Box size
Choosing a box size you will finish
Providers size their boxes by how many people live at the address. You should size yours by how many meals you will cook in a week. Those two numbers are usually not the same, and the gap is where the money leaks: the same four-person box costs more per week at five meals than at three, even though both are called the four-person box.
What each provider actually sells
The three providers publish different box sizes, and they do not agree on how many meals you can take out of one. Read on 2026-10-04:
| Provider | Box sizes (people) | Meals per box | Price is quoted |
|---|---|---|---|
| HelloFresh | 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | 2 to 6 | Per serving |
| Dinnerly | 2, 4, 6 | 2 to 6, except the 6-person box which stops at 5 | Per box, shipping included |
| My Foodie Box | Not published as a grid | 2, 3 or 4 servings | Starting price only |
Two things in that table change the arithmetic. Dinnerly’s six-person box stops at five meals, so the six-person option is not simply a bigger version of the four-person one. And My Foodie Box publishes no size grid at all — only that meals “start at \$6.25 per serve”. This site therefore cannot cost a My Foodie Box box, and the calculator says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.
Why more meals in one box costs less per serve
This is the part worth checking rather than assuming. Take HelloFresh’s four-person box, priced per serving on 2026-10-04:
| Meals a week | Per serving | Servings a week |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | \$13.59 | 8 |
| 3 | \$11.29 | 12 |
| 4 | \$10.39 | 16 |
| 5 | \$9.59 | 20 |
| 6 | \$8.99 | 24 |
The per-serving price falls as you add meals, and it falls fast: the six-meal plan is 34% cheaper per serving than the two-meal plan. Since HelloFresh bills per serving, a box you do not finish is pure waste, and waste is real money at \$9.59 a serving.
Dinnerly works the other way: it sells a box, and that box price already contains the \$11.99 shipping. Each extra box you order is another box price, and on some delivery areas another charge on top. So for Dinnerly the question is not only how big the box is, but how many boxes land in a month.
One number on the HelloFresh plan page contradicts the table above it: the introduction copy calls the four-person, five-meal box “$165 + shipping, that’s $8.25 per serving”, while the table says \$9.59. Both are on their site. This page uses the table, because every other box size appears only in the table — and the calculator prints the conflict beside the result rather than quietly picking one.
Matching the box to the meals you will cook
Work from the week you actually had, not the week you imagine. Two questions settle it:
- How many nights did you cook from scratch in the last fortnight? Count nights, not people. That number divided by two is roughly the meals-per-week a box should contain.
- How often do you already cook from the fridge? Meal kits replace planned cooking, not all cooking. If you already eat leftovers two nights a week, ordering for five nights leaves food going spare at \$9.59 a serving.
Then put that number into the calculator as your meals per week. It will show the weekly and monthly cost for exactly that box, and it will show the ongoing cost — the one that recurs after any introductory offer ends.
What this page does not tell you
We do not estimate how much food you will waste, and we cannot: waste depends on your cooking, your freezer and your appetite, so any figure here would be invented. Nor do we track how often each provider rotates its menu, which is the other thing that changes what a box is worth. Both are things only a subscriber’s own experience can answer.