Best Vegan Meal Delivery Services for 2024
Looking for quick and easy vegan meal options? Check out the best vegan meal delivery subscriptions, tested and reviewed by CNET.
Our Picks
Best plant-based meal delivery overall
Best vegan meal kits
Best vegetarian meal delivery for families
Best for vegan smoothies and soups
Best plant-based prepared meals on a budget
Best vegetarian plant-based meal kits on a budget
Best vegan meal delivery for picky eaters
Best meal kits for flexitarians
Best for salads and fresh meals
What's the best vegan meal delivery service?
Mosaic Foods has the best plant-based prepared meals of any we tried.
Meal kits and delivery services are a great way to simplify your meal routines, explore new flavors and save a few trips to the grocery store. While more and more people are adopting vegan or plant-based diets, it can still be tricky to find vegan options at the store or from delivery services. Getting a vegan meal kit may help you try out some new vegan recipes and spark some meal creativity. Of all the meatless meal delivery services we tried, Mosaic Foods is our favorite, but if you prefer to do the cooking and just don't want to do the meal planning, Purple Carrot may be the solution for you as the only 100% vegan meal kit service.
Other excellent plant-based meal delivery services exist, including some better suited to families, picky eaters and those who want the occasional chicken or salmon dish sprinkled into their mostly vegan diet. After testing more than a dozen services and cooking countless plant-based recipes, I've landed on this list of the best vegan and vegetarian meal delivery services for 2024.
Best vegan and vegetarian 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 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 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.
Here's my full review of Mosaic Foods.
A spread of Mosaic'd plant-based prepared meals.
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 in my full review here.
Purple Carrot delivered on its promise of wholesome plant-based meal kits.
Best vegetarian 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, 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.
Read more in my full review of HelloFresh.
I made a pork chop dinner and it was really good.
Best for vegan smoothies and soups
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 acai 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.
The gluten-free vegan meatballs were one of the best meals I tried.
Best plant-based prepared 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.
This harvest bowl has chunks of avocado which do not taste great when warmed.
Best vegetarian plant-based meal kits on a budget
Dinnerly
Dinnerly meal kits aren't fancy, but they get the job done and for a fair price, too. Dinnerly's plans start at $6 per serving for vegetarian recipes, which is ultimately less than if you were to buy all the groceries yourself. Dinnerly might cut corners in some places -- simple recipes with basic ingredients -- but even at that low consumer cost, the service manages to offer a massive menu with up to 15 vegetarian meal kit recipes per week.
A large portion of Dinnerly's vegetarian meals are kid-friendly like a gnocchi bake with cream sauce, vegetarian tacos and basil pesto ravioli. Dinnerly also has about two dozen recipes with meat to choose from in case you're not bagging meat altogether.
Read my full review of Dinnerly here.
All the ingredients required for my three meal kits arrived in one box looking fresh.
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 meal kits for flexitarians
Sunbasket
If you want vegan meal kits with the occasional meat or fish recipe thrown in, Sunbasket is the best option. The service isn't cheap, but Sunbasket's ingredients are mostly organic and the weekly menu sports some of the most interesting and inventive recipes of any meal kit service I've tested.
Sunbasket has roughly four or five plant-based meal options today, and even more prepared vegan meals and snacks to add to your weekly delivery. Meal kits take anywhere from 20 to 50 minutes to prepare, and the meals are most healthy with options such as pesto pappardelle with baby broccoli and mushrooms or diablo cauliflower tacos with pumpkin seeds and avocado.
Sunbasket ships to most of the country but not Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota and parts of New Mexico.
Read my full review of Sunbasket here.
Best for salads and fresh meals
Thistle
If you want truly fresh meal delivery like green salads and stir fry meals, or plant-based curries that need a quick heat-up in the pan, Thistle is a good option. Thistle food is not meant to be frozen like many of the other prepared meal services out there, which is why you'll typically get two hand-delivered bags of fresh meals per week.
Thistle is more of a set menu and so there are fewer choices per week, but the food is thoughtfully prepared and very healthy.
Thistle is a little more expensive than some of the other options on this list but the food is high quality and nutritious. It's similar to Sakara Life, a popular fresh food meal service touted by wellness influencers, but where Sakara Life will cost you roughly $20 per meal, Thistle is much more affordable at closer to $12 or $13 per meal.
Read my full review of Thistle here.
Other vegan and vegetarian 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. 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 for it to land on our list of best vegan meal services.
- EveryPlate: EveryPlate is our favorite cheap meal kit service, but its plant-based options leave something to be desired.
How we test vegan meal delivery services
The vegan steel-cut oat bowl was one of the breakfast meals I tried from Thistle.
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. 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.
I tested more than 50 vegan meals from
Vegan and vegetarian 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 |
Splendid Spoon (prepared) | 48 | Yes | $8-$12 | Free | 7.8 |
HelloFresh | 6 | Yes | $9 | $9 | 8 |
Sunbasket | 4 | Yes | $12 | $8 | 9 |
Green Chef | 9 | Yes | $13 | $10 | 7.6 |
Daily Harvest (prepared) | 50+ | No | $5-$10 | Free | 8.8 |
Veestro (prepared) | 50+ | No | $10 | Free for subscribers | N/A |
Thistle (prepared) | 12 | Yes | $12 | Free | 8.2 |
Factors to consider when choosing a vegan or vegetarian meal delivery service
Vegan meal kits vs. prepared meals: Which should you choose?
Purple Carrot is one of the only fully plant-based meal kit services.
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 for 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.
Types of meals: Vegan vs. vegetarian
HelloFresh has a mix of vegan and vegetarian meals.
Purple Carrot, Daily Harvest and Veestro are a few of the services that offer only vegan food (no animal products at all), while HelloFresh and Mosaic Food offer both vegan and vegetarian meals each week. If you're going fully plant-based, a vegan specialty service will offer more choices and you won't have to sift through the vegetarian meals to make your selections.
Go fully meatless or give yourself the option for meals with meat
Mosaic Foods is the best plant-based meal service for those who don't care to cook.
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
A spread of Mosaic'd plant-based prepared meals.
Most vegetarian and vegan 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.