HelloFresh vs EveryPlate: Does price impact quality with these meal kit competitors?

For people short on time or patience, meal kit subscription services like HelloFresh and EveryPlate offer a lot of value. Helping you to cut down on time spent in the supermarket and trying to think of meal ideas come dinnertime, these services will also help those who are looking to control portion sizes or perhaps just diversify their diet. 

Each week, these meal kit delivery services present a menu of different meals for subscribers to choose from, before sending out all of the necessary ingredients and instructions you’ll need to cook the meals yourself in the one convenient box.

Few meal kit delivery services are better known than HelloFresh, which has been operating for over a decade in Australia. Competitor EveryPlate is a newer entrant, having first arrived Down Under in late 2020, and is actually a subsidiary of HelloFresh — it’s effectively the company’s lower-cost option. 

But beyond price, how do the two services actually compare? Having spent our time with both subscriptions, we’ve put the two head to head below to help you determine which best suits your culinary (and budgeting) needs.

HelloFresh vs EveryPlate: price and availability

Given EveryPlate is designed as a low-cost alternative to HelloFresh, it’s no surprise that its subscription prices are indeed lower than those of its sibling service. 

EveryPlate also manages to include more subscription variations than HelloFresh, offering plans to feed up to six people per week, compared to the HelloFresh maximum of four. That’s alongside the option of up to six meals per person offered by EveryPlate, compared to a maximum of five for HelloFresh.

In the case of both meal kit delivery services, the more you order the more you’ll save, with the larger plan options providing the cheapest per-meal costs.

EveryPlate is a clear winner for those on tighter budgets, with prices on a per-meal basis that are unrivalled in the Australian meal-kit delivery market. For example, a plan to feed six people with six recipes per week sees a per-meal cost of just AU$4.72 each. To help put this in perspective, that’s less than you’d pay for a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, and over AU$4 less than the cheapest per-meal cost offered by HelloFresh at AU$8.75 — that’s on its five meals for four people subscription. Even at its most expensive, EveryPlate’s per-meal costs never exceed AU$10, topping out at AU$9.66 per-meal with its three meals for two people plan.

While HelloFresh may not offer prices as low as EveryPlate, its per-meal costs are still competitive compared to how much you’ll pay on average for takeaway or (in some cases) even versus buying the ingredients from the local supermarket to cook the same meals. For example, the highest per-meal cost of AU$13.33 for HelloFresh (applicable to its three recipes per week for two people option) will still cost you less than the average price for ordering takeout.

Two-person meal kit pricing

As expected, two-person meal plans from EveryPlate are less expensive than HelloFresh, though never by more than AU$4 per-meal.

At its most expensive, the HelloFresh plan of three meals for two people sees a per-meal cost of AU$13.33, versus EveryPlate’s highest per-meal cost of AU$9.66 for the same plan.

Four-person meal kit pricing

Much as with the two-person meal plans, prices for four-person kits see EveryPlate as the less expensive option of the pair. That said, it’s again worth noting that the difference between the two is never more than AU$4 per meal, and can be as little as only AU$2.26 per meal (five meals for four).

Six-person meal kit pricing

EveryPlate offers plans to feed up to six people, as a point of difference to HelloFresh and many other alternatives. If you are looking to feed a larger family or home, this makes EveryPlate a clear top choice and money-saver worth considering. 

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

HelloFresh vs EveryPlate: menu and recipes

As with most meal kit delivery services, HelloFresh and EveryPlate offer rotating menus with new meal options to discover each week. In total, HelloFresh offers a new weekly menu of at least 25 recipes to select from, while EveryPlate offers 22 new recipes per week.

HelloFresh’s menu is divided into eight categories, including Classic, Vegetarian, Family-friendly, Calorie Smart, Quick & Easy, Carb Smart, Flexitarian and Protein Rich. You can freely select meals from across different categories, and HelloFresh suggests that its options break down as follows:

EveryPlate, meanwhile, offers four dietary preferences to choose from when it comes to selecting your meal plan — Classic, Family, Flexitarian and Vegetarian — and subscribers can choose one or all of these options when signing up for their plan. It isn’t clear how or if this changes the menu you’re served at all, as recipes for the ‘Classic’ plan do sometimes overlap with the flexitarian and vegetarian options, alongside meals labelled as ‘kid-friendly’.

This is not the only area where EveryPlate is unfortunately vague, as it offers very few details about allergen info and minimal labelling to help navigate its menu for those with food sensitivities or more stringent dietary needs. HelloFresh does a far greater job of this by comparison, with full allergen information for each recipe listed on its website and better labelling to assist with navigating its menu.

How good HelloFresh and EveryPlate meals taste will, of course, somewhat depend on your ability to follow instructions and your comfort in the kitchen, though both HelloFresh and EveryPlate do make this easy thanks to the clearly printed recipe cards included in each weekly box. These recipe cards detail not only the full step-by-step cooking process, but also recommended heat settings and cooking times, meaning that meal prep is made easy even for novices in the kitchen.

Preparation times for recipes from both services generally average around 30-40 minutes, however actual prep times can sometimes exceed these suggestions for some recipes, as some preparation stages can be more time-consuming for some people than others — such as peeling and chopping garlic gloves, or dicing carrots.

All things considered, the menu of HelloFresh does have a slight edge over EveryPlate in terms of weekly variety, and its recipes are generally more high-end and ‘gourmet’ than the simple recipes found on EveryPlate’s menu.

HelloFresh vs EveryPlate: delivery and ingredients

HelloFresh and EveryPlate each offer uncomplicated delivery, requiring you to simply select a desired day and time window for your weekly delivery. 

HelloFresh has recently expanded its delivery to seven days a week, with the cut-off for changing or skipping a weekly order typically being one week before the desired delivery date. EveryPlate, meanwhile, offers its delivery from Saturday to Wednesday, with customers able to adjust their orders up until 11:59PM AEST of the Tuesday before their delivery week.

Delivery boxes for both services contain pre-packaged ingredients, with meat and other cold items packaged alongside ice packs to ensure these items stay cool until you can get them to the refrigerator. Ingredient quality can occasionally be inconsistent for both services, such as some fresh produce arriving unripened or soggy, but it also has to be said that this is sporadic and generally doesn’t occur every week.

HelloFresh offers its delivery to capital cities and other major population centres around mainland Australia, with the full list including: 

EveryPlate’s delivery areas are almost entirely restricted to the Eastern states at this stage, with Perth the only exception. These areas include: 

Delivery is also available for EveryPlate in other areas where additional delivery fees may apply, with these areas including: 

Sadly, neither HelloFresh nor EveryPlate deliver to anywhere in Tasmania. If you’re in our most southern state, Marley Spoon is your only real major meal-kit option, offering delivery to both Hobart and Launceston and surrounding areas.

HelloFresh vs EveryPlate: verdict

Given that EveryPlate was designed to be the low-cost alternative to HelloFresh, it’s not surprising that it offers lower prices than those of its more established meal-kit sibling. However, as mentioned above, this difference is never more than AU$4 per-meal.

EveryPlate also claims an edge when it comes to the number of available plan options, as both its maximum recipes-per-week and servings-per-week of six are unavailable from HelloFresh entirely. This means that if you’re looking to feed a bigger household, or cover meal time for more days per week, EveryPlate is the choice for you.

Where HelloFresh is a far better option than EveryPlate is with its greater suitability for those with food sensitivities or dietary needs, as allergen information is clearly detailed for each recipe via its website. Recipes for HelloFresh are also notably more ‘gourmet’ than that of EveryPlate, which does to some extent help justify the little bit extra you’ll pay.