Last updated: 7 August 2026
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
The number one question people ask about Grubby is simple: how much does Grubby cost? The number two question, naturally, is whether it is actually worth it. So here is the full pricing breakdown, the maths we have done on our own weekly spend, and the portion trick that quietly changes the whole value equation.
We have a referral partnership with Grubby. Our opinions and pricing analysis are independent, and we have been paying for and cooking Grubby meals for over a year.
Want money off your first Grubby box?
Before you price anything up, our Grubby discount page keeps the current welcome offer and codes up to date.
Let us get this out of the way first. Grubby is not the cheapest way to eat. If pure cost-per-calorie is your metric, then a bag of rice and some tinned beans will always win. But that is not really the comparison, is it? The honest comparison is Grubby versus what you would actually eat on a Tuesday night when you are tired and cannot be bothered to cook.
With that framing in mind, let us walk through exactly what Grubby costs, then work out the real number once you factor in portions and waste.
The sticker price
Grubby is a fully plant-based recipe box, so every weekly delivery arrives with pre-portioned fresh ingredients and chef-written recipe cards. The price depends on two choices: how many people you are feeding, and how many meals you want each week. Here is the current pricing at the time of writing.
| Box for 2 people | Box price | Per meal | Per portion (as sold) | Per portion (leftovers hack) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 meals | £29.00 | £14.50 | £7.25 | £3.63 |
| 3 meals | £36.75 | £12.25 | £6.13 | £3.06 |
| 4 meals | £48.50 | £12.13 | £6.06 | £3.03 |
| 5 meals | £57.50 | £11.50 | £5.75 | £2.88 |
| Box for 4 people | Box price | Per meal | Per portion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 meals | £48.50 | £24.25 | £6.06 |
| 3 meals | £61.99 | £20.66 | £5.17 |
| 4 meals | £75.99 | £19.00 | £4.75 |
| 5 meals | £89.99 | £18.00 | £4.50 |
So at first glance, £48.50 for four meals for two people is clearly not cheap. That works out at £12.13 per meal, or £6.06 per person per meal. For context, a Tesco meal deal is around £3.90, while a typical Deliveroo order lands somewhere between £15 and £20 a head. In other words, Grubby sits right in the middle of that range. We usually order the four-meal box for two, and occasionally bump up to five meals when the week looks busy.
"Grubby is not cheap. But the meals we were actually eating before Grubby weren't cheap either. They were just worse."
Delivery: the hidden cost, and how to kill it
Standard delivery adds £4.99 per box. That sounds small, yet it stacks up fast. Over a full year of weekly orders, you would pay roughly £260 in delivery fees alone. Fortunately, there is an easy fix.
Grubby Plus is the subscription that removes the delivery charge entirely. At the time of writing it costs £49.99 for a year, or £5.99 a month if you would rather spread it out, and it gives you free standard delivery on every box. The annual maths is straightforward: at £4.99 a delivery, Grubby Plus pays for itself after about ten boxes. If you order weekly, then it has already saved you money before the end of your third month.
We signed up for Grubby Plus once we knew we were sticking with it, and for anyone ordering regularly it is close to a no-brainer. Prices can change, so it is always worth checking the current figure inside the app before you commit.
The portion hack that changes everything
Here is the single most important thing we have learned, and it is the bit that reframes the entire cost conversation. Most Grubby meals are labelled for two people, but in practice the portions are generous enough to feed closer to four. We are not the only ones who have noticed this either. One long-time Trustpilot reviewer put it neatly, writing that their "weekly box for 2 would easily feed 3", with a non-vegan partner happily finishing the leftovers.
So we cook one meal, eat half for dinner, then keep the rest for the next evening. That simple habit effectively doubles the number of dinners per box. Our usual four-meal box therefore becomes eight dinners across the week, which covers more than a full week of evening meals for the two of us.
