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Blue Apron and Home Chef now sell meal kits in two different ways, and that matters more than their per-serving prices.
Blue Apron no longer requires a subscription. Its homepage repeats “no subscription needed” several times. You can place one order, pay $11.49 shipping, and never hear from it again. Home Chef is still a weekly subscription, and it sets a $50.95 minimum weekly order, shipping included.
So the question that decides it is simple: how many weeks a year will you actually order? Here’s the arithmetic for each answer.
What each one charges, read from their own sites
| Blue Apron | Home Chef | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription required | No | Yes (weekly, skippable) |
| Meal-kit price per serving | $7.99–$14.99 (most at $11.49) | “Starting at” $7.99, “average” $9.99 |
| Shipping | $11.49 per delivery | Flat fee, amount not published |
| Minimum order | $10 one-off, $25 on Subscribe & Save | $50.95 a week, shipping included |
| Recurring-order discount | 5% (Subscribe & Save, free) | None stated |
| Free-shipping membership | Blue Apron+, $9.99/month or $99.99/year | None |
| Weekly menu | “100+ meals” across all ranges | “Over 35 meals and 18 Extras” |
Blue Apron’s kit prices are from the 27 meal kits on the menu it displayed on 3 October 2026. Ten were $11.49 a serving, which is also the median, so we use it below. Its kits come in 2 or 4 servings.
Two of Home Chef’s own figures disagree with each other. Its homepage says standard meals “average” $9.99 a serving, and its help centre says they “start at” $9.99. The homepage also lists $82.91 as the Family Plan minimum, while the help centre says $90.81. We can’t tell you which is current. The $50.95 standard-plan minimum appears in both places, and that’s the one this article uses.
The four-plate box: $57.45 vs $50.95
Take the smallest box most couples order: two dinners for two, which is four servings.
Blue Apron, one-off order:
4 × $11.49 = $45.96 food + $11.49 shipping = $57.45, or $14.36 a plate.
Home Chef, standard plan:
The minimum is $50.95 including shipping. Four servings at the $7.99 “starting at” price come to $31.96, which is under that minimum, so the smallest box you can actually check out costs at least $50.95, or $12.74 a plate. We couldn’t confirm that four servings at Home Chef’s real menu prices plus its unpublished shipping fee lands exactly on $50.95. Treat it as the lowest you could pay, not a quote.
On a one-off order, then, Home Chef is about $6.50 a box cheaper. But Home Chef doesn’t do one-off orders. That’s where the comparison turns.
If you order every week, Blue Apron’s two discounts change the result
Blue Apron has two ways to cut its price, and they target different costs.
Subscribe & Save is free to join. Blue Apron says it “saves you 5% on every item you order”, which means food, not shipping. On a four-serving box, that takes $45.96 down to $43.66.
Blue Apron+ removes the $11.49 shipping fee. It costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Annual billing works out to $1.92 a week if you order every week.
Blue Apron’s pages don’t say the two can’t be combined, so we’ve assumed they stack. Then a weekly four-serving box costs:
$43.66 food + $1.92 membership share = $45.58 a week, or $11.40 a plate.
That’s below Home Chef’s $50.95 floor. Over a year:
| 4 servings, every week for 52 weeks | Per plate | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Blue Apron, one-off orders, paying shipping each time | $14.36 | $2,987 |
| Home Chef, at its minimum | $12.74 | $2,649 |
| Blue Apron, Subscribe & Save + annual Blue Apron+ | $11.40 | $2,370 |
Built this way, Blue Apron comes out about $279 a year cheaper than Home Chef’s minimum. The comparison isn’t perfect, because Home Chef’s menu has kits priced from $7.99. A household that fills a bigger Home Chef box with its cheapest kits can beat $11.40 a plate. Home Chef doesn’t publish its shipping fee, though, so we can’t say by how much.
The other caveat is real too. You only get $11.40 if you pick $11.49 kits. Blue Apron’s menu runs up to $14.99 a serving, and every $1 of difference adds about $198 a year to a weekly four-serving order once you take off the 5% discount. The cheaper end of its menu is a handful of $7.99–$9.49 kits, mostly vegetable-led ones such as enchiladas, tostadas and falafel.
