Cheapest Meal Kits 2026 — Price Per Portion

Meal kits are often marketed with headline prices like "from £3.52 per portion" — but that price almost never matches what you'll actually pay for the box you end up ordering. Your real cost depends on the per-portion price, delivery fee, and welcome discount combined, plus how many people are in your household. On this page, we cut through the marketing and figure out where you actually get the most food for your money in 2026. We only use documented figures straight from providers — see how we test.

Price isn't a side issue. Survey after survey shows that price is one of the top reasons subscribers eventually cancel their meal kit subscriptions, and the category's explosive early growth has levelled off in recent years as budgets tightened. At the same time, only a small share of subscribers say they signed up purely to save money over the supermarket — most are paying for time and convenience. Finding the cheapest kit, then, isn't really about beating the supermarket; it's about getting the most for the money you're going to spend anyway.

This page is for you if you want to stick to a budget but still skip the dinner-planning grind. We focus on the three kits that genuinely compete on price: Gousto, HelloFresh, and Grubby. Our overall top pick for cheap is Gousto — from £3.52/portion with a solid 3.6/5 Trustpilot score. HelloFresh has the deepest welcome discount, while Grubby is the cheapest way into a fully plant-based kit. Want to see the whole field? We've also crowned the best meal kit overall across price, quality, and nutrition.

Headline prices on landing pages rarely tell the whole story. Your real cost on a first box comes down to three parts: per-portion price + delivery − welcome discount. All three vary by provider, and delivery in particular can flip the ranking.

Take a concrete example: Gousto advertises from £3.52/portion with £3.99 flat delivery. Grubby starts a bit higher at £5.75/portion, and delivery is £4.99 — though it's waived entirely on your first box. On a small box with few portions, a delivery fee can make the "more expensive" kit cheaper in practice. We go deeper on this in our breakdown of meal kit shipping and delivery.

For perspective: across the six providers we track, the average price is around £5.50/portion, ranging from £3.52 to £13.49. Our three cheap picks all sit at or below that average — Gousto is well under it, Grubby is close to it, and HelloFresh's headline price sits right around it. Always run the numbers for the exact box you want — household size and number of recipes — rather than the headline price. And remember, the welcome discount only applies to your first few boxes. The real price from box four onward is the one you need to be comfortable with long-term. Want to dig into the savings maths itself? We have a full guide to saving money on meal kits.

The three kits hit different headline prices: Gousto from £3.52/portion, HelloFresh from £3.75, and Grubby from £5.75. On paper, Gousto is cheapest — and once you factor in delivery and welcome discounts, it stays that way for most orders.

Gousto is the strongest bet for genuinely cheapest, because its per-portion price undercuts the field by a wide margin, and it still holds a solid 3.6/5 on Trustpilot. Want the details? We have a full Gousto review.

HelloFresh wins on the single deepest welcome discount (up to 60% off your first box), which makes the very first order extremely cheap — see our HelloFresh review. Grubby is pricier to start, but it's the only one of the three that's 100% plant-based, and its free first delivery softens the difference, which you can read more about in our Grubby review. In short: Gousto on everyday value, HelloFresh on the intro period, Grubby if vegan matters as much as price.

Delivery is the most overlooked line item in the maths. Riverford is the only one of our six that delivers completely free, Mindful Chef charges £5.99 (free over £49), Grubby and HelloFresh both charge £4.99, and Gousto is the cheapest paid option at £3.99. Over a month of weekly deliveries, even a "small" delivery fee adds up to £16–£24 before you've bought a single ingredient.

How much delivery matters depends on the size of your box. Order a small box with few portions, and delivery eats up a relatively large share of the per-portion cost. Order a big family box, and that same delivery fee gets spread across more portions and matters a lot less.

