is hello fresh budget friendly

HelloFresh offers easy meal kits, fair prices and more than 50 weekly recipes. We tried the popular meal kit service to see if it lives up to the hype.

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HelloFresh is the most popular meal kit service in America, with more weekly subscribers than Blue Apron, Home Chef and Sunbasket combined. But does that mean its also the best meal kit service? HelloFresh offers a massive menu of weekly recipes, often as many as 60 to choose from, and competitive prices with plans that start at around $8 per serving — EveryPlate and Dinnerly are the only cheaper meal kit services — but all those stats dont mean much if the food isnt tasty.

If youre overwhelmed with all the choices of meal kits these days, thats natural. Weve been on a mission to test — and restest — all of them to suss out the very best cheap meal kits, best meal delivery for families, best plant-based meal kits, meals for health nuts and more. Meal kit cooking means shortcuts with ingredients sent alongside recipes ready to be spun into dinner, often in less than 30 minutes. Next on the block is HelloFresh, so I ordered up and cooked my way through two weeks of recipes from Americas favorite meal kit subscription.

Heres everything you need to know about HelloFresh and my honest review of the service from top to bottom. If you do decide to give HelloFresh a shot, this service has one of thebest meal kit deals, amounting to 16 free meals across your first four deliveries.

Before we dive in, heres how the service works. As HelloFresh is a meal-kit delivery service, youll be doing a good amount of the work here, but all the fresh ingredients you need to execute dinner will arrive in one box, preportioned and ready to cook. You wont have to do any shopping or measuring when you tackle a HelloFresh meal kit, but know you will have to do some light prep, chopping, mixing and cooking.

HelloFresh has a range of meal plans that vary depending on the type of food youre looking to cook, the number of people youre cooking for and how often you want meal kits delivered. Once you make those decisions youll choose one of six HelloFresh meal plans:

There is some crossover in meal kits each week from the various meal plans, but choosing one of these umbrella categories helps HelloFresh filter out the best recipes for you and your dinner goals. The more narrow the meal plan — such as pescatarian or veggie — the fewer options youll have each week. The plans are also priced the same no matter which meals you select, save for a few gourmet options that incur an upcharge.

After you select your meal plan, choose the number of servings (two or four) that youd like for each meal, and how many weekly meal kits you want to receive (two, three, four, five or six). These options are also easily modified, so dont feel too much pressure and know you can adjust as you go.

As with many similar services, you can pick your own meals or let the meal-kit gods surprise you when you open your box. HelloFresh meals arrive once a week on a day of your choosing (besides Sunday). When mine showed up, the food was packaged neatly in cooler boxes, with meats and fish separated from other ingredients so as not to cross-contaminate. The meat was thawed but still cold and there was no sign of spoilage among any of the ingredients.

Changing or canceling a HelloFresh order

You can add, change or cancel meals easily through the app or through the website, although using the latter feels more limited. Changes or cancellations to any order must be made before midnight PT at least five days before your scheduled delivery day. That date is made apparent when you open your dashboard.

How easy are these meal kits to prepare?

HelloFresh meal kits are mostly simple to make and thats by design. With lots of tossed pasta dishes, tacos and pan-seared meats with easy-to-prepare sides, the most technical skill youll need on a regular basis is some basic chopping, working a frying pan over the stovetop or boiling water. The most involved meal I made was meatloaf, which required a bit of chopping and mixing prep, but was effortless overall.

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How Much Does HelloFresh Cost?

FAQ

What is the cheap version of HelloFresh?

	Type	Price per serving
EveryPlate	meal kit	$4.99+
HelloFresh	meal kit	$8.99+
Daily Harvest	prepared meals	$6.79+
Dinnerly	meal kit	$4.99+

How much does Hello fresh cost?

Hello Fresh meals cost $8.99 to $12.49 per serving. Compare its cost with your typical meal expenses and look for discounts to help it fit your budget.

Is HelloFresh a good food delivery service?

Here’s everything you need to know about HelloFresh and my honest review of the service from top to bottom. If you do decide to give HelloFresh a shot, this service has one of the best meal kit deals, amounting to 16 free meals across your first four deliveries.

Is HelloFresh worth the cost?

Whether or not you’ll feel like HelloFresh is worth the cost will depend on what you’re using it for. In comparison to takeout meals, this service is significantly cheaper starting at $7.49 per meal—which is 72% cheaper than an average restaurant meal.

Is HelloFresh a good restaurant?

When it comes to online reviews, HelloFresh is kind of all over the place. While there are plenty of customers who had a similar experience to my own and gave four or five-star reviews praising things like meal variety, there were just as many people sitting firmly at the other end of star-rating system.