Vegan Meal Kits — Is It Actually Possible?

Short answer: Yes, you can absolutely eat vegan from a meal kit in 2026 — just not from a kit that's exclusively vegan. Among the six major providers we've tested, there are zero pure, 100% plant-based subscription kits on par with the meat- and seafood-focused giants. What you do get, though, are several kits we call vegan-possible: the menu includes meat, but you can pick the vegetarian and vegan dishes week by week.

That means the real question isn't really whether it's possible, but how good the selection is, and whether you end up with a properly balanced, nutrient-rich diet. The difference on the plate is significant: the most plant-forward kit, Green Chef, delivers 322 g of fruits & vegetables per serving, while the most budget-friendly, HelloFresh, comes in at 177 g — nearly half as much. In this guide, we walk honestly through the real options — Green Chef, HelloFresh, and Sunbasket — and look at selection, price, and nutrition, so you can choose the kit that fits your plant-based lifestyle. The figures come from our own benchmarking and official dietary guidelines.

When people search for a "vegan meal kit," they often mean two very different things. One is a 100% vegan kit, where the entire lineup is plant-based — no meat, seafood, eggs, or dairy at all. The other is a vegan-possible kit: a standard, broad meal kit where you filter the menu yourself and pick only the plant-based dishes. That's the same distinction we use in our roundup of vegetarian meal kits and in our guide to meatless meal kits.

The difference matters because it determines how large your real selection actually is. In a 100% vegan kit, everything on the menu is relevant to you. In a vegan-possible kit, you're sharing the menu with meat-eaters, and the number of purely vegan dishes can swing from week to week. Some weeks there's plenty to choose from; other weeks, less. If you're flexitarian — mostly plant-based but eating meat occasionally — the vegan-possible model is actually ideal, and you can see the best picks on our flexitarian meal kits page.

Right now, a pure, dedicated vegan kit doesn't exist among the major national players. That said, several kits have become plant-forward enough that vegan-possible covers most people's needs in practice — if you choose wisely.

If you want to get as close as possible to a genuinely plant-forward kit, Green Chef is the obvious first choice. Its recipes are 100% USDA-certified organic, and it scores 48.7 out of 100 in our dietary-guidelines benchmark — by far the highest of all six kits. Concretely, that means 322 g of fruits & vegetables per serving (versus HelloFresh's 177 g) and just 47 g of meat/seafood per serving, where the meat-heavy kits run over 100 g. If you want to understand what that score covers, we've explained the methodology in plant score explained.

Green Chef, part of the HelloFresh family of brands, is the only major kit with a dedicated Plant-Based (vegan) plan, alongside Keto, Mediterranean, Protein, and Gluten-Free options — typically 3–4 recipes per week. Pricing starts at $13.99/serving, plus shipping of $10.99, and new customers get a welcome discount on their first order. It's the priciest of the six, but that premium buys the organic certification and the dedicated diet plans — not the plant-based food itself. Want to dig into the details? We have a full Green Chef review, and if organic sourcing matters most to you, we round up the real organic options on organic meal kits.

HelloFresh isn't a plant-forward kit at its core, but it is vegan-possible thanks to a broad menu system with multiple meal plans — including a vegetarian plan — and a large weekly selection you can filter. You simply pick the plant-based and vegetarian dishes and build your own green week.

Its strength is price and flexibility: HelloFresh starts at $10.99/serving (dropping further for larger boxes), delivers nationwide, and offers a welcome discount of up to roughly 50% off your first box — making it one of the best options if you're after cheap meal kits. The weakness is nutrition: its plant score is only 25.3/100, with 177 g of fruits & vegetables and just 14 g of legumes per serving — the lowest in the field. You can eat plant-forward at HelloFresh, but you have to actively choose it, and the selection of purely vegan dishes is smaller than the vegetarian one. Its entry price is hard to beat, though. Our full HelloFresh review digs into both the menu and the complaints that come up most often (delivery and cancellation).

If you have neither the time nor the interest in standing at the stove, Sunbasket is the plant-friendly shortcut. It's a premium, prepared kit where much of the food arrives ready-to-heat — about 2 minutes of prep plus roughly 25 minutes in the oven for many dishes. The lineup includes vegetarian and vegan options, and shipping runs about $9.99 nationwide.

