None of the meal kits on this page pays us anything. They aren’t sold through Amazon and we haven’t joined any of their affiliate programmes, so every link here goes to the company’s own site and earns us nothing. See our methodology.
Per plate, a family box is the cheapest way to buy a meal kit. Per week, it is a big grocery bill.
Three dinners a week for a family of four costs $95.87 a box at EveryPlate, or $4,985 a year. The same order at Dinnerly costs $119.87, or $6,233 a year. Both companies advertise $5.99 a serving on their homepages. Neither charges that for a family of four.
So the question that decides it is: how many people, and how many dinners a week? Box size changes the per-serving price at three of the four services below.
What a family-size box costs, read from each company’s own site
We read EveryPlate’s and Dinnerly’s prices from their sign-up plan pickers on 19 October 2026, choosing 4 people and stepping through each number of dinners. Those pickers show the box price and shipping before you enter an address. Neither showed an intro discount, because we didn’t enter an email address.
| 4 people, 3 dinners a week | Box | Shipping | Total | Per plate | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EveryPlate | $83.88 | $11.99 | $95.87 | $7.99 | $4,985 |
| Dinnerly | $107.88 | $11.99 | $119.87 | $9.99 | $6,233 |
| Blue Apron Family Style (3 bundles) | $116.97 | $11.49 | $128.46 | $10.71 | $6,680 |
| Home Chef Family Plan | from $83.88 | not published | — | from $6.99 + shipping | — |
| HelloFresh | not published without a zip code |
The per-year column assumes all 52 weeks. Most families skip some, so multiply by the weeks you’d really order.
The headline price is the 30-serving price
Both budget services say “$5.99” on their homepages. Their plan pickers show where that price actually applies.
EveryPlate charges $6.99 a serving on every box we priced except the biggest one: 6 people, 5 dinners, 30 servings. That box is $5.99. EveryPlate’s own homepage FAQ still says plans “start at just $5.99 per serving” with “a flat $10.99” shipping. Its plan picker charged $11.99 shipping on every box. We’ve used the plan picker’s figures, because that’s the page that leads to checkout.
Dinnerly prices on a sliding scale, and a family of four sits in the middle of it:
| Dinnerly, 4 people | Per serving | Box + $11.99 shipping | Per plate | Per year (52 weeks) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 dinners | $9.99 | $91.91 | $11.49 | $4,779 |
| 3 dinners | $8.99 | $119.87 | $9.99 | $6,233 |
| 4 dinners | $8.89 | $154.23 | $9.64 | $8,020 |
| 5 dinners | $8.69 | $185.79 | $9.29 | $9,661 |
| 6 dinners | $7.99 | $203.75 | $8.49 | $10,595 |
Dinnerly’s $5.99 appears only at 6 people and 5 or 6 dinners a week.
For a family of four, EveryPlate costs $1,248 a year less than Dinnerly at three dinners a week: ($119.87 − $95.87) × 52. That gap is the main finding of this page. Our older budget meal kit comparison quotes both companies’ homepage figures of $5.99 a serving and EveryPlate’s $10.99 shipping. Where the two pages disagree, use the plan-picker numbers here.
At six people the two match exactly. For 6 people, Dinnerly’s plan picker gave the same box price and shipping as EveryPlate’s at 3, 4 and 5 dinners a week: $137.81, $179.75 and $191.69. Then the price stops being the deciding factor. Dinnerly says it offers “100+ recipes” each week.
Check your own number
The calculation is the same for any service and any box:
(box price + shipping) ÷ (people × dinners) = cost per plate.
Weekly total × weeks you’ll really order = cost per year.
For EveryPlate at 4 people and 4 dinners: ($111.84 + $11.99) ÷ 16 = $7.74 a plate. Ordered 40 weeks a year, that’s $123.83 × 40 = $4,953.
Shipping is a flat fee per box at EveryPlate, Dinnerly and Blue Apron, which is why a family box beats a couple’s box per plate. EveryPlate’s 2-person, 3-dinner box is $53.93 for six plates, which is $8.99 a plate. Double the people and it drops to $7.99. Adding dinners lowers it further, to $7.59 at five a week.
Home Chef’s Family Plan: the lowest starting price, but no total
Home Chef runs a separate Family Plan menu. Its menu page says meals start at $6.99 a serving, against $7.99 on its standard menu. Every Family Plan meal comes in multiples of four servings, and Home Chef says the menu has at least 10 meals a week.
