GoKawiilMeal kits are a convenience product, full stop. While the price gap between meal kits and grocery store prices has shrunk since they first launched, what you're paying for is premeasured ingredients curated into a single box and delivered to your door ready to be spun into dinner.
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We've calculated how meal kit delivery services stack up against grocery prices, and the findings aren't surprising, even amid rising food costs nationwide. It's almost always cheaper to buy groceries at the store, and you prepare meals, especially when you shop in person rather than have them delivered.
Read more: I Test Meal Kits for a Living: 7 Mistakes That Cost You
Meal kit prices are easy to compare. What's harder to answer is whether any of them actually deliver value relative to what the same groceries would cost at a supermarket -- and whether some services are giving you meaningfully more than others for your money.
So I did the math. Considering seven of the most popular traditional-format meal kit delivery services, many of which appear on our Best Meal Kits of 2026 list, here's how they stacked up, from highest to lowest, based on the value they offer for the price. (The lower the savings in the right-hand column in order to make the same meals yourself, the closer in price between the meal kit and the actual cost of groceries.)
And while these represent the best value meal kits, we've also dug into them to find the absolute cheapest meal kits available in 2026.
Meal kits, ranked by value Meal kit service % savings to make the same meals yourself Home Chef 35% HelloFresh 35% Blue Apron 37% EveryPlate 40% Marley Spoon 42% Green Chef 45% Sunbasket 48%
Home Chef scored top marks in our meal kit value ranking. David Watsky/CNET
Home Chef
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