mf-avgcost-v5-20260926

Average Cost of Meal Delivery in 2026: What 20 Services Cost With Shipping

How this was measured: MealFan read every price on the brand’s own website on September 21 and 22, 2026, using everyday prices before intro discounts, and added the shipping each brand charges. On September 26 it re-read EveryPlate, Dinnerly and HelloFresh from their own plan builders, because the headline “from” prices of the first two apply only to their largest boxes. Meal kits are priced for 2 people and 3 dinners a week (8 services); prepared meals for 1 person and 10 meals a week (12 services). Where a brand quotes a range, the median uses the middle of that range. Tax is not included. The full dataset is in the MealFan Meal Delivery Price Index and free to download as a CSV file.

Key numbers

• Median meal kit: $13.57 a serving, shipping included (8 kits, 2 people, 3 dinners a week).
• Median prepared meal service: $13.00 a meal, shipping included (12 services, 10 meals a week).
• Cheapest meal kit: EveryPlate at $8.82 a serving with shipping for 2 people and 3 dinners. Its $5.99 headline price applies only to its largest box.
• October 20 offer and delivery check: The Cumin Club: 20% off the first box with WELCOME20; free shipping. Delivery: Free The Cumin Club official terms
October 20 price check: Blue Apron: Current meal-kit menu $7.49 to $14.99 per serving; individual prepared meals $8.99 to $14.99. $11.49 per delivery without Blue Apron+. Optional Blue Apron+ costs $9.99 per month and includes delivery; membership is not included in our nonmember totals..
• Typical weekly bill: $81.43 for a couple on a meal kit, $130.05 for one person on prepared meals (medians).
• Shipping runs from free to $22.95 and up a box; most brands charge $9.99 to $12.99.

Disclosure: some “See current price” buttons earn MealFan a commission if you order. That never changes a price, a median or the order of these tables, which are sorted by cost.

How much meal kits cost per serving

Priced for 2 people and 3 dinners a week, which is 6 servings. Sorted from cheapest to most expensive per serving. The median is $13.57, and a couple spends $52.93 to $107.43 a week depending on the brand.

October 20 price check: Blue Apron: Current meal-kit menu $7.49 to $14.99 per serving; individual prepared meals $8.99 to $14.99. $11.49 per delivery without Blue Apron+. Optional Blue Apron+ costs $9.99 per month and includes delivery; membership is not included in our nonmember totals.. Sunbasket: Meal kits from $11.49 per serving; prepared meals from $9.99. $10.99; minimum order $65.

How much prepared meals cost per meal

Priced for 1 person and 10 meals a week. The median is $13.00 a meal, and one person spends $69.90 to $169.85 a week depending on the brand.

October 20 price check: Daily Harvest: Oat bowls $6.79 to $7.79; smoothies $8.49, protein smoothies $9.49; harvest bowls $9.79; pasta $10.79 per single item. $9.99 flat-rate shipping. Eligible student/educator subscription orders of 12+ items have separate free-shipping terms.. Splendid Spoon: Smoothies $9.99, soups $12.49, grain/noodle bowls $13.49 per item. Official selector and FAQ show conflicting delivery terms; confirm the final charge at checkout.

Meal delivery compared with groceries, takeout and restaurants

Meal delivery sits in the middle. It costs about 3 times the USDA moderate grocery budget per meal, but it is cheaper than the delivered restaurant meals in these studies. A chain meal that costs $11.71 at the counter came to $21.00 through DoorDash, Grubhub or Uber Eats in LendingTree’s test, which is more than either median here.

USDA publishes a weekly cost per person that covers every meal and snack. MealFan divided it by 21 meals and applied USDA’s own adjustment for a two person household (add 10 percent), for a man and a woman aged 20 to 50. A single adult pays more per meal: $4.45 to $5.26 on the Moderate-Cost plan after USDA’s 20 percent single person adjustment. These plans assume every meal and snack is prepared at home, so they are a floor, not a typical grocery bill.

Why the gap with groceries and restaurants keeps moving

Restaurant prices are rising faster than grocery prices. In August 2026, food at home cost 2.2 percent more than a year earlier and 32.2 percent more than in January 2020; food away from home was up 3.4 percent in a year and 37.6 percent since January 2020 (BLS Consumer Price Index, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted). The average U.S. household spent $6,224 on food at home and $3,945 on food away from home in 2024 (BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey).

What changed since July 2026

Meal delivery prices moved in both directions. Every row compares MealFan’s July check with the September check on the brand’s own site.

October 20 price check: Magic Kitchen: Complete individual meal examples from $10.00; menu prices vary by dish and portion. Standard shipping starts at $22.95. Orders of $125 or more qualify for free shipping with code PROGRAM; first-order terms differ..