When Blue Apron+ pays for itself
Blue Apron’s own pitch is that Blue Apron+ “pays for itself in just one order”. On the monthly plan, that’s true: $9.99 is less than one $11.49 shipping charge. But only if you order at least once in every month you’re paying for it. Forget one month and you’ve paid $9.99 for nothing.
The annual plan works differently. $99.99 ÷ $11.49 = 8.7. You need nine or more deliveries a year before the annual plan beats paying shipping each time:
- Order monthly (12 boxes): $137.88 in shipping vs $99.99. The annual plan saves $37.89.
- Order every other week (26 boxes): $298.74 vs $99.99. It saves $198.75.
- Order six times a year: $68.94 vs $99.99. The plan costs you $31.05.
One small inconsistency: Blue Apron’s membership page shows the annual plan at $99.99, but the FAQ on the same page says you’ll “pay $99 upfront”. It’s $0.99 either way, but check the figure at checkout.
Home Chef’s intro offer narrows the first year
Home Chef offers new customers 30% off their first three boxes (capped at $30 a box), then 45% off the next two (capped at $45). Blue Apron’s homepage showed no comparable new-customer offer when we checked. We worked out what Home Chef’s discount is worth across a full year in our meal-kit intro offers breakdown. The short version is that it covers five weeks out of fifty-two. It shouldn’t decide a subscription you plan to keep, and it’s a good reason to put a reminder in your calendar for week five.
What else separates them
Commitment. This is the biggest practical difference. Blue Apron lets you order when you feel like it. Home Chef sends a box every week unless you skip that week before its deadline. If you’ve ever paid for a meal kit you forgot to skip, that difference is worth money. Our guide to cancelling forgotten subscriptions exists because of charges like that.
Menu breadth. Blue Apron’s “100+ meals” includes ready-made meals, family bundles and extra proteins, not just kits. On the menu it displayed this week, 27 of those were classic meal kits. Home Chef lists “over 35 meals”. The kit menus are closer in size than the headlines suggest.
Vegetarians. Neither is built for you. When we counted Home Chef’s menu for our vegetarian meal kit comparison, it had three vegetarian dinners out of thirty-seven. Blue Apron’s kit menu this week had several vegetable-based kits at $9.49, some with an optional added protein, but we haven’t tracked it over time.
The verdict
Choose Blue Apron if you’ll order at least nine times a year and are willing to set up Subscribe & Save and annual Blue Apron+. At $11.49 kits, that’s about $11.40 a plate, the lowest figure on this page. Choose it too if you only want a meal kit now and then. A one-off order with no subscription to cancel is worth something on its own.
Choose Home Chef if its menu suits you better and you’ll order every week anyway. Its kits start at $7.99 a serving. A bigger box filled with its lower-priced kits can beat Blue Apron. We can’t say by exactly how much until Home Chef publishes its shipping fee.
Don’t buy Blue Apron+ if you’ll order fewer than nine boxes a year. At six orders it costs you $31 more than paying shipping.
Skip both if you’re trying to spend less on food. The cheapest arrangement on this page still costs $2,370 a year for four dinners a week. Budget kits advertise $5.99 a serving, and we work out what they actually cost per plate. Cooking from a grocery list is cheaper again. Skip both if you’re cooking for one, too. Home Chef’s $50.95 minimum commits one person to four or more servings every week they don’t skip.
Our older HelloFresh vs Blue Apron comparison uses Blue Apron figures from August 2026. Blue Apron’s shipping is now $11.49, so where the two pages disagree, use the numbers here.
Verified 3 October 2026. Blue Apron’s meal-kit prices, $11.49 shipping, $10 and $25 minimums, 5% Subscribe & Save discount, Blue Apron+ pricing ($9.99/month, $99.99/year, with “$99” in its FAQ), and 2- and 4-serving sizes were read from blueapron.com and Blue Apron’s help centre that day. Home Chef’s $7.99 and $9.99 per-serving figures, $50.95 standard minimum, conflicting $82.91 and $90.81 Family Plan minimums, intro-offer terms and menu size come from homechef.com and support.homechef.com. Home Chef does not publish its shipping fee, and we have not stated one. Whether Subscribe & Save and Blue Apron+ stack is our assumption; Blue Apron’s pages don’t say. We analyse published pricing and terms; we don’t test meal kits.