EveryPlate vs Marley Spoon: how much is variety worth in the kitchen?

Meal kit delivery services such as Marley Spoon and EveryPlate are an excellent way to take thinking out of dinnertime and still have your household sorted with tasty, nutritious meals. These meal kit subscriptions offer a variety of recipes to choose from each week, with delivery of all the ingredients and instructions you’ll need to prepare these recipes yourself.

First arriving Down Under in 2015, Marley Spoon has become one of the better known meal kit delivery services since its debut — particularly known for its unmatched variety with a menu of over 50 recipes each week. Meanwhile, food subscription competitor EveryPlate is a newer name to the market, first emerging in late 2020 as a subsidiary of fellow meal kit delivery service HelloFresh, with a focus on affordability and the potential to feed a crowd via subscription plans for up to six people (something no other meal kit service offers). 

But which of the two will be the better option for your Aussie dinnertime needs? Having spent time with both services, we’ve put the pair head-to-head below to see how they stack up.

EveryPlate vs Marley Spoon: price and availability

Straight off the bat, there is a large gap between prices for EveryPlate and Marley Spoon in both per-meal (aka per-serve) and total costs. As an example, the highest per-meal cost for Marley Spoon of AU$16.11 (two meals for two people) is over AU$6 more than EveryPlate’s high of AU$9.66 (three meals for two people). 

On average, the difference in per-meal prices between the two services sits around the AU$4-5 mark, with a smallest difference of AU$2.50 for the five-meal plan for four people.

At face value, this could make EveryPlate seem like an obvious choice between the two, especially for budget-conscious Aussies. But there are some concessions made by EveryPlate in order for it to offer these lower prices. The most significant of these is its modest variety compared to its competitors, with a menu each week of only 22 recipes to select from. 

For comparison, Marley Spoon features a weekly menu of over 50 recipes, with recipe options that are also generally more ‘gourmet’ and diverse than those offered by EveryPlate.

EveryPlate’s 22-recipe menu is also less accommodating for people with food sensitivities or specific dietary requirements, as allergen information for its recipes is limited and not clearly listed. Marley Spoon’s menu does a better job here, with clearer labelling for easier navigation, and allergen information for each recipe also easier to find.

There are differences between the plan options each service has to offer as well, with Marley Spoon the only major Aussie meal kit service to offer two-meal per week plans, and EveryPlate likewise unique in offering six-meal per week options.

Two-person meal kit pricing

When it comes to plan prices for two people, EveryPlate is clearly the cheaper option, with a lower per-meal cost of just AU$7.49 (when you order six meals for two) compared to Marley Spoon’s lowest of AU$12.49 per meal (five meals for two).

For a full comparison of the prices for two-person plans offered by EveryPlate and Marley Spoon, see below:

Four-person meal kit pricing

Much as with the two-person options, EveryPlate’s prices for its four-person meal kit plans are less than those of Marley Spoon. To illustrate this, the highest per-meal cost of an EveryPlate meal plan for four people is just AU$7.49 — over AU$5 less than Marley Spoon’s high of AU$12.80 (two meals for four).

For a full comparison of the prices for four-person plans offered by EveryPlate and Marley Spoon, see below:

Six-person meal kit pricing

EveryPlate is exclusive in offering weekly meal kit plans that can feed six people, which definitely helps it stand out for anyone looking to feed larger families. Per plate costs for these six-person meal plans range from AU$6.39 to just AU$4.72.

Note: per meal prices listed above are based on weekly prices inclusive of shipping

EveryPlate vs Marley Spoon: menu and recipes

Both Marley Spoon and EveryPlate provide rotating menus each week with new meals to discover. As mentioned above, Marley Spoon’s weekly menu offers the better variety of the two services, with over 50 recipes to choose from. This greater selection also allows Marley Spoon’s menu to include more diverse cuisines, ranging from popular mainstream options like Vietnamese, Mexican and Indian, to less common cuisines such as Tuscan, Portuguese and Moroccan.

In comparison, EveryPlate offers a weekly menu of 22 recipes. Of these, a number are listed as ‘Premium’ options, which means they typically incur additional fees if you opt to include them in your order. Marley Spoon does have its own ‘Premium’ meal options that will likewise incur additional costs, but its greater variety means that these options make up a smaller portion of its overall menu. 

During one week we observed for this comparison, EveryPlate included a total of four premium options among its 22 recipes, while Marley Spoon featured only eight in its 62-piece menu. This meant that 18% of EveryPlate’s menu would incur extra costs, compared to just 12.9% for Marley Spoon and the latter’s non-Premium selection is literally three times the size of EveryPlate’s (54 choices vs 18 choices).

Meal quality for both Marley Spoon and EveryPlate will depend a lot on how well you can follow instructions and handle yourself in the kitchen. This is made simple by the easy-to-follow recipe cards that both services include with each delivery, as even those with minimal experience in the kitchen should have no issues following along. These clearly printed instructions also help to keep preparation times reasonably short, with an average of 35-45 minutes prep time for each recipe.

The recipes each service offers are also stylistically different, with EveryPlate’s more simplistic menu resembling what you’d expect to find at a pub, versus Marley Spoon’s menu similar to what you’d find from a dedicated restaurant.

EveryPlate vs Marley Spoon: delivery and ingredients

EveryPlate offers delivery on five days of the week, from Saturday to Wednesday, with the option to adjust orders at any time until 11:59pm local time on the Tuesday before a delivery week. 

Marley Spoon delivers six days a week, from Tuesday to Sunday. Similar to EveryPlate, orders for Marley Spoon can be adjusted at any time typically until one week before an expected delivery date.

Ingredients and recipe cards for both services arrive secured in a single cardboard box, with cold items included in a satchel alongside a number of ice packs to ensure these items stay cool until you can get them to your fridge. In our experience, the quality of ingredients for Marley Spoon was slightly more consistent than for EveryPlate, which we found occasionally experienced issues such as fresh produce arriving unripened or soggy.

EveryPlate’s delivery zone is restricted almost entirely to the eastern states of Australia, with the one exception of Perth, and it offers free delivery to the following areas: 

Delivery is also available in these areas but may incur additional fees: 

Marley Spoon currently delivers to a greater part of Australia, with even Tasmania and South Australia included among its delivery regions — areas not offered by EveryPlate. 

The full list of regions with delivery available for Marley Spoon include the metro and surrounding areas of:

EveryPlate vs Marley Spoon: Verdict

When comparing Marley Spoon and EveryPlate, the most obvious differences are EveryPlate’s lower prices versus the greater menu variety offered by Marley Spoon. This means choosing between the two will likely depend on which of those two factors matter most to you. Here’s a quick rundown of each service’s key features:

If you’re one of the many people who deal with food sensitivities or have specific dietary requirements, Marley Spoon is the obvious choice compared to EveryPlate. With more labelling to assist in navigating its menu, more opportunities to opt for alternatives and a greater variety overall, Marley Spoon is likely to be a better fit for a lot of people despite its higher prices.

Meanwhile, with its cheaper overall prices (from both a full cost and per-plate perspective), EveryPlate is an excellent choice for budget-conscious Aussies. The no-frills approach to its menu should also appeal to those who like what’s familiar and who prefer to keep things simple in the kitchen.