What is the best meal delivery service for one person?

For a single eater, a prepared-meal service that portions one serving, such as Factor or CookUnity, avoids the leftover problem. If you want to cook, Blue Apron and Home Chef sell two-serving kits, and each also has a single-serving prepared line.

Can I order a meal kit for just one person?

Usually not as one serving. HelloFresh says it has no single-serving plan and suggests refrigerating half of a two-serving recipe. Home Chef's standard menu starts at 2 servings, and Blue Apron's kit menus are 2-serving and 4-serving.

Is meal delivery cheaper than cooking for one?

Usually not per meal. CookUnity, for example, publishes $10.39 to $12.69 per meal plus a $9.99 or $11.99 delivery fee. It can still save money if it replaces takeout or groceries you would otherwise throw away. See our cost-per-meal guide for the arithmetic.

Do I have to commit to a subscription?

Factor says there are no commitments and that you can pause, skip weeks or cancel. HelloFresh, Home Chef, Blue Apron and CookUnity also let you skip or cancel, each with its own cutoff, so check the deadline before you rely on it.

Which single-serving option is best if I hate cooking?

Factor's meals arrive ready to heat and are described as never frozen. CookUnity is the other fully prepared option here. Home Chef's Tempo meals are microwaveable single servings, and Blue Apron's Prepared & Ready line offers a 1-serving size.

Best Meal Delivery for One Person: Which Services Actually Portion for a Single Eater

Most meal kits are built around two servings, which leaves a solo eater with leftovers, waste or both. Here is how Factor, HelloFresh, Home Chef, Blue Apron and CookUnity handle a household of one, based on what each publishes.

Cooking for one is the awkward case in meal delivery. Nearly every meal kit is sized in pairs, and the economics of a weekly box assume someone is eating the second portion. This guide sorts the main services by how well they actually fit a household of one, using what each company publishes about its serving sizes and plans. We did not order or taste any of these meals; everything here comes from the services’ own pages, checked in September 2026.

The short version, by kind of solo eater

If you are…	Look at	Why
Someone who wants zero cooking	Factor or CookUnity	Single portions, ready to heat
Fine with a microwave meal on busy nights	Home Chef’s Tempo line, Blue Apron’s Prepared & Ready	Single-serving options inside a kit brand
Someone who likes to cook and will eat leftovers	HelloFresh, Home Chef, Blue Apron	Two-serving kits; you get lunch the next day

Prepared meals: the natural fit

Factor has a page aimed squarely at solo eaters. It says every solo meal is fresh and has never been frozen, that meals arrive ready to heat in a couple of minutes, and that they ship in insulated boxes with gel packs. It also states there are no commitments and that you can pause, skip weeks or cancel. Factor shows its per-meal price only after you enter a ZIP code, so we are not quoting a figure here; check the price on your own checkout screen. Our Factor review goes into the menu and nutrition panels.

CookUnity publishes a price range: $10.39 to $12.69 per meal depending on plan size, with a flat delivery fee of $9.99 or $11.99 depending on ZIP code, as of September 2026. It says there is no membership or setup fee and that you only pay for the meals you pick. Because you choose individual meals, a plan of four or six a week suits one person well. The larger the plan, the lower the per-meal price, but a bigger plan only saves money if you will actually eat everything. Details are in our CookUnity review, and the two are compared head to head in Factor vs CookUnity.

Kit brands with a single-serving escape hatch

Home Chef sells its standard menu in 2-serving increments, so one person cannot order a single serving of a regular kit. Its help center describes a separate brand, Tempo, made of single-serving microwaveable meals that it says are ready in four minutes, under 600 calories and carry 30-plus grams of protein. That is Home Chef’s own description; we have not checked the panels meal by meal. If you want to cook some nights and not others, mixing standard meals with Tempo is possible on paper, but the help center notes you can only order from one menu per account each week, so you would switch plans between weeks rather than mix them in the same box. Read the Home Chef review for the rest.

Blue Apron offers a 2-serving and a 4-serving menu, plus a Prepared & Ready line whose meals come in 1-, 2-, 3- or 4-serving sizes, according to its site. For a solo eater the 1-serving prepared meals are the relevant part. The kit menu still works if you are happy to eat a recipe twice. See the Blue Apron review.

Kits for one, honestly

HelloFresh is direct about this on its own page for singles: it does not offer a dedicated single-serving plan. Recipes are designed for two, and the company’s suggestion is to refrigerate half and eat it another day. That is a real option, and it means one cook session yields two dinners. But it also means you are committing to eating the same dish twice in a row or freezing half, and you should plan for that before you choose recipes. A shipping fee applies on all deliveries after the first box. Our HelloFresh review covers menu breadth, and the best meal kits roundup compares the category.

Storage, fridge space and the one-person reality

Cooking for one changes practical details as much as price. Prepared meals live in the fridge, and a week of them takes real space; Factor’s page calls its meals fresh and never frozen, which is good for taste and bad for a plan that lets meals sit. Most people end up eating the earliest-dated meals first and leaving the rest for later in the week, so ordering fewer meals than you think you need is safer than ordering more. If you order eight and eat six, you paid for two you did not want.

Kits raise a different issue. A two-serving recipe uses a full set of ingredients, including things like a single lime or a sauce packet, so cooking half a recipe is not an option and cooking the whole thing means the same dinner two nights running. That suits some people and bores others. Check whether the menu you choose has recipes that reheat well; we cannot vouch for that from the menus alone, and we did not cook any of them.

What we would not assume

Two things are easy to get wrong. First, “for one” in marketing does not always mean one serving of every meal; read the serving count on each item before you confirm a box. Second, prices shown before you enter a ZIP code are often promotional. The number that matters is the total on the final checkout screen, with shipping, divided by the number of meals you will actually eat.

How to decide

Count the meals you actually skip. If you eat out or improvise three or four dinners a week, a plan of four to six meals fits better than a full week.
Decide how much you want to cook. Prepared meals cost more per meal than groceries, but they replace the decision fatigue as well as the cooking.
Price the delivery fee into the meal. A flat fee spreads thinly across a big order and heavily across a small one. Ordering four CookUnity meals at the top of its published range with an $11.99 fee is a very different per-meal number than ordering twelve.
Read the skip and cancel rules before you pay. A solo eater is the person most likely to travel or eat elsewhere; our guide to skipping and cancelling lists the deadlines.

For a wider field, the best meal delivery services page ranks the category overall, and cheapest meal delivery services is the place to start if budget rules everything else.

If you have a health condition or a specific diet, talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before choosing a meal plan; this guide is not medical advice.