Best Vegan Meal Delivery Service for 2024
We tested 15 vegan meal subscriptions to find the best for your plant-powered life.
Our Picks
What's the best vegan meal delivery service?
If you're eating vegan in 2024, or want to find out how cutting meat and dairy from your diet will affect your energy levels and overall health, vegan meal delivery services make it easy. There are dozens of options for having meatless meal kits and prepared meals sent to your door.
Of the 15 we've tried, Mosaic Foods is the overall best vegan meal delivery in 2024. Mosaic offers 22 vegan options per week with family-style meals starting at $6 per serving. All of the recipes we tasted were either good or great -- no duds -- making Mosaic an easy pick for the top spot.
If you prefer to do the cooking yourself, Purple Carrot is our pick for the best vegan meal kit service in 2024. But there are others still, including vegan meal delivery for picky eaters, families and flexitarians, that might be an even better fit for your plant-powered life.
Best vegan meal delivery services of 2024
I tried about nine of Mosaic's plant-based prepared meals and there wasn't a true miss in the bunch. Not only is Mosaic Foods my favorite vegan meal delivery, but it's also one of the cheapest vegan meal subscriptions available, with plans starting at $6 a serving. That makes it an easy pick for this top spot on the list.
Mosaic uses global flavors and creative meat substitutes such as jackfruit, tofu, and vegan sausages to create satisfying meals (even for this omnivore) that are all tasty and fresh. While everything I had from Mosaic was at least good, some standouts included the bean and vegan jackfruit chili, jerk lentil and plantain bowl, and tangy Thai noodles.
Best vegan meal kits
Purple Carrot
Purple Carrot is the first and, to my knowledge, the only 100% vegan meal kit service, and it takes its recipes seriously, too. Purple Carrot's underlying vegan philosophy is not to imitate other foods using plant-based alternatives, but to create tasty and nourishing vegan dinners the old-fashioned way, using fresh vegetables, grains, legumes and other whole foods.
Out of all the vegan meal kits I've tried, Purple Carrot's provided me with the best practice cooking vegan cuisine and its ingredient mainstays like lentils and grains. Purple Carrot also introduced me to some really interesting sauces and condiments that are great for a vegan diet, like cashew cream and other nut-based "dairy" products. You will find lots of lentils, mushrooms, ancient grains and nutritious produce. I cooked my way through a week's worth of Purple Carrot meal kits, which you can read about here.
Best vegan meal delivery for families
HelloFresh
Pound for pound, HelloFresh has the most vegan meals that will appeal to larger groups. Because HelloFresh's menu isn't fully vegan, you'll find plenty of plant-based "cheat meals" like cheesy bean enchiladas, hot honey brussels sprouts and ricotta flatbread, and pasta dishes galore. HelloFresh also has a ton of crave-worthy meal kits that have meat, so if you still want the occasional shrimp scampi or coconut chicken curry, this is a great choice.
I tried out HelloFresh and found it to be one of the most affordable, flexible and consistent meal kit services on the market. HelloFresh's vegan meal kits were also some of the easiest to prepare, with many taking less than 25 minutes from start to finish.
Splendid Spoon has some interesting recipes. Some worked better than others.
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Splendid Spoon
Splendid Spoon is the best meal delivery for healthy, ready-to-go breakfasts and lunches. This healthy, 100% vegan and gluten-free service uses whole ingredients and superfoods in its premade meals and snacks, including smoothies, soups, noodles, flatbreads and bowls.
The weekly menu includes bold flavors such as cauliflower tikka and Mexican tomato, while smoothies come in tasty combos like almond butter and jelly, blueberry açai and green matcha with spirulina, ginger and turmeric. Soups and smoothies are loosely categorized by their overall intended effect, such as "heal," "energize" and "refresh." Splendid Spoon also offers a full-day soup cleanse add-on to reset your system. Read more in my full Splendid Spoon review here.
Best vegan meals on a budget
Daily Harvest
Daily Harvest offers an enormous menu of frozen and ready-to-blend vegan smoothies, flatbreads, snacks, premade soups, hearty grain bowls and beverages to keep stocked in the freezer. You can order a one-time box to try them or keep these healthy vegan meals coming monthly with a subscription.
Some of the bowls and soups could pass as dinner, but I like this vegetarian meal delivery service best for a quick vegan lunch or breakfast. Depending on the specific meal, you either drop it into a saucepan or skillet to heat and eat, or add nut milk and blend it up. Daily Harvest uses lots of ancient grains, oats, nut milk and trendy superfoods like chia, avocado and kabocha squash in its recipes.
While some Daily Harvest meals are on the expensive side, the healthy service just launched a line of excellent family-style pasta and rice dishes that clock in at a more than reasonable $5 per serving. Stick to those and you'll be able to eat vegan without breaking your budget. Read my full review of Daily Harvest here.
Best vegan meal delivery for picky eaters
Veestro
Veestro is a fully prepared vegan meal delivery service and not a meal kit, so all you've got to do is heat and eat. I tried it and found the 100% plant-based food to be consistently fresh and tasty. Veestro has a massive menu of around more than 50 ready-to-eat, meatless meals to choose from each week.
Veestro's vegan meals arrive fresh in shipments of 10, 20 or 30, so you can pop them into the fridge or freeze them for the days and weeks ahead. Having a few Veestro meals on hand is a good way to hold yourself to any plant-based nutrition goals since you're far more likely to eat healthy vegan food you have on hand than go out of your way to track it down in the throes of hunger.
