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Hungryroot Review: Is This Customizable Meal Delivery Service Right for You?
All testers said this company offers options for many dietary preferences — but that its credit system for meals and grocery items is confusing
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If you have specific dietary preferences or restrictions, it can be difficult to figure out what to have for dinner — especially if you want to try something new. And while meal delivery services let you order a set of meals delivered directly to your door, all services may not offer a great deal of customization.
When our AARP Smart Picks team evaluated the best meal delivery services — testing 15 of these services to help older adults decide whether these offerings might be worth a try — Hungryroot made our list. This service offers prepared meals and meal kits, plus add-on grocery items. Prepared meals just require reheating, while meal kits are boxes filled with the ingredients you need to make a given meal. While some services may allow you to swap a side dish or a protein, this service also allows for additional meal customizations by considering factors like your weekly budget, health goals and dietary preferences. You can go a step beyond swapping proteins and change a sauce or remove an ingredient. It also offers up to 20 dietary filters, which is the most we’ve recorded in our testing.
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Of course, you have many options when it comes to meal delivery services. So, to evaluate these offerings, our AARP Smart Picks team worked with testers ages 50 and older, including members of AARP’s The Ethel community. The Ethel is a free weekly newsletter, website and online community named in honor of AARP founder Ethel Percy Andrus. As part of this process, our lab team ordered meal kits that our older adult testers cooked in our Smart Picks Test Kitchen. Our lab testers evaluated the ordering and shipping process, and our older adult testers evaluated factors like taste, portion size and ease of preparation. To gain further insight into the subject, we also conducted a survey in April 2026 of 300 adults ages 50 and older who were currently using a meal delivery service or had used one in the last 12 months.
How did Hungryroot fare in our assessments of its meal kits and prepared meals? It earned a perfect score for the ability to customize meals, and tester Annie, 62, awarded it near-perfect marks for taste. But Annie and our lab testers said the Hungryroot credit system — which is used to order weekly meals and any add-on groceries — can be confusing. Lab testers also said they didn’t like that you need to enter payment information before you can see meal options for your plan and pricing. Read on to learn more about what stood out about Hungryroot, what you may want to consider before subscribing and whether this meal delivery service could be the right one for you.
What to know about Hungryroot
As noted, Hungryroot offers meal kits, prepared meals and grocery items, which can all be delivered in each weekly offering.
As with other meal delivery services, you’d need a subscription to place orders. If you sign up, you’d first complete a quiz that asks about your household size, dietary needs, health goals and cuisine preferences. The service then uses your answers to build a customized plan for you. You’d also select a plan size based on how many meals you’d like each week, and that plan would start a recurring weekly charge for the same amount of food. You’d have the flexibility to choose your dishes before each round of meal delivery, and your orders can include a combination of ready-to-eat meals, meal kits and grocery items.
While other meal delivery services usually require you to select from a pre-approved list of plan sizes (such as four, six or 10 meals per week), Hungryroot uses a credit system to assign value to each item you add to your box based on your plan size. So, if you sign up, you’d select how many credits you want each week. Each meal kit, prepared meal and grocery item is assigned a credit value, and you shop with your allotted credits for the week.
Since one credit equals about $2.50, the starting price per dinner serving is about 4 credits, or $8.99 when you divide the $8.99 by the $2.50 estimated credit value. Each grocery item will have its own set credit value. For example, a small grocery item — like a can of soda valued at $2.50 — could be worth a single credit with this meal delivery service. If you become a subscriber, you can also pay for add-on credits that you can apply to your meals or grocery items. If you don’t use all of your allotted credits for the week, they’d roll over into a Hungryroot wallet for future use. However, these rollover credits expire 180 days after your last delivery date, so you’d need to use them before then.
This credit system offers more flexibility than the standard meal kit structure, as it, for example, allows you to mix and match grocery items to a greater extent than many meal delivery services. But it may require a learning curve to navigate.
Another thing to know? The Hungryroot ordering process for meals is more customizable than most meal delivery services we’ve tested because of the level of specificity with ingredient and meal creation detail you can achieve across meal kits and prepared meals, thanks to the service’s quiz. Testers said they were impressed with the introductory quiz because it covered preferences, cooking habits, health goals, favorite cuisines, unfavorable food items and more. “I love how customizable the platform is,” said one lab tester after signing up. “It let me swap proteins, which is common, but also sauce, which is rare for a meal delivery service.”
During our evaluation, for instance, Annie gave her meal kit and prepared meal near-top-level scores for convenience, freshness and flavor. However, both Annie and our lab testers said the Hungryroot credit system is confusing. They also said they didn’t like that the meal options and pricing for their plans were not accessible before submitting payment.