That's why a low or waived delivery fee is worth the most to singles and couples ordering small boxes. If you're single, this logic matters enough that we've rounded up the options on our page for meal kits for 1 person. It's also part of why Mindful Chef's free-delivery threshold is worth checking before you order — a low per-portion price paired with waived delivery is hard to beat once your order clears £49.

Every provider lures new customers with steep welcome offers, and they're real money on your first few boxes. HelloFresh offers up to 60% off your first box, and Gousto runs a tiered 50%/40%/20% offer across your first three boxes. Grubby offers 25% off your first three boxes, and Riverford and Green Chef run their own intro offers, typically a flat discount or a percentage off on your first order. We keep the current offers updated on our voucher codes page.

Be honest with yourself: the discount is temporary. Once the intro period is used up, you're paying full price. For HelloFresh, that means the per-portion price rises back up to the standard £3.75–£8.25-plus-delivery range. That lines up with the broader market pattern: many subscribers try a kit on a discount and then scale back or cancel once full pricing kicks in.

We never invent voucher codes on this page — only documented offers from the providers themselves count. If you only want to ride the welcome discount, you can switch providers once an offer ends, but always check the cancellation window first. We have a guide to cancelling your meal kit without getting caught by an extra delivery, and an overview of how to avoid subscription traps.

If you want the most food for your money, it's almost always the larger boxes that win on price per portion. Fixed costs like delivery and packaging get spread across more meals, and providers often reward bigger orders with a lower per-portion price.

Gousto is available for 1–6 people, and the box gets noticeably cheaper per portion the bigger your household is — making it an obvious choice for larger budget-conscious families. See the full lineup on our pages for meal kits for families and for 3–4 people. HelloFresh covers 2–4 people, and Grubby scales similarly. All three scale reasonably well as your household grows.

If it's just you, the logic flips: the goal is avoiding food waste and paying as little delivery as possible. Look for kits with low or waived delivery and small portion sizes, so you're not paying for food you never get around to eating. Students and singles on a tight budget should check out our guide to meal kits for university students.

A low price is only a good deal if the food is actually worth eating. Here the kits diverge noticeably. Gousto scores 3.6/5 on Trustpilot, HelloFresh sits at 3.2/5, and Grubby leads the pack at 4.0/5. Grubby, in other words, delivers both a competitive price and one of the field's better satisfaction scores. Keep in mind that Trustpilot scores are snapshots that shift over time — we explain how to read them properly in meal kit reviews explained.

The takeaway is that "cheapest" and "best" don't have to be opposites. Gousto and Grubby both show you can get a low price and solid quality in the same box, without a real quality trade-off to weigh before you subscribe.

Let's be honest here: a meal kit is rarely cheaper than shopping for groceries yourself. That's also not really what people are paying for. Most subscribers choose a meal kit to save time on planning, shopping, and washing up, and to cut down on food waste — not to beat supermarket prices.

That changes what "cheap" means in this context. A cheap meal kit is the one that gives you the most value for money compared with other kits — not compared with doing everything yourself. If you want a direct comparison with the supermarket, we walk through the maths in meal kit vs. supermarket, and we tackle the whole value question in are meal kits worth it?

Want the full market picture — pricing, ownership, and trends in 2026? Read our breakdown of the UK meal kit market in 2026. Not sure which kit fits your situation? Our guide to choosing the right meal kit can help you decide.

None of the three cheap kits require a long-term commitment — you can cancel anytime. But cancellation and delivery timing are exactly the most common complaints in reviews. For both HelloFresh and Grubby, critical users mention it can be hard to find the cancel button, so locate it before you order.

Also watch pricing transparency. Grubby's total can vary a bit by recipe selection and add-ons, so always check your cart total before checking out. For HelloFresh, the real price after the welcome discount ends (up to £8.25/portion plus £4.99 delivery) is the number you need to be comfortable paying long-term.

Finally: missing or incorrect items show up in reviews across every provider. It's uncommon, but check your delivery on arrival and contact customer service quickly if something's missing — most providers refund without issue.