Best prepared meal delivery for flexitarians
Fresh N Lean
If it's a fully prepared meal delivery service you're looking for, Fresh N Lean is one of the best. Every meal I tried from the service was good, and many of them were great, including its plant-based offerings. With Fresh N Lean, you don't have to go fully vegan unless you want to but the nonmeat meal kits were just as good as any other, with fresh ingredients, creamy tofu and no mushy vegetables (a major problem I've encountered with prepared meals).
Fresh N Lean has as many as 12 vegan meals to choose from each week with plant-based meal options like cauliflower and squash with tofu, mushroom rice with lentils and teriyaki bowls with Beyond Beef crumbles. There are even some breakfast meals to tack on to your order, including pineapple coconut chia and banana oatmeal. There is even a low-carb vegan meal plan if you're going keto and plant-based.
Best meal kits for flexitarians
Sunbasket
Sunbasket is my meal kit pick if you're looking for some vegan meal kits but not all vegan meal kits. Sunbasket has three or four plant-based options per week, which is significantly fewer than Purple Carrot or HelloFresh. That said, Sunbasket's meal kits, plant-based options included, are of higher quality than many of the others I tried.
If you're looking to incorporate vegan cooking into your diet, but aren't ready to give up cheese, chicken and fish altogether, give Sunbasket a try. Read my full Sunbasket review here.
Other vegan meal delivery services we tried
- Sakara Life: While all the food we tried from this trendy, organic, 100% plant-based meal delivery was great (and Instagram-ready) it's just too expensive.
- Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon: This service is comparable to Sunbasket on offerings and cost. It's a solid pick for those seeking plant-based meal kits with options for meat, too.
- CookUnity: This is another great prepared meal service, but it's on the expensive side and isn't quite worth the money if you're choosing mostly plant-based meals.
- Territory Foods: This healthy meal service only has a few plant-based offerings on its menu, and they cost between $15 and $17.
- BistroMD: These meals are intended to promote weight loss. The meals with meat are good, but the plant-based recipes are bland and boring.
- Home Chef: This meal kit service is good for families and has many plant-based meals. That said, there's too much plastic packaging, and many of the recipes we tried weren't very exciting.
- RootBerry:This meal service is solid, but its limited weekly options were not good enough to land on our list of best vegan meal services.
How we test vegan meal delivery services
To test each meal delivery service, I tried at least five and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service. I tried to choose a range of meals from the various menu and meal plan offerings. For instance, I always mixed up the meal types to include pasta, rice bowls, soups, salads or any other options offered by the brand. I made sure to test a variety of cuisines -- Italian, Indian, Thai, Mexican -- if they were offered.
I took note of each meal delivery service's website, including what information was provided (ingredients, nutritional info), how clearly the menu was organized and how simple it was to pick a meal plan and order meals. When they arrived, I noted how well they were packaged and checked whether each meal was still chilled or frozen.
To reheat each prepared meal, I took a twofold approach. For some meals, I meticulously followed the heating instructions on the label. But since these are merely suggestions, I reheated other meals the way I would if left to my own devices. Often, that meant warming them gently in a nonstick skillet or reheating them in my air fryer.
Testing meal kits requires cooking, of course, and thus different practices and procedures for evaluation. Here's more on how we test meal kits at CNET.
Vegan meal delivery services compared
Service | Plant-based options per week | Subscription only | Price per serving (entree) | Shipping | CNET rating (out of 10) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mosaic Foods (prepared) | 50+ | Yes | $10 | $8 | 9.2 |
Purple Carrot | 8 | Yes | $12 | Free | 8.6 |
Fresh N Lean (prepared) | 12 | Yes | $9-$13 | Free | 9.2 |
Splendid Spoon (prepared) | 48 | Yes | $12 | Free | 7.8 |
HelloFresh | 6 | Yes | $9 | $9 | 8 |
Sunbasket | 4 | Yes | $14 | $8 | 9 |
Sakara Life (prepared) | 15 | No | N/A | Free | 7.6 |
Green Chef | 9 | Yes | $13 | $10 | 7.6 |
Daily Harvest (prepared) | 50+ | No | $9 | Free | 8.8 |
Veestro (prepared) | 50+ | No | $14 | Free for subscribers | N/A |
Factors to consider when choosing a vegan meal delivery service
Vegan meal kits vs. prepared meals: Which should you choose?
The first choice you'll have to make is between meal kits and meal delivery. Vegan meal kits still save time and effort over starting a recipe from scratch, but they require some cooking. If you're looking to hone your plant-based cooking skills or learn new vegan or vegetarian recipes, a meal kit service is the way to go.
Prepared meals are the other option, and it just doesn't get any easier. These services send freshly cooked individual meals that are packaged in cooler boxes to you to eat or freeze for later. There's generally no cooking involved, so you'll get all the benefits of a plant-based diet without having to do the work.
Purple Carrot is one of the only fully plant-based meal kit services.
Types of meals: 100% plant-based or a mix of meat and meatless
Some meal delivery services such as Purple Carrot and Mosaic Foods specialize in only plant-based foods. Most other services have vegan options mixed in with the weekly menus containing recipes with meat. Decide whether you want to go full force with your plant-based diet or give yourself the choice of a chicken or salmon dish every once in a while.
Cost and pricing
Most vegan meal delivery services range from around $9 to $13 per serving. If you want the most bang for your buck, choosing a budget-friendly meal kit such as EveryPlate or Blue Apron and selecting plant-based recipes will be your best bet. Mosaic Foods also has family-size meals that cost just $6 per serving, making it the most affordable vegan prepared-meal subscription we've tried.
Number of meals and servings
Most meal services have a minimum number of meals you must order per week, but some are higher than others. For meal kits, you'll want to order only the number of servings you know you'll cook and eat in a week since most of the ingredients can't be frozen. Prepared meals offer more flexibility since you can typically freeze them to thaw and eat later.