- Pros and cons
- Features
Pros
Highly customizable for dietary preferences
Above-average taste scores and fresh ingredients
Ability to add grocery items to weekly orders
Cons
Credit-based pricing system is confusing
Must enter payment information before seeing custom meal plan
Type :Meal kits and prepared meals
Plan options: Varies, based on the types of meals you want
Vegetarian friendly: Yes
Vegan friendly: Yes
Sample of other diets available: Low-sodium, dairy-free, low-sugar, gluten-free, pescatarian, egg-free, peanut-free and shellfish-free
Key takeaways from our testing
Hungryroot offers an extensive set of up to 20 filters for dietary restrictions, protein types and nutrition needs, including plans that it refers to as less sodium, peanut-free and more. Examples of plans offered include dairy-free, gluten-free and high-protein, among others. While it’s common for meal delivery services to offer dietary filters, services usually don’t offer up to 20. This service also allows subscribers to change — and even remove — some individual ingredients. Another pro? For meal kits, Hungryroot goes further by allowing subscribers to swap individual ingredients. "I removed anything I knew I wouldn't actually eat," one lab tester said, "and also swapped out the protein to one I preferred." For older adults seeking a meal delivery service that accommodates specific dietary needs, Hungryroot may be worth considering. We named it the best for dietary restrictions in our review of the best meal delivery services.
In addition, when Annie evaluated a Moroccan vegetable tagine prepared meal and a chile limon chicken kale salad meal kit, she said she “loved” both meals. She gave the vegetable tagine a perfect score and the kale salad a very good score for taste. “The salad is very hearty but not heavy,” she said. But she said the vegetable tagine was her favorite. “Taste was off the charts,” she said. “I wasn't expecting to be wowed with a microwaveable meal, but the spices and textures were perfectly balanced. There was crunch, there was good moisture and it was very well seasoned.”
In addition to its meal kits and prepared meals, each weekly order can include items from an extensive grocery list. The service offers add-on snacks such as yogurt, fruit and granola, as well as pantry items like spices, croutons and olive oil. Other grocery categories include sauces and condiments, grains and pastas and cereal and oats. Other meal delivery services like Home Chef offer options to add items like snacks, desserts and extra proteins, but no service we’ve tested offers a list of grocery items that’s as extensive as Hungryroot’s. While Hungryroot’s add-on offerings may not replace what you can buy during a dedicated trip to the grocery store, they may cover most essentials.
Tester Annie said the flavors in her chile limon chicken kale salad meal kit (seen here) complemented each other well, noting, “the meal feels very healthy and fresh.”
AARP Smart Picks
Tester Annie said the flavors in her chile limon chicken kale salad meal kit (seen here) complemented each other well, noting, “the meal feels very healthy and fresh.”
Annie and our lab testers said they liked the customizability of Hungryroot’s credit system but also said the system was difficult to understand at first. “Because the meals to choose only have credits listed, not price, it’s difficult to tell how much everything costs,” one lab tester said. Once familiar with the service, all testers said they appreciated how Hungryroot automatically tracks the credits you use and what you have remaining. They said they also liked that unused credits automatically roll over to future deliveries. However, you must use these credits within 180 days of your last delivery. Testers said the ability to mix and match meal kits and grocery items is ultimately an advantage over more rigid meal delivery structures, but it’s not immediately intuitive.
Another knock? Testers said they didn’t like that you must enter payment information before you can see meal options and pricing for your plan. “Other meal delivery services like HelloFresh let you see next week’s menu before signing up,” said one lab tester. Hungryroot does offer recipes to peruse, but there’s no indication whether those meals will be available that week until you sign up. If you want more transparency into available meals before signing up, HelloFresh may be a better option.
How we tested and reviewed meal delivery services
To identify the strengths and weaknesses of popular meal delivery services, we recruited testers ages 50 and older — including members from AARP’s The Ethel community — to test these services and share unbiased feedback. Our lab team and older adult testers then ordered and cooked their meals in their homes or in our AARP Smart Picks test kitchen and shared their thoughts on key factors such as food quality, portion size, taste, customization options and ease of preparation.
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In addition, we paid close attention to the delivery process, including the number of delivery updates each service provided and the quality of the packaging. We also reviewed the cancellation process for each service to determine how long it takes and whether any challenges might arise before a subscription is paused or canceled.
For more details, you can see our meal delivery service testing methodology page.
How much does Hungryroot cost?
Hungryroot starts at $8.99 per dinner serving, $5.99 per lunch serving and $3.99 per breakfast serving, per its website. But unlike most meal delivery services, remember that Hungryroot does not offer a standard set of plans or a per-meal price. Instead, it creates a unique plan for each subscriber based on their answers to the introductory quiz, which asks about household size, dietary needs and cuisine preferences.
As noted, rather than a per-meal price, Hungryroot assigns a credit value to every item in its catalog, such as prepared meals, meal kits and grocery items, with each credit valued at roughly $2.50. Subscribers receive a set number of credits per delivery based on the plan built out from their quiz responses. They then use those credits to build their weekly boxes. So, based on the pricing structure mentioned above, a dinner serving is around four credits, a lunch serving is around three credits and a breakfast serving is around two credits. We gathered these estimated credit values by taking the listed starting prices per serving and dividing by the estimated individual credit value of around $2.50. Again, your amount of credits will vary based on your individual box size, so the best way to get an accurate price is to follow the steps presented by Hungryroot’s system. You then have the freedom to adjust as needed.
