7 best meal delivery services UK 2025; tried and tested ...Middle East

THE BEST meal delivery services are a godsend, saving busy people the effort of planning and shopping for meals.

Thanks to their pre-portioned ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes, they also take a lot of effort out of cooking.

There’s a recipe box for everyone these days — whether you’re a card-carrying vegan, protein junkie or just a massive fan of Chinese food, you’ll find something that suits your palette.

However, a meal delivery service that doesn’t make your life easier is pointless, so we’ve put the most popular services through their paces and ranked them below.

Best meal delivery services at a glance:

Mindful Chef

Get 25% off your first four Mindful Chef boxes

Pros: Great-quality ingredients, interesting and seasonal recipe selection that introduces you to new dishes, portion for two ACTUALLY serves two, B-Corp certified

Cons: Expensive, even compared to other meal delivery services, introductory offer isn’t as good as some competitors

Rating: 10/10

Mindful Chef doesn’t offer the same amount of choice as some of its competitors, with only 20 to 25 recipes to choose from each week.

However, every single recipe reads like it’s from the menu of a high-end bistro: recipes available at the time of writing include “Wild-caught Hake with Korma-spiced Lentils & Tomato Chutney”, “Five-spice Duck, Sesame Roast Potatoes & Veggies” and “Free-range Maple & Mustard Chicken, Asparagus & Potato Salad”.

And if we have one rule when we visit a restaurant it’s this: the smaller the menu, the better the food.

And having tested it a few times now, we can testify that each recipe is well-considered, and the menu changes each week according to which ingredients are in season.

And the ingredients Mindful Chef sends are also the best we encountered, both in quality and quantity.

Unlike more affordable recipe boxes, it’s not stingy with the protein: a sharing steak we recieved was 400g and as big as our head, a portion of salmon for two was 300g, and a meal of pork steaks with romesco butterbeans comprised two juicy, butcher-sourced slabs of pork.

While we think it’s worth it, there’s no denying Mindful Chef is expensive; meals start from around £7.50 per person (if you’re feeding two people) and go up to almost £10 per person for more expensive ingredients.

It’s also true that its introductory offer — 25% off your first four orders — isn’t as good as some of its competitors.

If you want to know more, read our full Mindful Chef review.

Delivery: £5.99 (free on first four deliveries); Cost: If ordering for two people, £7.50 – £10 per portion; Plans: Two to five recipes per week for one, two or four people

Gousto

Get 50% off your first box, 40% off your second box and 20% off all boxes for two months at Gousto

Pros: Affordable, astounding amount of variety with 500+ recipes per month, market-leading offer for new customers, affordable, standard delivery ensures your food arrives by 7pm, boxes available for one and five people

Cons: Ingredients aren’t organised by recipe, which makes things a bit disorganised

Rating: 9.5/10

If affordability is top of your list of priorities (and we don’t blame you), then we’d point you in the direction of Gousto.

At £35.74 for three meals for two people with delivery, it’s the cheapest recipe box we’ve come across, and that’s before you take into account its worldbeating offer for new customers: 50% off your first box, 40% off your second and 20% off all boxes for two months.

It also has the widest selection of meals, with a staggering 500 recipes available every month. There are people on the Sun Shopping team who have used Gousto for years without having the same recipe twice.

Over 185 of those monthly recipes are veggie, too, meaning that there is something for everyone, and large families will love that it offers an option for five people.

All the meals we tried were tasty, quick and healthy, and we loved the choice of cuisines available; as well as popular Chinese, Mexican and Indian dishes, there are recipes inspired by the food of Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Brazil and the Philippines.

Another really small detail we like is that Gousto’s standard delivery window ends at 7pm, meaning that you’re guaranteed to get dinner on the table by 8pm. Hello Fresh’s standard delivery ends at 9pm, which is too late for many people (including us).

Our only tiny niggle is that, unlike Mindful Chef and Hello Fresh, Gousto doesn’t group ingredients together by recipe, which makes things a bit disorganised when it comes to cooking.

Read our full Gousto review for our full thoughts.

Delivery: £3.99 (free during promotion period) Cost: If buying for two people, from £4.48; Plans: Two to five recipes per week for one to five people

Hello Fresh

Get 50% off 1st box, 20% off your first month + free dessert for life at Hello Fresh

Pros: Tasty meals that include several components, creates minimal washing up, great amount of choice, well-priced, attractive offers for new customers, free dessert!