Pricing starts at around $11.49/serving, and new customers get up to $90 off their first three boxes. On Trustpilot, Sunbasket scores well at 4.4/5 from thousands of reviews, with praise centered on time savings and convenience. Keep in mind that the most common criticism is that taste and quality can be inconsistent and some portions run small — so it's a trade-off between convenience and control over your food. Read our full Sunbasket review before you commit.

The three paths to plant-based eating differ mostly in how much cooking you do yourself, how plant-forward the food is, and what it costs. Here are the key numbers side by side:

Here's how to read the table: Green Chef clearly wins on plant-forwardness and organic sourcing, but costs the most among meal kits. HelloFresh wins on price and selection, but is the weakest nutritionally — you do the work, and you choose the plant-based dishes yourself. Sunbasket wins on pure convenience and customer satisfaction, but wasn't included in the dietary-guidelines benchmark, so we can't put a number on how plant-forward it is. If you're generally unsure how to weigh price against plant-forwardness, we have a step-by-step guide in how to choose a meal kit.

Most Americans eat far less produce than they think. The USDA Dietary Guidelines recommend roughly 2–3 cups of vegetables and fruit a day and around 3 cups of legumes a week — but national dietary surveys consistently find that only a small share of the population meets the vegetable and fruit recommendation, and legume intake lags even further behind, with a large share of adults eating close to none in a typical week.

That's the gap a meal kit has to close if it's going to make a real difference. Both the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the World Health Organization point toward a predominantly plant-based diet with limited red and processed meat. A vegan-possible kit, then, isn't just a niche option for vegans — it's a practical tool for shifting everyday eating in the direction the guidelines actually recommend. But it only works if you actively choose the plant-based dishes, because the menu won't do it for you.

The real pitfall with plant-based meal-kit food isn't protein itself — it's legumes. Beans, lentils, and chickpeas are the backbone of a healthy vegan diet, and dietary guidelines point to roughly 3 cups a week. None of the kits come close per serving: Green Chef leads with the most legumes per serving, Home Chef and Blue Apron trail behind, and HelloFresh comes in lowest. The average across the benchmarked kits is modest at best.

That means two things. First: even the most plant-forward kit covers only a fraction of the recommended legume intake — so you should plan to supplement yourself, for example with a can of chickpeas or lentils in your own snacks and sides. Second: Green Chef gives you a noticeably better starting point than the meat-heavy kits, both on legumes and on the 322 g of fruits & vegetables that gets you more than halfway toward the daily produce target. If you choose a vegan-possible kit like HelloFresh, you need to be extra deliberate about building in protein and fiber yourself — otherwise you risk plant-based dishes that look healthier than they actually are. We go deeper on the general health question in are meal kits healthy?, and if health is your main goal, we round up the best picks on healthy meal kits.

One last, honest note on the numbers: nutrition figures for meal kits are typically calculated from the recipes — not lab-tested. That's true of most research in this space. Our plant score measures alignment with dietary guidelines, not a precise nutrient-by-nutrient breakdown of your exact plate, so treat the figures as a solid directional guide rather than a definitive answer.

There's no single right answer, but there is a right answer for you. If you want the most plant-forward and organic food and don't mind cooking it yourself, Green Chef is the clear choice — just accept that you'll pay the most among meal kits, and that you'll need to supplement legumes yourself.

If price matters most, and you'd rather try plant-based without a big commitment, HelloFresh has the lowest entry price and a vegetarian plan to build on — but be aware that you're responsible for steering toward plant-forward choices yourself. If instead you want everything done for you because life is busy, Sunbasket's prepared meals with vegetarian and vegan options and reasonable shipping are the easiest path — in exchange for giving up a bit of control over taste and portion size.

What all three have in common: there's no commitment. You can pause, skip, or cancel, so the cheapest way to find your favorite is to use a welcome discount on each and taste the difference yourself — see how on our page about meal kits with no commitment. Want to look beyond these three? Compare the full field on vegan meal kits.