Keto meal kits are easy to love in 2024.
A ketogenic diet, also known as the keto diet is a low-carb, high-fat, protein-dense diet that has many health benefits. It’s often attempted by those looking to lose weight, manage acne, or improve their overall heart health, and has had a resurgence of interest in recent years despite first being developed back in the 1920s.
One 2024 survey by Statista suggested that 4% of respondents in the US had attempted a keto diet in the past year, and it’s one of the most commonly searched diets on Google in the country too, behind only veganism. But despite steady interest, keto can be a big change to someone’s usual diet, and making the switch – finding new recipes, sourcing different groceries – can feel overwhelming.
That’s where keto meal delivery services come in. By signing up to a regular subscription service, you can receive keto-friendly meals at the same time every week, delivered straight to your door, helping to reduce stressful planning and save you precious preparation time.
What is the best keto meal delivery service overall?
Thankfully, there are plenty of great keto meal delivery services to choose from. After testing a number of different services, we chose Factor 75 as our top pick, thanks to its all-organic, low-carb meals and recipes based around common comfort foods to make the new diet easier for recent converts. Green Chef is also a fine choice, and one of the healthier (if pricier) options in this list – while folks who prefer a meat-based keto diet may be drawn to ButcherBox’s high-quality meats.
So, if you’re worried about starting the keto diet or don’t know where to start, here are the best keto meal delivery services of 2024. Whichever service you choose, you’ll have the option to pause or cancel your subscription at any time, too.
Best keto meal delivery services for 2024
Factor offers a keto meal delivery plan for customers who are looking to follow a low-carb diet. The Factor keto meal delivery plan includes breakfast, lunch and dinner options that are all low in carbohydrates and high in healthy fats. Factor’s weekly keto menu features fewer bold recipes and flavors and more comfort-style food such as burgers, grilled chicken and meatloaf, making it a good choice for picky eaters or those with a less adventurous palate.
All of Factor’s keto meals are made with mostly organic, non-GMO ingredients and are free from gluten, soy and artificial preservatives. In addition to a low carb count, Factor keto meals are also designed to be low in calories to aid in weight loss.
Green Chef is one of the healthiest meal kit delivery services and caters to an array of designer diets including a keto meal plan for folks looking to cut carbs. With a Green Chef meal kit subscription, you’ll find creative keto meals.
A bevy of chef-created recipes — roughly four keto options per week — coupled with Green Chef’s high-quality, mostly organic ingredients make for a pricier subscription, but Green Chef is worth it for those seeking healthy meal kits delivered each week.
The paleo and keto diets have a lot in common, but there are some important distinctions too. If you’re more inclined to keep to a paleo plan that allows for healthy foods that may also have a high carb count, like carrots and sweet potatoes, then I’d recommend Pete’s Real Food prepared keto meals. You can still order plenty of low-carb, keto-friendly meals through Pete’s Real Food, but it’s not the foundational diet plan for this meal delivery service.
I tried several of the service’s healthy options loaded with protein and healthy fats and I was entirely impressed. A slow-cooked pork shoulder with sweet potatoes and celery was tender, with great flavor. Another win was the moist Mediterranean chicken thigh dinner with salty olives, served alongside spaghetti squash and cauliflower. This is thoughtfully prepared and healthy food made with quality paleo-friendly ingredients.
If you’re looking to make keto dinners at home, Home Chef has the most keto-friendly meal kits of any service I tried, and that makes it an excellent choice for those keeping to a low-carb keto diet. Home Chef’s Carb Conscious meal plan starts at about $8 a serving and there are typically around 14 meal kits to choose from in any given week containing less than 15 grams of carbs per serving.
One great feature Home Chef offers is that you can swap or double the protein in any meal and since keto diet followers are all about that protein, it makes finding the right low-carb meals each week that much easier. Home Chef also has oven-ready keto-friendly meal options.
While we don’t rate meat delivery and subscription boxes the same way we do meal kits and prepared meal services, they’re a great way to feed your keto diet. Protein is the cornerstone of any low-carb nutrition plan, and ButcherBox sends grass-fed beef, organic chicken and wild-caught salmon to your door every few weeks.