Cons: Protein servings can be stingy, standard delivery window lasts until 9pm

Ratings: 9/10

It’s nearly 15 years since the founders of Hello Fresh, Dominik Richter, Thomas Griesel and Jessica Nilsson, started delivering recipe boxes to the hungry people of Berlin.

Despite some stiff competition, it’s still the most famous name in the recipe box business, with thousands of recipes, millions of customers and billions in profits under its belt.

Several people at Sun Shopping have tried it, and we were all impressed by the variety, ease and tastiness of the recipes.

Each meal contains multiple elements, which helps to keep things interesting and nutritious, and there’s an incredible amount of recipe choice.

Despite the number of elements, of the recipes we tested, Hello Fresh’s took the least time to make — none took more than half an hour to make. They resulted in the least washing up, too, which is a bonus.

Our only complaint about the food was that Hello Fresh creates the impression of being generous with its portions by over-supplying cheap carbs, while being a bit stingy with protein — this was even true of the “premium ingredient” recipe we tried, which cost an extra £3.99 per portion.

We also learned the hard way that Hello Fresh’s standard delivery window lasts until 9pm, meaning that you might not get your ingredients in time to cook that night’s dinner. However, you can pay extra to get it delivered before 12pm.

For the most part, though, Hello Fresh goes off without a hitch — it’s competitively priced, and it runs extremely attractive offers for new customers, too. its current offer includes free dessert for life, which is something we’ll never turn down.

For more info, check out our full Hello Fresh review.

Delivery: £4.99 (free for first month) Cost: If buying for two people, from £4.45; Plans: Two to five recipes per week for two to four people

Frive

Get 40% off your first week of Frive and 20% off your next two weeks

Pros: Taste great, balanced, healthy meals, sustainable packaging, can order up to four meals per day for up to six days per week

Cons: Expensive, meals can’t be heated in the oven, less variety than some traditional recipe boxes

Rating: 8.5/10

For some people, cooking a meal just isn’t feasable day-to-day.

However, a lot of ready meals are overly processed, lack nutritional value and contain a lot of nasties like salt, sugar and saturated fats, as well as artificial ingredients and preservatives.

Not to mention most of them taste like mud.

With Frive (the artist formerly know as Lion’s Prep), that description couldn’t be further from the truth.

Claiming to be “The UK’s Highest-Rated Meal Service”, its ready meals are approved by nutritionists, made with 100% whole foods, and endorsed by A-list actors, singers and athletes.

And most importantly, they’re all phenomenally tasty — more tasty than any ready meal we’ve tried before. We tried several meals, including Coconut Lime Leaf King Prawns, a Lamb Burger, a Lemongrass Coconut Sea Bass Curry and Teryaki Salmon, and there wasn’t a bum note.

The meals can look deceptively small on first glance, but thanks to the fact that they’re high in protein and macro balanced, they’re actually really filling.

Unlike a lot of meal delivery services, Frive is designed to supply up to four meals per day, meaning there’s a variety of breakfasts, snacks and smoothies on offer alongside the main courses you’d expect.

Our only qualm is that the meals can’t be heated in the oven, so make sure you have a microwave before you order a delivery. And because they’re delivered fresh, most meals have to be eaten within three or four days of delivery (but we’d rather that than a box full of preservatives).

It’s also expensive — three meals for two people will cost £48.30, compared to just £36.48 at an affordable recipe box service like Hello Fresh.

However, this doesn’t offend us massively; after all, you have to factor in an added cost for chefs to prepare your meal for you.

Delivery: £6, or free if you spend over £40 on the 3-day plan or £70 on the 5- and 6-day plans; Cost: If you’re feeding two people, from around £7.65 per serving; Plans: 3, 5 and 6-day meal plans with up to four meals per day, for one to four people

Green Chef

Get 30% off your first four Green Chef boxes

Pros: Healthy and tasty recipes that left us feeling satisfied, wide array of recipes and cuisines, great for vegetarians, specialised meal plans, generous portions

Cons: Recipes require slightly more prep than Hello Fresh or Gousto, slightly more expensive than competitors, some recipe instructions were a bit questionable

Rating: 8/10

Green Chef puts a lot of emphasis on its USP of being a nutritionist-approved recipe box.

