Are These Affordable Meal Delivery Services Worth The Hype? Here's How To Choose

The decisions you make at mealtime set the tone for your mood, your energy levels, and (of course) how satiated you are1. Meal delivery services help even the busiest people stay more mindful about their eating habits. When it comes to Blue Apron vs Home Chef, both have quick, healthy, customizable options. 

At mindbodygreen, enjoying healthy food is an art form; finding the best healthy recipes and selecting the perfect produce at the farmer’s market is well worth the effort. But for the weeks when there’s simply no time to shop, meal kit delivery services are our savior. 

Blue Apron and Home Chef are two of the most popular meal kit delivery services out there—but is one better than the other?

Blue Apron vs. Home Chef: Quick facts

Blue Apron

Cost per meal:

From $8 per serving

Delivery fee:

Free shipping on the first order, then $10

Dietary considerations:

VegetarianLow-carb

Organic ingredients:

Some produce

Who should try it?

As one of the most affordable meal delivery services, Blue Apron is a good choice for those who want to eat healthy on a budget. With menus available well in advance, it’s great for anyone who likes to plan weeks ahead of time and who want a wide variety of cuisines and menu options to choose from. If you’re passionate about sustainable eating, you’ll likely be impressed by Blue Apron’s efforts in that arena as well.

Who should skip it?

One qualm with Blue Apron is that the menu does not cater very well to people with special dietary needs such as gluten-free, vegan, or dairy paleo. Since the plans max out at four servings per recipe, it isn’t the best choice for larger households. Additionally, while some produce is organic, Blue Apron is not a fully organic meal delivery service.

Home Chef

Cost per meal:

From $10 per serving

Dietary considerations:

VegetarianCarb-consciousCalorie-conscious

Organic ingredients:

Not guaranteed

Who should try it?

Home Chef has a ton of customization options for its recipes, and is a great option for large families looking for quick, easy recipes.

Who should skip it?

While you can customize your meals, there are not a ton of options for specific dietary needs. Home Chef is also not the most sustainable meal delivery service and does not have very adventurous recipes.

Pros

Cons

Pros

Cons

Blue Apron menu categories:

Next, you’ll select the number of meals you’d like to receive per week (two to five) and how many servings you'd like (two to four). If you’re feeding more than four, Blue Apron might not be the best option.

To conclude the sign-up process, you’ll enter your contact information and select your meals. We love that you can browse Blue Apron's menu before submitting your payment, to see if any of the 70+ weekly menu items stand out.

Blue Apron might not be the best choice for those on special diets like gluten-free, Whole30, or keto because you won’t be able to filter recipes by dietary need. If you’re plant-based, however, they can cater to you with their ‘veggies’ plan.

Blue Apron sample menu:

Home Chef’s platform is similar to Blue Apron’s, but it starts with a fun, short quiz for new customers. The quiz helps identify which recipes you'll be recommended each week.

You’ll answer questions about your feelings towards cooking (i.e. “it’s a fun stress reliever” or “does a bowl of cereal count?”), ideal weeknight dinner, and preferred global cuisines.

You can also use this time to identify your priorities when it comes to cooking, such as fitting your meals into a specific time frame or staying on track with wellness goals.

Home Chef menu categories:

Meals will automatically be selected for you once you've subscribed, but you can make changes by clicking the “edit meals” button. Remove the recipes you want to swap by clicking under each recipe image.

Home Chef also has a drop-down button on most recipes, where you can customize the meal by choosing a different protein such as filet mignon (for an additional charge), or ordering larger serving sizes.

We also love that Home Chef's menu is available four weeks in advance. You can filter by calorie conscious, less than 30 minutes, carb conscious, and vegetarian.

Home Chef sample menu:

Which meal kit delivery service is the cheapest? Home Chef and Blue Apron are pretty similar for average-size plans of offer three meals for two servings.

Blue Apron’s shipping is free on the first order, and around $10 per box after that. On the other hand, Home Chef charges $10.99 for each box.

You can order more food per box from Home Chef. Yet, no matter how much you buy, Home Chef's price per serving stays the same.

Both companies offer huge discounts for new customers, but Blue Apron definitely steals the show with its offer of your first box for about $15. Home Chef’s offer is still worth taking advantage of, but the lowest offer is about $45 for your first box.

Here’s a quick comparison of the costs:

Blue Apron

Home Chef

We’re naming Home Chef the winner of this category purely because you can select from a small list of allergens (pork, poultry, beef, fish, shellfish, mushrooms, tree nuts, and sesame) upon set-up. But truthfully, neither company offers much in the way of dietary considerations.

You can make protein upgrades or swaps on almost every dish with Home Chef, such as upgrading to antibiotic-free meats or swapping out fish for filet, or ground beef for ground turkey or Impossible meat. Blue Apron offers a similar level of customization for some meals, but not all.

Blue Apron recipes can be filtered by beef-, pork-, and fish-free.

Blue Apron offers 70+ new recipes per week while Home Chef offers up to 30 weekly choices. But it’s worth noting that neither Blue Apron or Home Chef are the best meal kit delivery service if you’re following a special diet like gluten-free, keto, or paleo. If that’s you, you should check out our roundups of the best paleo, the best Whole30, and the best gluten-free meal kit delivery services.

The only diet Blue Apron and Home Chef seems to accommodate is vegetarian, which you can set in your preferences at sign-up. While both brands do clearly mark any meals containing the top eight major allergens (wheat, milk, soy, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, and shellfish), each warns that cross-contamination is possible.

Choosing the winner of this category was a tough decision. Home Chef's larger selection of protein options, serving sizes, prep levels, and add-ons offers more customization for dietary needs than Blue Apron.

We scoured the internet for reviews and found that Blue Apron recipes are more flavorful and out-of-the-box than Home Chef. Reviewers say Blue Apron recipes stand out and tend to become new staples in recipe rotations, while Home Chef recipes often needed outside seasoning or fell short of expectations.

Of course, this difference in flavor profile could be because Blue Apron's meal kit recipes are a bit more complex and labor-intensive than Home Chef's. While you’ll still only need basic tools for both services, it seems Blue Apron requires a bit more effort overall.

If you’re an adventurous eater or a self-proclaimed foodie, you might prefer Blue Apron’s meal options more than Home Chef’s standard kits. But, if you’re feeding a large family and don’t want to use a meal kit service to expand your palette or venture out, Home Chef could be the better option.

Home Chef also has a Culinary Collection, which is perfect for adventurous foodies, challenging cooking techniques, and higher quality cuts of meat and ingredients.

Blue Apron is 100% carbon neutral and the company is making strides when it comes to sustainability, environmental impact, and animal welfare. It’s one of the most sustainable meal kit services, with 50% of its packaging being fully recyclable. Home Chef’s boxes, on the other hand, have only 19% recyclable materials.

Blue Apron says it only sources from farms that have high-quality animal welfare standards. Home Chef also assures that it only sources meat and poultry that has been inspected by USDA FSIS, among other high requirements.