ButcherBox meat subscription starts at $146 for 9 to 14 pounds of beef, chicken and fish. You can curate your delivery of cuts and seafood and have it sent as frequently as every two weeks, or every month, every six weeks or every two months. Shipping is free.
If it feels like you’re experiencing deja vu, that’s because Fresh N Lean, the best overall prepared keto meal delivery service, lands another spot on our list as the best plant-based keto meal subscription. With Fresh N Lean’s keto vegan plan, you’ll get to choose from low-carb, plant-based meals like bolognese vegetables, cream of broccoli soup and chimichurri vegetables.
Because protein is such a cornerstone of the keto diet, eating keto and vegan is a bit trickier and the meal delivery options are few. Cooking meals at home might be your best bet, but if you’re craving some easy low-carb, meatless meal delivery, give Fresh N Lean a try.
ModifyHealth: This healthy meal delivery service specializes in low-FODMAP to help those with IBS but also offers a low-carb meal plan. The food was tasty and the free health counseling was useful, but it’s a bit more expensive than some others on our list.
Snap Kitchen:I liked Snap Kitchen meals but the portions were a bit small and the service still has a limited delivery area.
Territory Foods: The portions from this meal delivery service were far too small considering how expensive they are — as much as $23 a meal — but they did taste OK. If you’re looking for some serious portion control for weight loss and to cut down on calories, this might be a good option. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem worth the money.
FlexPro: These frozen keto meals were some of the worst I tried and I would not recommend the service.
BistroMD: These meals are intended to promote weight loss, but the cost is high, and the flavors weren’t good enough to justify the price.
Meal kit versus prepared meal delivery
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 that are ready to heat and eat. Meal kits will demand more of your time and energy but they’ll also cost a little less per serving. Prepared meals require almost no time and energy, other than what it takes to eat the food, but typically run a few bucks more per serving.
Fresh N Lean is the best prepared keto meal delivery service we tried.
Cost
After you’ve picked between meal kits or meal delivery, you’ll want to find a service within your budget. There are meal kits with recipes for as cheap as $5 a serving with basic menus and no-frills recipes. More expensive services include recipes with more exotic ingredients, high-end cuts of meat and organic produce but can cost as much as $15 or $20 a serving. Here we’ve outlined all the best cheap meal delivery services right now.
How keto do you want to go?
There are different levels to keeping keto. One decision you’ll want to make is whether to choose a meal service or meal plan that includes only or mostly keto or one that has options for non-keto meals such as Green Chef.
Most meal kit services offer a range of keto recipes each week.
Number of meals per week
Lastly, you’ll want to hone in on exactly how much food you’ll want sent to you per week. If you can’t imagine yourself cooking more than twice per week, don’t order more than two meal kits because they typically won’t last more than a week in the fridge.
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.
With nearly every service, the more meals your order per delivery, the cheaper it is per meal.
Our experts have logged more than 5 years of cooking more than 75 meal kits and tasting more than 100 prepared meals from various services to help land on our list of the best in 2024.
Meal kits are judged on several factors as we cook our way through a box of recipes.
Testing meal kits for CNET means rolling up our sleeves and cooking at least one week’s worth of meals from each service, often more. How each meal kit tastes, how easy it was to prepare and the portion sizes are all considered. We also evaluate the website and how easy it is to navigate along with determining how easy it is to pause, cancel or change your order at any given time. To learn more, we have an in-depth look at how we test meal kits here at CNET.
We carefully tested every prepared meal delivery service on this list.
To test each meal delivery service, we tried at least five and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service. I chose a range of meals from the various menu and meal plan offerings and took note of the ordering process, recipe variety and information available.
I reheated meals according to the instructions. If there were none, I heated them the way I would if left to my own devices. Often that meant warming gently in a nonstick skillet or reheating in my air fryer. Many of the meal delivery services offer a microwave heating option, but I almost always found that produced worse results than my trusted methods, even if they typically take a few seconds longer.
What’s the most popular keto meal delivery?
Are there keto meal kits?
Is the keto diet healthy?