When it comes to price per serving, EveryPlate is tied with another meal kit on our list, Dinnerly, as the cheapest option around.

To get that lowest price, you would need to select the maximum number of meals per week: six meals, with four servings each.

If you're planning out couples meals -- or live alone -- you might be interested in the minimum weekly box size. With more than 20 recipes to pick each week, EveryPlate serves up a decent variety with its dishes.

You might find a deeper variety with other, more expensive meal kits, but EveryPlate's offerings aim for a sort of mass appeal.

From comfort food items with a twist like the Cheesy Tortilla Smash Burgers to zesty options like the Southwest Pork Flautas pictured above , there's enough here to satisfy even the picky eater.

Why we recommend EveryPlate: This meal kit checks all the boxes for a budget-friendly delivery service: affordable plans, nutritious recipes available at low serving prices, and big-time savings for first-time customers. Behold, the close runner up in our books for cheapest meal kit service: Dinnerly.

Either way, you're still enjoying decent savings by signing up for dinners through Dinnerly instead of hunting down your own ingredients at the store or ordering takeout. Dinnerly features more than meal options each week that are dairy free, vegetarian, kid friendly and more.

Where EveryPlate lacks ever so slightly in meal variety, Dinnerly shines with more than 40 weekly recipes at your disposal.

Alongside plenty of reliable if a bit predictable dishes like the Smoky Pan-Roasted Steak or Crispy Cheddar Chicken plate, you can find less common meals: there's the spicy and dairy-free Pork Vindaloo, for example, or Pesto Primavera made with gluten-free ravioli.

Why we chose Dinnerly: Low prices combined with a decent variety of nutritious recipes each week ensured Dinnerly would have a spot on our list. Now Blue Apron isn't just known for gourmet meals that are fun to cook -- but also huge savings.

Savings also include free shipping on that first order, as well as additional savings across your next four deliveries. Blue Apron offers an impressive selection of meals to choose from, with more than 70 recipes to browse each week.

This includes low-calorie or less , diabetes-friendly thanks to a collaboration with the American Diabetes Association , WW-approved formerly Weight Watchers , and vegetarian choices. You can also find recipes that fit into the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet.

Blue Apron also comes with some noteworthy add-ons and features. Another perk that may sit outside your food budget is Blue Apron's unique wine pairing service. We looked at these and other perks during an extensive Blue Apron review.

Thankfully, you can still save big by sticking to the no-frills weekly plan. And hey, if you want to splurge on some of Blue Apron's premium services once in a while, who are we to stop you? You deserve it! Blue Apron also makes it easy to pause services or skip a week.

This kind of flexibility is key when it comes to long-term savings on your food budget. Why we highlighted Blue Apron: Blue Apron is a popular meal kit known for fun and unique recipes with affordable prices that really sealed the deal for this delivery service in our books.

If you want prepackaged meals that cut out prep entirely, Fresh N Lean would make for the perfect addition to your weekly routine. This meal delivery service hooks subscribers up with ready-made meals that are fresh, never frozen, and made from quality ingredients.

With over menu items to choose from each week, Fresh N Lean wins points for variety. This includes a number of low carb, vegan, and gluten-free meals to consider on a weekly basis. While not USDA-certified, this company does aim to ship organic ingredients whenever possible.

In the event that an ingredient doesn't meet the brand's quality standards, it may be replaced with conventional ingredients. Why we chose Fresh N Lean: Fresh N Lean is a great meal delivery service to turn to for budget-friendly, fully prepared meals -- especially if you order enough meals to earn free shipping each week.

Do you like healthy fruit smoothies for breakfast? What about harvest grain bowls or soups for lunch? If you started salivating at the mention of even one of those options, then Daily Harvest is the meal delivery service for you.

With a menu packed full of whole fruits and vegetables, Daily Harvest is great for finding the perfect meal for breakfast or lunch. There are more than 20 unique, flavorful, and nutritionally-packed smoothies to choose from including the dragon fruit and lychee smoothie, pineapple and Matcha, and our personal favorite : the strawberry and peach smoothie.

Don't worry, there are plenty of dinner options to consider here as well. Daily Harvest's menu includes hearty soups, forager bowls, flatbreads, and pasta recipes -- so there's truly something for everyone here.

Deliveries are put together one item at a time, so you have the freedom to build your own meal plan each week. Pick anywhere from nine to 24 items each week. Why we highlighted Daily Harvest: Despite smoothie prices that are higher than you expect, Daily Harvest is still a top contender for healthy meals and treats on a budget, especially if you're interested in the variety of breakfast and lunch options here.

Admit it: It's a bit of a flex to have a delicious, homemade meal ready and waiting multiple nights throughout the week.

It takes time and a bit of planning to pull this off, especially if you're cooking for a busy family. And that's not even factoring in high prices that come with eating out.

