I’m a Dietitian Who Tried Dinnerly for a Week — Here’s Where This Budget Meal Kit Surprised Me

This is where Dinnerly comes in. The service offers meals that support your pocketbook, and it doesn’t skimp on flavor or options for picky eaters and folks with specialized diets. Menus are filled with meals that match up with categories like gluten-free, low-carb, vegetarian, vegan, GLP-1 friendly, high-fiber, high-protein, low-sodium, Mediterranean diet, and even kid-friendly options. So there’s something for everyone. Even better, most Dinnerly meals take less than 30 minutes to make.

My household has just two adults, but we’re busy people with decision fatigue, especially when it comes to shopping for groceries and answering the dreaded question, “What should we do for dinner?” We were gifted with a week of Dinnerly meals of our own choosing to see what the experience would be like. Here’s how it went.

Signing up for Dinnerly is easy.

Simply go to the homepage and click “Choose meal kit.” From there, you’ll have the option to choose your menu preferences. This helps Dinnerly recommend recipes to you each week, but you can change your preferences any time.

Next, you pick how many servings you’d like of each meal and how many meals you want to receive each week. On the next page, you’ll enter your ZIP code and email address. Then you'll enter your credit card information and choose what day you’d like your meals delivered. Finally, the last step is the fun one: choosing your meals.

Choosing the Meals

With Dinnerly, you can choose your meals up to four weeks in advance. If you provided dietary preferences when you set up your plan, the platform will automatically select meals based on those preferences. However, you always have the option to see and select from the whole menu for the week (there are more than 100 meals to choose from).

Additionally, Dinnerly offers a “flexible subscription,” meaning you can skip weeks (you'll need to do this a week in advance), change the number of meals you’d like (up to six per week), or cancel your subscription at any time.

Ashley Brafman, MPH, RD, who is based in Michigan and tested Dinnerly, had similarly positive things to say about the menu. “I like the variety of recipes available, including a wide range of flavors, proteins, and cuisines,” she says, “and I appreciate that they source produce directly from the farmers.”

The menu itself is pretty impressive in both size and variety; however, you’ll see some repeat recipes and ingredients. But plenty of these are swapped out from week to week, so you don’t have to have the same meal twice if you prefer variety. I would’ve liked to have seen a bit more variety, especially in the whole grain and vegetable categories, though I’m sure that’s part of what helps Dinnerly keep costs down.

Meals can lean a bit basic or comfort food-y, with pastas, salads, and some meat-starch-vegetable plates, as well as grain bowls, tacos, and soups. While some other, more-diverse flavors are included, it’s definitely approachable for pickier, Westernized palates, with ingredients like teriyaki sauce, hoisin, or some basic taco seasonings, jerk seasoning, or Harissa paste. That said, the meals are very appetizing overall, and I had a hard time choosing what to eat because so many good options stood out. All in all, it’s not the most diverse menu, but the choices can still be enticing.

For anyone with more of a family focus, it’s worth noting that the recipes that meal delivery services usually tag as “kid-friendly” are more sophisticated than you might imagine, says Christine Byrne, MPH, RD, in Raleigh, North Carolina. They’re often “tasty meals without complex flavors, like pasta with meat sauce, beef or turkey burgers … [and] the vegetables are often sweeter choices like carrots, peas, corn, and broccoli,” she says.

When I searched Dinnerly’s menu, I really liked how simple it was to filter my options for things like dietary preferences, cooking time, protein type, price category, dish type, and more. Of course, being able to search the menu easily for dietary preferences and allergens is great. But beyond that, filtering for quick and easy meals or types of dishes and cuisines is an excellent feature. I also really enjoyed that when adding a recipe to your box for the week, you usually have the option to substitute or double your protein. While it would be amazing to have fully customizable recipes that let you, say, add more vegetables, this is probably more realistic. Still, it’s a very nice feature if you want more variety or you just prefer more protein.

In addition to offering meal kits, Dinnerly has an online Market where you can shop for grocery essentials. You can have these added to your delivery and skip a trip to the store. The Market also has “quick fix” meals and desserts you can add to your order. Most of these require some cooking, but they tend to come a bit more prepared than other meal kits. I didn’t add any such extras to my meal delivery box. I ended up adding a coconut, apricot, and almond overnight-oatmeal recipe, since I like a quick breakfast option on weekday mornings.

