can enjoy Silver Cuisine and the convenience they offer by not requiring a subscription or commitment at any time.
Silver Cuisine offers fully prepared meals, which is a bonus for seniors who are either living busy lifestyles or maybe can’t get around the kitchen as easily as they once could. Premade meal services, like Silver Cuisine, offer easy meals that require nothing in terms of grocery shopping or meal prep. Plus, with just the right portion sizes, you find this creates less food waste with Silver Cuisine meals.
Silver Cuisine also offers options for individuals with dietary restrictions. A few of the special diets that Silver Cuisine caters to include:
- Vegetarian meals
- Gluten-free meals
- Diabetic-friendly meals
- Low-sodium
- low -carb/carb-conscious meals
- Mediterranean Diet meals
- Dairy-free meals
- Menopause meals
- Heart healthy meals
What’s also nice about Silver Cusine is the variety on its menu. You can enjoy simple, traditional meals like roasted chicken breast and your favorite vegetables, or stretch it out of the box a little and try something like roasted pork tenderloin with olive tapenade. The menu is large and offers delicious meal options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Silver Cuisine wants to make sure its customers have access to the food and nutrition they need without the barrier of needing to commit to a subscription. However, if you find that you do want to subscribe, you can contact them on their website or call their customer service department to discuss meal delivery plans that will work for you.
Key Benefits
- Prepared meal delivery with the needs of seniors in mind
- No subscription makes proper nutrition more accessible
- The best meal service for special diets, including the Mediterranean diet, menopause meals, and heart health
- Meals arrive just a few days after you place your order
- Eat healthier with no grocery shopping, meal prep, or cooking
Icon Meals
Icon meals offer healthy, prepared meals that are geared toward individuals looking to embrace a healthy lifestyle and achieve health-related goals.
Icon Meals lets their customers choose whether they want to subscribe or not, with subscriptions available on their Icon Meal Boxes. These include a Lean Box, Chef Meals Box, Bulk Box, and a Keto Box. You can also order any of these prepared meal boxes without a subscription.
In addition to the boxes, ala carte meals include custom breakfast, lunch, and dinner options. You can also filter by health goals, including eating clean, building muscle, and having low-calorie meals that are designed to help you lose weight.
Key Benefits
- One of the best fresh meal delivery services for approaching dietary goals without a subscription
- Gluten-free, dairy-free, low-calorie diet, high-protein with healthy fats, low-fat, and keto meal filters are provided
- Meals portions are generous
- Prices start at about $11 per serving
Magic Kitchen
The intention behind Magic Kitchen is to offer delicious-tasting prepared meals to every person, and practically every diet, without ever needing to sign up for a meal plan or recurring deliveries.
Magic Kitchen has an entire segment of its menu of chef meals devoted to nutrition for seniors. These meals are dietitian-designed for the nutritional needs of seniors and factor in any special health concerns or dietary restrictions.
Additionally, there’s a segment of the menu with special diet meals for customers of all ages. These special diets span just about every health concern you can think of, from diabetic, dialysis-friendly, and renal meals to dairy-free, gluten-free, and low-carb.
Magic Kitchen’s chef-prepared gourmet meals taste good, are nutritionally sound, and are available with plenty of customization options. Customers can choose from ala carte meal components, including mains, sides, snacks, and desserts, or opt for complete meals.
If you do decide you want to commit to Magic Kitchen, they offer what they call Flex Subscriptions. Simply contact their customer service department, and they’ll walk you through the entire process.
Key Benefits
- No subscription, ala carte, 15-meal trial packs, and flex subscriptions are available.
- Prepared fresh and then frozen, meals stay fresh longer
- Family meals are available
- You choose how many meals per week or month you want
- Most meals are suitable for all appetites and flavor preferences
Buying Guide
When you’re on the hunt for a meal delivery service that doesn’t require a subscription, you might be so excited when you find one that all the other details seem less important. This is understandable because, at first, it feels like you’ve found a magical unicorn. Still, there are some key points that deserve consideration before you click the purchase button,
Price & Penalties
Price is a very important consideration for most people. The price of meal delivery services can be all over the board, with some being less expensive than a fast food meal to others that cost as much as a nicer restaurant meal. One thing you may notice is that the price of meals without a subscription may be more than the price with one.
Meal delivery companies would argue that they’re giving a price discount to those who subscribe, where you might see this as a price penalty for not wanting to make a commitment. With most meals, the price increase isn’t substantial – maybe a dollar or so per serving. Still, it’s something to keep an eye on, especially if you’re looking to try a new meal delivery service while sticking to a budget.
Menu Variety
Next up is variety. Your mouth may start watering as soon as you glance at the menu, but take a minute to see if ordering ala carte meals provide access to the entire menu or if your choices are more limited.
From a business standpoint, it does make sense for meal delivery services to limit ala carte selections. Some meals are more costly to produce, and if they don’t sell during peak freshness, it leads to more food waste. When they’re providing meals to subscribers, they have a better idea of how many portions of certain meals they need to produce.
The good news here is that even for services that restrict their ala carte menu, such as Splendid Spoon, the meals you have access to are usually the best sellers, so you still have access to what their customers consider to be the best of the best.
Special Diets
For people who follow any type of special diet, whether it’s to lose weight, eat clean, or because they have a health condition that demands a particular way of eating, making sure a meal delivery company offers meals that fit those dietary needs is crucial.
All of the meal delivery services on this list do a really good job of offering meals for special diets and dietary restrictions. Two of the best are Silver Cuisine and Magic Kitchen, which also offer meals that cater to the preferences and needs of seniors.
Even if you’re not a senior or at that point where you feel much younger than your driver’s license says you are, these meals offer great nutrition for healthy lifestyles without all the added fats, processed sugar, and sodium that often come with convenient food options.
Fresh or Frozen
It’s worth considering if you prefer your prepared meals to arrive at your door fresh or frozen. There are pros and cons to each.
For example, fresh meals, like those offered by Meal Pro, tend to taste better than frozen, but they also have a shorter shelf life. You can always freeze them, but this isn’t always recommended.
On the other hand, frozen meals, like those offered by Paleo On the Go and others on this list, might be missing a little something in terms of flavor, but chances are they were frozen when all the ingredients were at their peak. In some cases, they might even taste better.
Frozen also has the advantage of not needing to be eaten in three to five days, but they also usually require thawing before heating for best results.
Prepared Meals or Meal Kits
One more thing to consider is whether you prefer prepared meals or meal kits. This wasn’t an issue that came up when creating this list because there wasn’t a meal kit service that made this list. However, it feels neglectful not to mention this choice at all.
Meal kits arrive at your door with all the ingredients needed, plus a recipe, to create a delicious home-cooked meal. These meal kits are great for people who enjoy cooking. However, it’s not easy to find a meal kit option that doesn’t require a subscription. If you’re on a budget, a meal kit subscription is usually less expensive than prepared meals, but you might find that you have to sign up for regular meal kit deliveries to benefit from the cost perk.Â
FAQs
Is there a meal delivery service that doesn’t require a subscription?
Key Takeaways
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- You don’t have to sign up for a subscription to enjoy prepared meal delivery
- It’s easier to find prepared meals without a subscription than it is to find meal kit services
- MealPro is the best meal delivery option when you want delicious meals and convenience without a subscriptionÂ
- No-subscription meal services are ideal for seniors with a fixed income
- Many no-subscription services offer meals for special dietary needs
- You might end up paying a bit more for the convenience of no-subscription