To give a sense of the actual price range we observed in our evaluation, after completing the quiz, one lab tester ended up with a weekly plan consisting of four dinners, each with two servings (eight dinner servings total), for $99.60 before discounts. With a 30 percent first-time discount plus free shipping, the lab tester’s order came to $69.72. Another lab tester chose four lunch servings and eight dinner servings, and their total came to about $120 with the 30 percent discount. One more lab tester created a plan with four breakfast servings, two lunch servings, six dinner servings, three to five servings of snacks and two to four servings of sweets. That totaled $96.47 with the 30 percent discount.
So how does this pricing stack up to other meal delivery services? In the April 2026 meal delivery survey that we conducted, the largest group of respondents — about 38 percent — said they spent $50 to $75 per week on their meal kit subscription. About 22 percent said they spent between $75 and $100 and another 21 percent spent up to $50. Hungryroot orders typically are higher than the range noted by the largest group of respondents, depending on the plan and selections. This detail makes this service more expensive than some other options. First-time discounts can help bring down the cost of your first order.
You can see a breakdown of some of these estimated costs in the chart below.
Is Hungryroot right for you?
There’s no shortage of meal delivery services to choose from. If you’re interested in a meal delivery service and your main focus is customization, Hungryroot may be worth a try. In testing, this service earned outstanding scores for both customization and the cooking experience, and above-average scores on measures of taste, delivery and cook time. But, as noted, its pricing structure was difficult for testers to navigate. If you’re considering this service, but you’re not sure if it’s right for you, you may want to consider the following questions.
Is meal customization important to you?
One of Hungryroot’s standout features is the ability to customize at a level not often seen among meal delivery services. Customizations apply to dietary plans and preferences, such as gluten-free and dairy-free, budget needs, health and wellness goals and preferred cuisines and flavor profiles. Once you’ve selected meals for the week, you can also swap specific ingredients within some recipes. For example, you may be able to swap beef burgers for veggie burgers. You also can customize at a more granular level, such as removing ingredients from a recipe or swapping sauces. This ability to modify standard offerings may be a particular benefit for older adults with food sensitivities or strict dietary preferences, or those who simply want more control over their meals.
Do you want to add grocery items to your weekly shipment?
This service’s wide range of grocery items is a benefit compared to other services that only let you add on extra proteins or a few snacks and desserts. Hungryroot grocery items can include supplements, condiments, sauces and oils, grains and bakery items, among others. And since Hungryroot’s delivery service offers meal kits, prepared meals and grocery items, it may be a good fit for older adults who want varied options for their weekly deliveries. For example, if you’re particularly busy one week and have less time to cook or run to the grocery store, you may choose to add more prepared meals or grocery items to your shipment.
Do you want a straightforward pricing structure?
If so, this service may not be a good fit because it does not offer the clear, preset pricing that other meal delivery services do. As noted, its credit-based system — which is required to order meal kits, prepared meals and grocery items — was confusing for our testers to navigate because of its variability. Hungryroot is the only service we’ve tested with this kind of pricing structure. While the service tries to gauge your needs with a hyper-specific quiz to help build out an individualized plan, that level of pricing variability could be overwhelming for some and could work against the goal of simplifying weekly meal planning. If you’re more comfortable with a clear-cut pricing structure, the other services we’ve tested offer more traditional, straightforward pricing.
FAQs
There is no set minimum for Hungryroot orders. That said, if you want to get free shipping, the total cost of your box contents should be at least $70. Otherwise, shipping is $6.99 per box, which is less expensive than the shipping costs of many other services we’ve tested. For example, the shipping costs for the other services in our best meal delivery services review were at least $10.99. Just remember that final shipping costs may vary depending on your location.
Based on our testing experience, it is not hard to cancel Hungryroot. In fact, our lab testers gave this service exemplary scores for its cancellation process. One lab tester said that while the service will ask multiple times whether you want to fully cancel or simply pause, there is no requirement to contact a customer service representative to finalize the cancellation. If you sign up for this service but later want to cancel, just go to your account settings on the website or in the app and find the “subscription” or “delivery schedule” section. You can then select “cancel subscription” to initiate and complete the cancellation.
Hungryroot is not the cheapest meal delivery service that we've evaluated. EveryPlate — which offers meal kits — is the cheapest meal delivery service we’ve tested, with a price per dinner serving starting at $6.99. Meanwhile, per Hungryroot’s website, its starting price per dinner serving is $8.99 for both meal kits and prepared meals. Remember, the pricing for your Hungryroot box will likely vary based on your individual experience with its credit system and how you build out each box.
Questions or feedback? Email us at AARPSmartPicks@aarp.org.
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