Kitchen, cost per portion
Cost per portion: meal kits, shopping and takeaway
Meal kits are sold on convenience and defended on waste, and are usually attacked on price. The price attack is correct but smaller than people think, and the comparison that actually matters is not the one the adverts pick.
Some links on this page are affiliate links, which earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra, and it never changes which option comes out cheapest here, because the ranking is arithmetic. How this works.
The table
A portion runs from £2.26 batch cooked to £15.00 delivered. A meal kit sits at £5.18, which is about 40% more than shopping for the same meal yourself and about a third of a takeaway.
| Option | Running | Cost per portion | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batch cooked from scratchcooked six portions at a time | £2.26 | £2.26 | |
| Supermarket ready mealchilled, one portion | £3.54 | £3.54 | |
| Cooked from a supermarket shoptwo portions at a time | £3.68 | £3.68 | |
| Meal kit boxmid tier subscription | £5.18 | £5.18 | |
| Takeawayone main, delivered | £15.00 | £15.00 |
The energy is almost invisible. Cooking a portion adds between nothing and 18p, and no decision on this page turns on it. This is a food price article wearing a cost per use hat, and it is worth being upfront about that.
The comparison the adverts choose
Meal kit companies compare themselves to takeaways, where they win by a factor of three, and to supermarket food waste, where they have a real argument. They do not compare themselves to a supermarket shop, where they lose by about £1.50 a portion, or to batch cooking, where they lose by nearly £3.
Across 520 portions a year, the gap between the meal kit and batch cooking is about £1,500. That is the number the convenience is being bought with, and it is large enough that it deserves to be a conscious decision rather than a subscription nobody has looked at since January.
It is the strongest thing meal kits have. UK households throw away a meaningful share of what they buy, and a box containing exactly 60 grams of an ingredient you would otherwise buy in a 200 gram bag does genuinely reduce that. If your alternative is buying a bunch of coriander, using a third and binning the rest every week, the real gap is narrower than the table suggests.
Why batch cooking wins so clearly
Two reasons, and only one of them is the ingredients. Buying in larger packs cuts the unit price, and cooking six portions in one oven session divides the energy six ways instead of two. Neither requires any skill beyond owning containers and a freezer.
The honest case against cooking every night
It takes time, it takes planning, and the failure mode is not eating a slightly worse dinner. The failure mode is ordering a takeaway at seven o'clock because nothing was defrosted, and at £15.00 a portion that single event costs more than a whole week of the difference between a meal kit and a supermarket shop. A meal kit that reliably stops one takeaway a week has already paid for itself.
The verdict
If you cook anyway, a meal kit is an expensive way to buy ingredients and batch cooking is the cheapest thing on this page by a wide margin. If you do not cook and the real alternative is delivery, a meal kit is a third of the price and the arithmetic is entirely on its side. Work out honestly which of those two people you are, because the same box is either a luxury or a saving depending on the answer.
Put your own numbers in
The consumable field is the ingredients for one portion. Put your own numbers in.
Cost per meal
Set the purchase price to zero for the running cost alone.
Questions
Are meal kits cheaper than supermarket shopping?
No. A meal kit portion works out around £5.18 against about £3.68 cooking the same meal from a supermarket shop, so roughly 40% more.
Are meal kits cheaper than takeaways?
Considerably. A meal kit portion is about a third of the cost of a delivered takeaway main at £15.00 including fees.
What is the cheapest way to eat dinner at home?
Batch cooking, at about £2.26 a portion. Larger packs cut the ingredient cost and cooking six portions at once divides the energy six ways.
How much does it cost to cook a meal in electricity?
Between nothing and about 18p a portion at the current cap. It is the smallest item in this comparison by a wide margin and does not change any of the rankings.
Do meal kits reduce food waste?
They can, genuinely, because ingredients arrive pre-portioned. If your alternative involves regularly binning most of a bag of something, the real price gap is narrower than the headline figures.
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More kitchen costs, or read how we work these out.
Prices used on this page
- Electricity, 26.11p per kWh. Ofgem price cap, direct debit, average of England, Scotland and Wales, including 5% VAT.. Ofgem energy price cap unit rates and standing charges. Checked 22 August 2026.