What we actually pay per week
Four-meal box for two: £48.50
Delivery: £0 (we have Grubby Plus)
Dinners we get from it, with leftovers: 8
Real cost per dinner for two: £6.06, or £3.03 per person
That £3.03 figure is the number that changes the conversation. With leftovers factored in, our usual four-meal box works out at roughly £3 per person per dinner. That is less than a Tesco meal deal, for a chef-quality vegan meal cooked from fresh ingredients. Honestly, once you see it that way, the sticker price starts to look very different.
How it compares to the competition
Grubby does not exist in a vacuum, so let us line it up against the other big UK recipe boxes. The table below shows the cheapest per-portion price at full list rate, whether the box is fully vegan, and the standard delivery charge. All figures were verified in May 2026, and intro discounts can lower the first few boxes for everyone.
| Meal kit | From (per portion) | Fully vegan? | Delivery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grubby | £5.75 | Yes, every recipe | £4.99 (free with Plus) |
| Gousto | £2.99 | No, some vegan options | £3.99 |
| HelloFresh | £3.75 | No, a few vegan meals weekly | £4.99 |
| Mindful Chef | £6.71 | No, vegan options labelled | £5.99 |
| allplants | No longer trading | Was fully vegan | n/a |
So Grubby is more expensive per box than Gousto or HelloFresh. However, neither of those is fully plant-based, and in our experience the vegan recipe quality is simply not in the same league. Mindful Chef is actually pricier than Grubby per portion, and although its meals are good, we think Grubby's recipes are more creative and more confidently vegan. You can see the full head-to-head in our comparison of Grubby and Mindful Chef, and a wider view in our roundup of the best vegan meal kits in the UK.
One note on allplants, since people still ask. It entered administration in November 2024 and was wound down, and the brand name has since been bought by Ella Mills' Plants business. If you are searching for an allplants box today, that is why you cannot find one.
How it compares to cooking from scratch
Time for an honest section. Cooking a similar-quality meal entirely from scratch would cost less in raw ingredients, probably somewhere between £3 and £5 per meal for two. On paper, that wins.
But that figure ignores the parts that do not show on a till receipt. It does not account for the time spent meal planning, the trip to the shop for specific ingredients, or the waste from buying a full bunch of coriander when you only need a tablespoon. Once you value your time at all, the gap narrows quickly. We dug into this trade-off in more detail in our look at vegan meal kits versus supermarket costs, and the short version is that the raw-ingredient saving is real but smaller than it first appears.
How it compares to eating out
This is where Grubby genuinely shines. A comparable vegan main in a mid-market London restaurant costs roughly £15 to £20 a head, and that climbs past £30 once you add a starter, a pudding and a drink. Outside London, vegan mains tend to sit around £10 to £14.
Against those numbers, Grubby at £3 to £6 per portion delivers quality that rivals or beats many vegan restaurant meals we have eaten. That is not an exaggeration. The jerk tofu burger we cooked last month was better than anything we have had in a vegan restaurant this year. If you want a sense of the dishes themselves, we wrote up the Grubby meals we loved this month, and there are plenty of summer-friendly ideas in our best vegan BBQ recipes too.
"Our food waste dropped to almost nothing. No more half-used jars of paste going furry in the fridge. No more bags of spinach turning to soup in the drawer. That saving doesn't show on the receipt, but it's real."
The savings that don't show on a receipt
Where the hidden value adds up
1. Reduced food waste. No more wilting herbs, half-used jars, or forgotten vegetables sliding to the back of the fridge.
2. Fewer impulse buys. When your dinners are already sorted, you walk into the supermarket with a much shorter list.
3. Fewer takeaways. Grubby is usually quicker and cheaper than ordering in on a tired evening.
4. No meal-planning time. No Sunday-evening recipe scrolling and no shopping-list admin.
We reckon we save somewhere between £20 and £30 a week in avoided waste, skipped impulse buys, and the takeaways we no longer order. That more than offsets the Grubby cost for us. If you want to squeeze your regular shop even further on top, our guide to cashback on groceries covers the apps and tricks we use.
Grubby vs cooking from scratch vs eating out
Grubby (with leftovers hack): around £3 per person per dinner, zero planning, almost no waste.