Two things stop us giving you a total:
- Home Chef doesn’t publish its shipping fee. It says only that the minimum weekly order is $82.91 for the Family Plan, shipping included. That figure is from its homepage FAQ today. When we checked on 3 October, its help centre gave $90.81 instead. We couldn’t re-read the help centre today, so we can’t tell you which is current.
- “Starting at” isn’t an average. The family menu page didn’t show prices for individual meals, so we don’t know how many cost $6.99.
What we can say: three Family Plan dinners for four at the starting price come to $83.88 before shipping, already above the minimum. If Home Chef’s shipping is close to the $11–12 the others charge, its cheapest family box would cost about the same as EveryPlate’s. That’s an estimate, not a quote. Our Blue Apron vs Home Chef comparison covers its standard plan in more detail.
Blue Apron Family Style: no subscription, higher price
Blue Apron sells a Family Style Bundle for 4 at $38.99. Blue Apron describes it as two mains and two sides that you choose, making one meal that serves four. That’s $9.75 a plate before shipping, which is $11.49 per delivery.
Blue Apron doesn’t require a subscription, so you can order one bundle the week relatives visit and nothing after. Three bundles a week plus shipping is $10.71 a plate, the highest figure in the main table.
Blue Apron has two discounts for regular orders. Subscribe & Save takes 5% off each order. Blue Apron+ removes shipping for $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Its FAQ says “$99 upfront”, so check the price at checkout. Blue Apron’s pages don’t say whether the two discounts can be combined, so we’ve assumed they can. With both, three bundles a week costs $9.42 a plate, or about $5,878 a year. That’s still $893 more than EveryPlate.
Annual Blue Apron+ only pays off from nine deliveries a year: $99.99 ÷ $11.49 = 8.7. Below that, pay the shipping.
HelloFresh: not priced here
HelloFresh only shows plan prices after you enter a zip code. We don’t publish prices we couldn’t read on a company’s public pages, so it isn’t in the table. If you’re considering it, run its box through the formula above.
The first box is not the price
Every service here leads with a new-customer offer. EveryPlate’s “$2.99/meal” is based on a 2-person, 3-recipe box, not a family one. Dinnerly advertises “up to $180 off your first 5 boxes”. Home Chef’s 30%-then-45% offer covers five boxes and applies to Family Plan orders too. Each covers a few weeks of a 52-week year; we worked through what happens when meal-kit intro offers end. Judge the full price, and set a reminder for the week the discount ends.
The verdict
Choose EveryPlate if you’re feeding four on a budget and will order most weeks. At $7.99 a plate for three dinners, it’s the cheapest family box we could fully price at source, and about $1,248 a year cheaper than Dinnerly for the same order.
Look at Home Chef’s Family Plan if you want a bigger, more varied family menu and don’t mind seeing the shipping fee only at checkout. Its $6.99 starting price is the lowest here, but the total may not be.
Choose Blue Apron Family Style if you only want a family meal kit now and then. Paying more per plate is reasonable when there’s no subscription to forget.
Don’t choose Dinnerly for a family of four. For four people it costs more than EveryPlate at three, four and five dinners a week, the box sizes both offer. At six people the prices match, and its larger menu may decide it.
Skip family meal kits entirely if you’re trying to cut your food bill. Three kit dinners a week at the cheapest price on this page still cost $4,985 a year, and that covers only three dinners. Kits replace planning and shopping, not spending. If planning meals doesn’t bother you, you’d be paying for a problem you don’t have. If you’ve signed up and changed your mind, here’s how to cancel a meal kit subscription before the next box ships.
Verified 19 October 2026. EveryPlate’s box prices ($6.99 a serving, $5.99 at 30 servings) and $11.99 shipping were read from its plan picker at everyplate.com/plans. Its homepage FAQ says $5.99 and $10.99 on the same day. Dinnerly’s sliding per-serving prices and $11.99 shipping were read from dinnerly.com/select-plan. Home Chef’s $6.99 Family Plan and $7.99 standard starting prices are from its menu pages. Its $82.91 Family Plan minimum is from its homepage FAQ, and its shipping fee is not published. Blue Apron’s $38.99 Family Style Bundle for 4, $11.49 shipping, 5% Subscribe & Save and Blue Apron+ pricing are from blueapron.com. Whether Blue Apron’s two discounts stack is our assumption. HelloFresh prices require a zip code and are not stated. Annual figures assume 52 weekly orders. We analyse published pricing and terms; we don’t test meal kits.