Costs that are easy to miss

October 20 price check: Magic Kitchen: Complete individual meal examples from $10.00; menu prices vary by dish and portion. Standard shipping starts at $22.95. Orders of $125 or more qualify for free shipping with code PROGRAM; first-order terms differ.. Clean Eatz Kitchen: Build-a-meal-plan menu variants $8.99 to $13.99 per meal, including XL options. Free shipping. Splendid Spoon: Smoothies $9.99, soups $12.49, grain/noodle bowls $13.49 per item. Official selector and FAQ show conflicting delivery terms; confirm the final charge at checkout.
• The intro price ends. Factor at 8 meals a week costs $388.14 for the first four weeks with its offer, then $515.64 every four weeks, 33 percent more. BistroMD at 20 meals a week goes from $763.21 to $959.00, 26 percent more.
• Headline prices are for the biggest box. EveryPlate and Dinnerly advertise $5.99 a serving. Their plan builders charge that only at 6 servings and 5 meals a week; a couple ordering 3 dinners pays $6.99 at EveryPlate and $9.99 at Dinnerly, before shipping.
• Smaller plans cost more per serving. HelloFresh charges $14.99 a serving for 2 people and 2 dinners and $11.99 for 4 people and 5 or 6 dinners. Dinnerly runs from $11.49 down to $5.99. Factor runs from $17.49 a meal at 4 meals a week to $12.99 at 14 or more.
October 20 price check: Trifecta: Verified seven-meal selection: $112 per week ($16.00 per meal). Continental US $12.99; Alaska/Hawaii $49.99. Sunbasket: Meal kits from $11.49 per serving; prepared meals from $9.99. $10.99; minimum order $65. Icon Meals: Signature-menu examples $12.20 to $19.20; meal-plan page advertises $12.00 per meal at 12 and $11.61 at 18. Confirm current delivery total at checkout. Eat Clean Bro: Current examples: Teriyaki Chicken Thigh $13.25, Lemon Chicken & Orzo $14.25, Maple Walnut Salmon $21.99, Chimichurri Steak $24.99. Shipping is charged by the carrier according to location; no single national fee is published. Four-meal minimum for shipping..
• Auto renewal. Subscriptions keep shipping until you skip or cancel before the weekly cutoff.

Cost per gram of protein

For people eating for protein, including GLP-1 users and athletes, the price per gram matters more than the price per plate. Protein is the median across every dish in MealFan’s meal catalog for each brand (9,045 meal pages, brands with at least 30 dishes carrying nutrition data; the 2026 Meal Delivery Data Study explains how dishes are collected). The price is the September 2026 cost per serving above, shipping included.

October 20 price check: Splendid Spoon: Smoothies $9.99, soups $12.49, grain/noodle bowls $13.49 per item. Official selector and FAQ show conflicting delivery terms; confirm the final charge at checkout.

What it costs to eat a certain way

A brand counts as fitting a way of eating when at least 40 percent of its cataloged dishes meet the rule and it has at least 30 dishes with nutrition data. The rules use the published nutrition numbers, so every brand is judged by the same test. The table shows the three cheapest fits, cost per serving with shipping as above.

Vegetarian and keto are not ranked. Brands label those diets so differently that a fair test is not possible from the labels: largely plant-based brands such as Daily Harvest and The Cumin Club carry no vegetarian label on any cataloged dish, and only Factor labels keto on more than 40 percent of its menu. Nutrition data is the brand’s own; dishes were cataloged mostly between May and September 2026, so a current menu can differ. This is not medical advice.

What a year of meal delivery costs

• A couple on a meal kit, 3 dinners a week: $81.43 a week at the median, about $4,234 a year. The range is $52.93 to $107.43 a week.
• One person on prepared meals, 10 a week: $130.05 a week at the median, about $6,763 a year. The range is $69.90 to $169.85 a week.

What a family of four pays

Four servings a dinner, read from each brand’s own plan builder on September 26, 2026, everyday prices before intro offers, shipping added. Bigger boxes bring the price per serving down, so a family pays less per plate than a couple, but a lot more per week.

Shipping for EveryPlate ($10.99) and HelloFresh ($12.99) is the Price Index figure, because their builders do not show it before signup; Dinnerly’s $11.99 was shown in its builder. HelloFresh was read at zip code 10001. Home Chef asks for an email before it shows plan prices, so it is not in the table; its homepage lists dinners from $7.99 a serving and a Family Plan minimum of $82.91 a week including shipping. For comparison, the USDA Moderate-Cost plan for a family of two adults and two children aged 6 to 11 is $321.00 a week for every meal and snack (July 2026).

Cost of meal delivery FAQ

Sources and method

• Meal delivery prices: read on each brand’s own website on September 21 and 22, 2026. Factor was read from its plan calculator at New York and Dallas zip codes, HelloFresh and Green Chef at New York zip code 10001, stopping before signup. Published in the MealFan Meal Delivery Price Index (CSV).
• Medians: each service counts once, a price range counts as its midpoint, meal kits and prepared meals are calculated separately. Everyday prices, intro offers excluded, tax excluded.
• Grocery benchmark: USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home, July 2026, issued August 2026.
• Delivery app and restaurant benchmarks: LendingTree, delivery vs pickup study, October 2025 (5 chains, 10 largest metros); Revenue Management Solutions, June 2026 (61,000 restaurants, 21 chains).
• Price trends and household spending: BLS Consumer Price Index, August 2026; BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2024.
• Plan-builder re-check, September 26, 2026: EveryPlate, Dinnerly and HelloFresh plan builders, everyday prices before signup, no account created; HelloFresh at zip 10001.
• Protein and diets: MealFan meal catalog, 9,045 meal pages with the brand’s own nutrition data; method in the 2026 Meal Delivery Data Study.

How to cite this page

Cite as: MealFan, “Average Cost of Meal Delivery in 2026,” prices checked September 21 and 22, 2026, with a link to https://mealfan.com/average-cost-of-meal-delivery-2026/. The tables and the Price Index CSV are free to reuse with credit.