Cooking from scratch: £3 to £5 per meal in ingredients, but add your time, the shop, and the waste.
Eating out: £15 to £20 a head in London for a comparable vegan main, often more.
Who Grubby is, and isn't, for
No box suits everyone, so here is our honest read on the fit.
Grubby is for you if: you want high-quality vegan meals without the meal-planning grind, you are a couple or a family who eats out or orders in fairly often, or you are trying to eat more plants but keep running short on inspiration.
Grubby probably is not for you if: you are on a very tight food budget and genuinely happy cooking everything from scratch, you actually enjoy meal planning and shopping as a hobby, or you only eat one or two meals at home each week. In those cases, the per-portion cost will be hard to justify.
How to get started for less
If you do want to try it, then there is no need to pay full price on box one. Our Grubby discount takes up to 40% off your first box, with 20% off the next two. Our advice is to start small: pick a two or three-meal box first, test the portion sizes for yourself, and then scale up to a four-meal box once you know exactly how far the leftovers stretch in your house.
For the full picture on taste, packaging and the cooking experience, our in-depth Grubby review goes well beyond the price. You can also read more about the brand and current menu on the official Grubby website.
We have a referral partnership with Grubby, which means we earn a small commission if you sign up through our link. This costs you nothing, and in most cases it gives you a discount on your first box. Our pricing analysis and opinions remain independent.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Grubby cost per week?
For two people, Grubby costs £29.00 a week for two meals, rising to £57.50 for five meals. For four people, prices run from £48.50 to £89.99 a week. Standard delivery adds £4.99 per box unless you have Grubby Plus.
How much is Grubby per portion?
At face value, a two-person box works out between £5.75 and £7.25 per portion depending on size. However, because the portions are generous, we routinely split each meal across two dinners. With that leftovers hack, our four-meal box drops to about £3.03 per person.
Is Grubby worth the money?
In our view, yes, provided you value convenience and you would otherwise eat out or order in. It is not the cheapest meal kit per portion, but the recipe quality is genuinely high and the waste reduction is real. If your only metric is raw cost, then cooking from scratch will always win.
Is Grubby cheaper than eating out?
Comfortably, yes. A comparable vegan main costs £15 to £20 a head in London, whereas Grubby lands at roughly £3 to £6 per portion. So for the price of one restaurant dinner, you can cook several Grubby meals at home.
How much is Grubby delivery?
Standard delivery is £4.99 per box. Alternatively, Grubby Plus costs £49.99 a year or £5.99 a month and removes the delivery charge entirely. For weekly orderers, the annual plan pays for itself after about ten boxes.
What is Grubby Plus?
Grubby Plus is the optional subscription that gives free standard delivery on every box. You can pay £49.99 once for a year, or £5.99 each month. The box itself is still paid for separately, so think of it as a delivery saver rather than a discount on the food.
Is Grubby cheaper than HelloFresh?
No, HelloFresh is cheaper per portion, starting around £3.75 against Grubby's £5.75. That said, HelloFresh is not fully plant-based and offers only a handful of vegan meals each week. For dedicated vegan cooking, we think Grubby justifies the gap.
Can you make Grubby meals stretch for more portions?
Often, yes. Many meals are labelled for two but comfortably feed three or even four, which several reviewers have flagged independently. We cook once, eat half, then have the rest the next day, which effectively doubles the dinners per box and slashes the real cost per portion.
More from CoolCuration
- Gousto referral and pricing - the budget-friendly box if pure cost per portion is your priority.
- Gift guide for foodies - thoughtful presents for the keen cooks in your life.
- Overherd oat powder - a clever plant-based pantry staple that travels and stores well.
- Oddbox discount code - rescue wonky fruit and veg and cut your food waste further.
- Airtime Rewards cashback - earn money back on the shopping you already do.
Prices and offers were accurate at the time of publication and may change. Average UK grocery spend figures are drawn from GOV.UK Family Food statistics, and our wider meal-kit comparison draws on the MoneySavingExpert meal box comparison.
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