In the end, these are the recipes I chose for my week with Dinnerly:

• Toasted Coconut Chia Overnight Oats
• Gyro-Spiced Chicken and Kale Tabbouleh With Hummus
• Hoisin Beef Rice Bowl with Pickled Cukes and Spicy Mayo
• Detroit-Style Four Cheese Pizza With Pepperoni
• Mushroom Quesabirria-Style Tacos With Consomme
• Chicken Taco Salad With Guac, Corn, and Tomatoes

How Much Does Dinnerly Cost?

Dinnerly meals start at around $5.99 per serving. Total weekly delivery prices range from about $46 to $227, depending on the number of servings and the number of meals you choose. Customers can choose two, four, or six servings per meal and have between two and six meals delivered per week. Here’s the pricing breakdown:

Shipping is an additional $11.99 per box.

Dinnerly’s recipes fall into four pricing categories: standard, customizable, premium, and saver. Standard recipes are included in the base cost of your box, while some customizable and premium selections come with an additional fee that varies by recipe. Saver recipes, on the other hand, cost up to $1 per serving less than standard recipes, and they can bring down the total cost of your box; these tend to be more basic meals, though.

Overall, Dinnerly’s price per meal is on the lower end compared with similar companies. In fact, Byrne notes that it’s one of the most affordable options out there. “Dinnerly has a lower price point than most services, so it’s a great way to stick to a weekly food budget,” she says.

That said, if you really want to leverage Dinnerly to keep your budget in check, keep an eye on the extras and try the saver recipes first to get the best bang for your buck.

When editor Ashley Ziegler tested the service, her box arrived with everything “neatly packaged and undamaged.” I, unfortunately, didn’t have the same luck. While everything was packaged in layers within the box and felt cold to the touch, some items arrived smashed. Those included a cucumber that ended up being only about half usable because it was squished; same with some of the cilantro. The aluminum pan that came with my pizza was so badly crunched that I had to spend a few minutes trying to re-bend it out to make it usable. Ultimately, I salvaged and supplemented enough to make it work, and I didn’t feel that any of this was worth contacting customer service about.

Cooking and Preparing the Meals

Each meal came with a large, color-printed recipe. I received an ingredients list of what was sent, items you’d need from your own pantry, a list of allergens, and some basic nutrition, in addition to the instructions for preparing each meal.

I wish Dinnerly included some step-by-step photos for the recipes, as I think that would be helpful for beginner cooks. But overall, the recipes were clear, concise, and easy to follow. I found the time estimates pretty spot-on for most home cooks. I run a little on the quick side, so if you’re experienced in the kitchen, you may also find the recipes take less time than estimated. I also found the optional steps or tips to be helpful: for example, how to get a crispier bottom crust for the pizza. There were also some instances in which you’d reuse a pan. (As someone who hates dishes and cleanup, I really appreciated this.)

Most of the recipes felt pretty reasonable for a weeknight meal. My one caveat is that I had to pull from my own pantry a bit more than I thought I would. I’m totally fine using my own cooking oil, but one of the recipes expected me to have apple cider vinegar (luckily I do). Two even asked me to use my own garlic, which I really felt should have come with the box. Aside from that, the cooking process was streamlined and easy. It would be a breeze for an experienced cook or a great starting point for a novice.

Tasting the Meals

I have to say that despite the budget nature of the meals from Dinnerly, I have zero complaints about the flavors. There were maybe some places where you could get more complexity by riffing on the recipes with ingredients of your own. But overall, things tasted pretty solid and as expected based on descriptions and photos.

We had two-portion meals for everything, and I found that for the entrees, the portion sizes were pretty spot-on. Still, I felt that one or two of the meals could’ve benefited from an additional ingredient or side. I actually got three portions out of the breakfast overnight oats, as they were really filling and made a pretty large serving.

For the Mushroom Quesabirria-Style Tacos With Consomme, I ended up adding a side of beans. But if you’re eating this as a GLP-1 friendly meal (as it’s labeled for), you might be fine with the smaller serving. For the pizza, I ended up adding a side salad just for some freshness to contrast with the pizza. Another GLP-1 friendly meal, the Chicken Taco Salad, was probably the best match-up for a smaller-appetite meal, as it felt quite simple and light. If I had it again, I might add some black beans to the mix or maybe make a creamy avocado-based dressing to give it more staying power.

I’d call the flavors solid and the portions overall adequate, but not necessarily generous, with the exception of the overnight oats. It might work better for someone on a GLP-1 or for those who are feeding kids, so there’s less of a need for larger portions. But if you have a typical adult appetite, I wouldn’t expect leftovers.