It’s certified organic by the US’ Department of Agriculture, all of its chefs are registered nutritionists, and it provides specific meal plans for people following Keto, calorie-conscious or high-protein diets.

The question is: does the food taste any good?

Thankfully, the answer is yes — we were surprised to enjoy every single meal we tried, and we’d specifically recommend Green Chef to vegetarians: over a third of Green Chef’s meals are veggie, and the brand finds creative, exciting ways to use vegetables.

A highlight was the Hoisin Duck-Less Wraps, which were super easy to prepare and delicious; we genuinely could have been eating shredded duck.

The meat options are diverse too. Despite only having 37 recipes available on the week we tested it (plenty enough, but less than, say, Gousto or Hello Fresh), there were meals featuring duck, pork, steak, turkey and lamb, as well as the obligatory chicken.

Our only real qualms were that it’s a bit more expensive than its main two competitors, and its recipes do require a bit more prep and washing up, too.

Read our Green Chef review to find out more.

Delivery: £4.99 (free during promotion period) Cost: If you’re feeding two, from £6.49 per meal; Plans: for two or four people, with two to five recipes per week

Cook

Meals for one from £4.75 at Cook

Pros: Lots of variety, meals available in different portion sizes, not subscription-based, tasty meals, food is pre-prepared, all food is prepared by hand

Cons: Freezer space is required, portion sizes are small, some meals require the purchase of sides, the minimum order can be expensive

Rating: 8/10

The Cook website has a huge variety of meals to choose from and various serving sizes to suit every household. Like many services, the value increases the larger the portions are, although prices aren’t too bad compared to some of the other services we’ve reviewed.

We ordered some one-person and two-person meals and specifically chose some that didn’t require any extra sides, such as rice and noodle dishes.

A few of the options sounded delicious but didn’t come with any sides, such as the Chicken Tikka Masala. So it’s worth checking what is included in each of the dishes and whether you’d need to purchase anything additional to accompany it.

We found all the meals to be tasty, and it’s a dream to just bung them in the microwave and not have to stress about washing up. We also loved that it’s not subscription-based, so we could simply stop ordering whenever we liked without having to cancel.

Most of the meals required around 4-6 minutes in the microwave, but a couple required an hour or so in the oven.

As with Field Doctor (below), we find the portion sizes to be quite small. The one-person meals, in particular, left us pretty hungry in the evenings.

We had an issue with one of our meals, so we reached out to customer service and were extremely impressed with their response.

Overall, while these might not be the most satisfying meals in the world, each was extremely tasty, and they’re a lifesaver in an emergency.

Delivery: £3.50-£8.95 depending on delivery method Cost: Meals for one start at £4.75, meals for two start at £7.95; Plans: Minimum order for us was £45, but there’s no subscription required

Field Doctor

Get 25% off your first two Field Doctor orders with code THESUN25x2

Pros: Convenient, high nutritional value, time-saving, personalised plans available

Cons: Small portions left us hungry, some of the meals lacked flavour, expensive

Rating: 7.5/10

Field Doctor’s website prominently features a quote from Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine.”

It’s obvious from the company’s site and branding that it sees itself as much as a pharmacy as it does a meal delivery service: its frozen ready meals are designed by dieticians, and you start your Field Doctor journey by answering a health quiz.

This allows you to be nice and specific about any health conditions. If you’re a menopausal pescatarian with a soy allergy, you’ll still find a couple of meals you can eat.

Field Doctor claims that nine out of ten people feel better having eaten a Field Doctor meal, and we can back up this claim; we ate a lot of them as lunches, and the wealth of slow-release carbs, vegetables and protein meant that we dodged any dreaded afternoon sleepiness.

However, the reason that we ate a lot of them as lunches is that they’re not very big; if you have a big appetite and eat one of these for dinner, chances are you’re going to bed hungry.

And while some of the meals were delicious (the Salmon Teryaki and Beef Ragu Penne were standouts), others, like the Piri Piri Chicken, felt underseasoned.

Finally, with prices for one starting at £6.99, there’s no getting around the fact that these are expensive frozen ready meals. (However, they probably contain double the nutrition of your average supermarket ready meal.)

For more info, read our full Field Doctor review.

Delivery: £5.50, or free if you order nine meals; Cost: Meals for one start at £6.99, meals for two start at £11 Plans: Minimum order is 7 meals, meals serve one or two

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