If you live in New York City, for example, your food budget would likely benefit from a change to meal kit delivery. But wait -- we already know your next question: "With so many meal kits out there, how do I pick the best one? Choosing the right meal kit for you comes down to a few things.

In addition to hunting down the lowest prices per serving, you should always keep an eye out for added discounts. First-time customers can typically find some level of savings right from the plan selection page.

Instead of signing up for the first appealing price you see, shop around a bit to make sure there aren't other better deals waiting for you elsewhere. Take into account factors such as portion sizes, number of meals per week, and any additional fees for shipping or customization.

That note about shipping fees is worth mentioning again. It's not always easy to see how much a meal kit service charges for shipping until you get into the plan selection process.

In order to make the best selections possible, it's important to pull out all the stops when reviewing meal kit delivery services.

We considered a number of factors when choosing the best meal kits for affordability and the biggest ones were:. Tom Horton is a resident health expert for CBS Essentials, with deep experience in topics ranging from chronic conditions to health-care devices to diet options.

He lives in upstate New York, and draws his power from local bookstores, long hikes on a sunny day, and his cat Sammy. These modern coffee tables from Wayfair, Amazon and more make a style statement in your living room. If you've been thinking about giving your three- to year old their own tablet, Amazon's kid-friendly options are on sale.

We found the easiest and cheapest ways to catch out-of-market NBA games and games not televised nationally. Getting the right amount of sleep each night is important. Here's how much sleep you should be getting each night.

Celebrate the Chiefs' epic Super Bowl win with the official championship merch Patrick Mahomes wore on the field. The San Francisco 49ers face the Kansas City Chiefs in an epic Super Bowl rematch.

Here's how to watch todays game. The Super Bowl is in the history books. Here's how to watch the epic Kansas City Chiefs game on demand. Usher is the Super Bowl halftime show star. Here's how to watch every moment of the Apple Music show. We've got the playbook for how and where to watch Super Bowl All your streaming and app options to watch live.

The Biden administration has sought to use an app-based appointment system to discourage migrants from crossing the southern border illegally.

Court documents identified the shooter who opened fire at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston before being killed by security officers.

The Biden campaign says it's "incorporating a sophisticated security protocol" around use of TikTok. A meeting hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris with battleground state governors included discussions about how to campaign more aggressively on abortion rights and immigration.

Some Gen Z workers are posting video of themselves being laid off in search of "likes," feedback and revenge. Long-term care insurance can be valuable for many seniors, assuming they first know these important dos and don'ts.

Here are the Super Bowl ads ranked best and worst by the experts, including spots featuring Ben Affleck and Arnold Schwarzenegger. New England was on full display during a star-studded Super Bowl commercial by Dunkin'. Visa, Mastercard and Amex will provide a merchant code for firearms retailers to comply with a new California law, CBS News has learned.

The Biden campaign has repeatedly leaned into the "Dark Brandon meme, appearing to mock right-wing conspiracy theories with the superhero depiction that arose out of an anti-Biden slogan. They even have a lasagna bundle that serves up to 12! Note that soup, salad and breadsticks are extra.

Panera : Panera offers Breakfast feasts, sandwich feasts, pizza meals and soup deals for your whole family! Popeyes : You can order 5 different family meals from Popeyes, from only chicken to all the trimmings!

Red Lobster : If you need a seafood fix, Red Lobster is offering Family Meal Packs for 4 people. Choose from several options that include sides and tasty Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Red Robin : With this meal deal, you can customize four to six gourmet burgers. Yukon Kettle Chips or Steak Fries included.

All meal deals include crinkle fries and Texas Toast. Get the best deals delivered to your inbox daily! com is adamant that we will only share deals that we think will truly save you money.

To support our work, we do make money from some links to companies and deals on our site, which helps to pay our bills and support our Consumer Action Center. Learn more about our guarantee here.

Most prepared meals either arrive frozen or can be frozen after unboxing. That means it's less of an issue if you order too many meals on your first go around. Most services allow you to change the number of meals or servings in your plan even after you've started.

Our meal delivery experts have logged more than 5 years of cooking more than 75 meal kits and tasting more than prepared meals from various services to help land on our list of the best healthy meal subscriptions in While everything else has got more expensive, meal kit subscriptions seem to be getting cheaper.

The absolute cheapest meal kit is EveryPlate , and with consistently tasty meals -- we've tested it three times now -- that take as little as 20 minutes to cook, it's an easy pick for the best cheap meal service for Read more: Are Some Meal Kits Cheaper Than Buying Groceries?

I Did the Math. If you're looking for inexpensive vegan meals by mail or an affordable meal kit service that includes steak and seafood in the standard plan, we have picks for those, too.