Nutritional Quality of the Meals

Dinnerly definitely has a varied menu with meals on both ends of the nutrition spectrum. But one of my biggest issues is that it makes the nutrition information for each recipe somewhat difficult to access. You can easily filter and search the menu for a variety of dietary preferences, but if you want to see the actual nutrition numbers, you have to click on the recipe page itself. Even there, you’ll only see calories, fat, protein, and carbs.

While these nutrients are helpful, they don’t tell the whole story. If you want to see something like sodium or fiber, you have to navigate to an additional page. And in some cases, that information wasn’t provided. I’d love to see more-complete nutrition information displayed directly on the main recipe page rather than having to dig for it, especially since Dinnerly already makes allergen information readily available. I think the point of recipe selection is where nutrition information matters most, but those same basic nutrients are also the only ones displayed on the printed recipe cards. You can find more-extensive nutrition information in the app.

“In the app,” Brafman says, “I was able to see more nutrition information for each recipe, including the amount of saturated fat, sodium, dietary fiber, and total sugars. In addition, allergen information is clearly listed so you can quickly see whether or not the recipe contains anything someone needs to avoid.” In fact, in the app, you can pull up full details about which ingredients in each recipe contain the allergen. “So if you accidentally selected a recipe with an allergen, you can see which of the ingredients you need to avoid and could still use the rest,” Brafman says, which is a really handy tool to keep you and your family safe.

As far as the nutrition itself is concerned, the recipes from Dinnerly fall across all areas of the nutrition spectrum: Some are quite high in sodium, while the menu search filter shows several that would be compliant with a low-sodium diet. The same goes for most of the major nutrients. But with that being said, Brafman notes that Dinnerly may not be the best fit for people who have to follow a special diet for health reasons, like those who have high blood pressure, heart disease, or those on low-sodium or low-fat diets.

I was happy to see several meal options with the “GLP-1 friendly” filter, but some felt more appropriate than others. While I was glad to see that even the vegetarian options had more than 20 g of protein per meal, some didn’t have quite the amount of fiber I’d want to see. Also, some were heavier in fat content, which may not end up sitting well if you’re dealing with GLP-1-related stomach issues.

As with any of the meals, healthier options are available on the menu. And it’s always good to have a mix of foods that meet nutrition needs and those that bring the fun. Dinnerly has a decent mix of both, though it may take a bit of a hunt to see precisely what the nutrition is for each meal.

Dinnerly stands out from competitors largely for its pricing. It comes in at around half the cost of some other popular services like Sunbasket, Green Chef, or its sister service, Marley Spoon. While these other services might have Dinnerly beat in terms of upgrades like organic ingredients, Dinnerly’s price point and picky eater–friendly meals make it a lot more family-friendly and approachable.

You might think that Dinnerly’s budget approach would have it lagging behind on dietary accommodations or weekly menu choices, but it’s actually pretty on par with some major competitors in this area, like HelloFresh. While most meal delivery services offer numerous meal options each week, Dinnerly’s weekly menu is vast and caters to a range of diets: vegetarian, low-carb, no added gluten, and low-calorie, to name a few. Higher-cost competitors have either a similar variety of meals and diets or actually offer less than Dinnerly.

Across almost all categories — including price, menu variety, and dietary accommodations — EveryPlate is Dinnerly’s closest competitor. EveryPlate might have a slight edge in terms of how easy the nutrition information is to access when choosing recipes. But all things considered, if you’re looking for easy meals that prioritize budget, Dinnerly shouldn't be overlooked. It might just surprise you.

It’s easy to see how Dinnerly can take some of the pressure off of managing the food for a household. From the budget to the planning, shopping, and daily decisions, it makes everything much simpler. I think it could be a great option for couples, college students, or families. And according to Ziegler, the “picky eater approved” recipes were quite helpful for getting a dinner on the table that everyone could enjoy.

That said, you’ll want to consider a few things if you’re concerned mainly with nutrition or allergies, or if you’re on certain medications like a GLP-1. There may be options for you, but they definitely won’t include the full menu. You’ll also have to do your due diligence to ensure that meals meet your individual nutrition needs.

Everyday Health is finding the best meal delivery kits by testing over 50 different services. First, we research and vet the company and its business practices. Next, we consult registered dietitians (RDs) to find out what to look for in meal delivery kits, what to avoid, and about overall nutrition. Finally, we assign professional journalists and/or RDs to try out the service. Ashley Ziegler spent hours familiarizing herself with Dinnerly and its online offerings, gathering expert insight, and cooking and tasting three meal kit recipes to provide honest feedback. Experienced meal-kit tester Tori Martinet, RD, also tried the service for a week. She analyzed it for the nutritional quality of the meals, the overall experience, and its appropriateness for those on GLP-1s.