Updated · WeeklyMealPlans kitchen
Answer two questions first
Do you want to cook? If yes, you want a meal kit. If no, you want prepared meals. If you quite like cooking and the problem is deciding, you want a planner and neither service.
How many people? Per-serving pricing means everything scales linearly. A service that's reasonable for one person is expensive for four.
The options, honestly
HelloFresh — the biggest meal kit. Widest recipe choice, most dietary options, the most reliable delivery operation. Roughly $9–12 per serving. You still cook for 20–40 minutes.
EveryPlate — the budget kit, same parent company. Simpler recipes, fewer ingredients, noticeably cheaper per serving. If cost is the deciding factor among kits, this is normally the answer.
Factor — prepared meals, fully cooked. Two minutes in a microwave. Roughly $11–15 per serving. The only one on this list that removes cooking entirely.
Planning and shopping yourself — roughly $4–7 per serving. You decide nothing (the planner does that) but you shop and cook. Free, and the grocery list can go straight to Instacart or Walmart if the shop itself is the problem.
What the per-serving numbers mean at household size
Five dinners a week, two people: a kit runs roughly $90–120, prepared meals $110–150, a planned shop $40–70.
Five dinners, family of four: a kit runs roughly $180–240. A planned shop is typically $80–140. That gap is why kit marketing targets couples.
The question nobody asks
How many weeks will you actually keep it? Most of these services are priced around an introductory discount and renew at full price. Deciding whether something is worth it at the first-box price is how people end up paying full price for a box they don't want in week six.
If you're not sure, a planner costs nothing and tells you within two weeks whether your problem was deciding, shopping or cooking. Then buy the service that fixes the actual problem.
What we are
We don't deliver food. We build weekly plans and grocery lists, free, and point at the services above when one of them is genuinely the better answer. Those are plain links, not tracked affiliate links — if that changes, we'll say so here.