The takeaway? Being budget-friendly certainly doesn't mean the food has to suck. If you're looking to eliminate a few weekly tasks -- grocery shopping, meal planning, prep, cooking -- without squeezing your budget, we tested more than 10 top wallet-friendly services to find the best cheap meal delivery for The bottom line : EveryPlate's meal kits were all solid and easy to make.

EveryPlate meal kits are easy to prepare and I loved everything I made in multiple rounds of testing. You won't find a lot of foofy, upscale cuisine or complicated recipes, but you will get a lot of satisfying comfort food, such as hoisin meatloaf with mashed potatoes, cheeseburgers, umami pork chops and sweet potato quesadillas.

I tested EveryPlate and was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the meals. Having tested all of the leading prepared meal delivery service options, Fresh N Lean ran away from the competition, ticking more boxes than any other.

The food is healthy, thoughtfully prepared, tastes fantastic, looks appetizing and is fairly affordable, depending on the plan you select. Fresh N Lean has five meal plans to help keep folks on track with their specific nutrition goals, including low-carb, vegan, paleo and protein-plus options.

The food I tried was all made exceptionally well, made from simple, whole ingredients. This is the perfect service for families with picky eaters trying to eat well on a budget. Much like EveryPlate, Dinnerly has a lot of comfort foods such as ravioli with spinach and parmesan sauce, carne asada tacos and chicken pad thai.

Dinnerly has an enormous menu of recipes -- typically more than 60 to choose from in a given week. The bottom line: This plant-based meal delivery service had some of the best, healthy prepared meals of any service we tried. I sampled about nine of Mosaic Food's plant-based prepared meal offerings and the vegetarian prepared meal delivery service had an astoundingly high hit rate.

Mosaic uses bold and interesting global flavors and employs creative use of meat substitutes such as tofu, jackfruit, cauliflower and vegan sausages to create tasty and satisfying vegetarian meals -- even for this omnivore.

There are some vegan meals, but many of them use dairy products, so vegans must choose their Mosaic meals more carefully. The bottom line: Blue Apron is a classic example of a quality meal delivery service.

One of the original providers of this service, it also stands out for eco-friendliness. Blue Apron is one of the original meal kit services and it's also one of the best. In fact, Blue Apron topped our list of best meal delivery services for with a wide range of excellent recipes, all for an affordable price.

It's true, you can order bistro steaks and roasted trout dinners with Blue Apron's standard plan, where many services charge extra for those premium proteins.

In addition to solid meal kits, Blue Apron is the most eco-friendly service of the major players, according to a recent study. The heartier meals are great too, like the cauliflower rice and pesto harvest bowl with cashews and spinach.

You won't need more than a saucepan, toaster or blender to prepare most of the meals, and most can be made in as little as 5 minutes. When I tried Daily Harvest , I loved the interesting smoothie combos such as a chocolate blueberry smoothie with greens, banana and almond butter.

The bottom line : It doesn't get much easier than HelloFresh. This service has tons of cheap meal kit options, more than 50 per week, and allows you to add proteins or extra servings to keep the whole crew fed and happy. HelloFresh has as many as 25 dinner meal kits per week, so it is nearly impossible not to find something you'll like.

HelloFresh also has five or six plant-based recipes a week, making it the best cheap meal kit service for vegetarians. Over the past few years, we've tested nearly every meal kit delivery and prepared meal delivery service we could get our oven mitts on, and that includes the best budget meal delivery services.

Many of the menu options for the meal delivery services we've listed include nutritious plant-based food or high-protein recipes with lots of veggies and lean meats.

To test each cheap meal delivery service, I tried at least four and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service. I always choose a range of meals from the various menu and meal plan offerings. For instance, if a meal subscription service offers vegan or vegetarian meals I was sure to try at least one.

I also mixed up the cuisine types to include pasta, meat dishes, bowls and other various styles offered by the brand. To test the best cheap meal kits, there was another set of standards and protocols to adhere to. Here's more on how we test meal kits at CNET.

The first big decision you'll make is whether you want meal kits, which require some prep and cooking, or a prepared meal service that sends fully cooked meals ready to heat and eat. Prepared meals require almost no time and energy, other than what it takes to actually eat the food, but typically run a few dollars more per serving.

If you're keen on eating low-calorie, low-carb, plant-based or pescatarian food, certain meal kits and meal delivery services are better than others.

Our list of the healthiest meal delivery services for is a good place to find the most nutritious options. With almost every service, the more meals or servings are in your order per delivery, the cheaper it becomes per meal.

Ideally, you'll want to determine exactly how much food makes sense for your household. That means it's less of an issue if you order too many meals on your first go-around.

Services like Daily Harvest and Splendid Spoon have meals for similar prices but are focused more on grain bowls and smoothies and might be better for breakfast or lunch versus dinner.

When it comes to meal kits, your options are many, and most services provide weekly recipes that are low on calories but still filling.