I’ve been reviewing meal kits for years, and have cooked hundreds of different recipes. So, this comparison between Marley Spoon and EveryPlate is going to be very thorough and cover every aspect of choosing a meal kit.
However, you might not want to read an essay to help decide which meal kit you should use. Let me give you the key headlines:
Quick Summary
Marley Spoon are a premium meal kit service who offer huge variety and customisation options, compared to EveryPlate who provide a budget offering based on a smaller menu and simpler recipes.
If that’s enough for you to decide, go ahead and click on our exclusive discounts for readers of Food Box Mate below. You’ll get a great discount on your first few boxes.
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Both EveryPlate and Marley Spoon fundamentally offer a weekly box of ingredients that can be cooked up into tasty meals at home. This begs the question, “Which one is right for me?”.
This detailed comparison aims to answer that question, helping you work out which meal kit service is right for you. For even more information about each service, you can also read my individual Marley Spoon review and EveryPlate review.
Featured Service
Page Contents
EveryPlate vs Marley Spoon Summary Features
As you can see, Marley Spoon are around twice as expensive as EveryPlate for equivalent portions. However, Marley Spoon do offer twice as many weekly meal options for anyone who wants more variety to choose from.
Service Options
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| 2 or 4 | Number of People | 2, 4, or 6 |
| 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 | Recipes per Week | 3, 4, 5, or 6 |
Marley Spoon offer meal kits for 2 or 4 people, which is more limited compared to EveryPlate who also deliver boxes with portions to feed 6 people per meal.
The two services also differ on how many recipes you can order each week, with Marley Spoon delivering boxes with just 2 recipes included. EveryPlate start at a minimum of 3 recipes but also deliver up to 6 recipes compared to Marley Spoon’s maximum of 5.
That means you can get an EveryPlate box starting from 6 up to 36 portions, compared to a range of just 4 portions up to a maximum of 24 portions with Marley Spoon.
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Service Options Winner
EveryPlate
Menu Size & Variety
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| 70+ | Weekly Recipe Options | 27 |
| Chicken: 25% Vegetarian: 21% Beef: 16% Fish: 16% Pork: 15% Lamb: 7% | Protein Source Variety | Vegetarian: 27% Pork: 24% Beef: 24% Chicken: 16% Fish: 9% Lamb: 0% |
This is where Marley Spoon excels. With 70+ different recipes every week, you’re guaranteed to find quite a few recipes you’ll enjoy. In fact, the only complaint I could have is that it’s too much choice.
In comparison, the 27 recipes EveryPlate provide every week can be considered quite limited, especially if you’re wanting to pick 6 meals. To make EveryPlate suitable for vegetarians, 6 of the meals are vegetarian and this does limit some of the variety of meat-based meals.
With EveryPlate, you won’t find any Lamb dishes (unless you’re very lucky) and there are a very limited number of Fish meals.
Marley Spoon provide a good range of different meals each week, although 1 in 4 meals are chicken-based. It’s important to see that in context though, because even if you didn’t like chicken, you’d still have more options with Marley Spoon than you’d have with EveryPlate.
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Menu Size & Variety Winner
Marley Spoon
Customisation and Extras
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| Yes | Customisable Recipes | Yes |
| Yes (8 per week) | Premium Recipes | Yes (3 per week) |
| Yes | Fruit Box | Yes |
| No | Veggie Box | No |
| Yes (ChefGood) | Ready to Eat Meals | Yes (YouFoodz) |
| Yes | Marketplace | No |
A relatively new trend for meal kits is providing the ability to customise some recipes. For both Marley Spoon and EveryPlate, this is available for a small selection of meals each week and allows you to either:
- Change the protein source (e.g chicken to fish).
- Upgrade the protein source (e.g rump steak to porterhouse).
- Switch the carbohydrate (e.g rice to cauliflower rice).
- Add a protein source (e.g add chicken to a vegetarian dish).
Each service charges a small premium for some recipes each week, listed as “Premium” recipes. Whilst Marley Spoon does have more premium options (8 vs 3), this is around 15% of the total recipes each week for both Marley Spoon and EveryPlate.
One major difference is the variety of add-ons offered by Marley Spoon, with a wide selection of ready-to-eat meals, desserts, snacks, pantry ingredients, and juices to add onto your weekly delivery. In comparison, EveryPlate have a fairly minimal offering.
For their ready-to-eat meals, Marley Spoon are providing ChefGood meals, a company that was bought by Marley Spoon in 2021. Based on my experience, this matches the premium offering that Marley Spoon offers with their dinner kits.
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Customisation and Extras Winner
Marley Spoon
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Dietary Options
I consider a meal kit service suitable for a special diet if they offer at least 5 suitable meals per week.
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| Yes | Vegetarian | Yes |
| Yes | Vegan | No |
| No | Keto | No |
| Yes | Gluten-Free | No |
| Yes | Dairy-Free | No |
It’s easy to proclaim a winner in this category. If you’re restricted to a special diet due to intolerances, or you’re dieting for health reasons, then Marley Spoon is the better choice.
Marley Spoon has recipes listed as ‘no added gluten’, ‘dairy free’, and ‘vegan’ to make it easy for you to find suitable meals.
However, this conclusion must come with 2 caveats:
- All meal kit recipes are technically suitable for intolerances because you can choose not to use individual ingredients.
- For anyone with severe allergies, no meal kit service in Australia can fully guarantee there is cross-contamination between ingredients during packaging / delivery.
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Dietary Options Winner
Marley Spoon
Delivery Areas and Cost
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| All States | Delivery Areas | All States (excl. NT, TAS) |
| Varies by Postcode | Delivery Days | Varies by Postcode |
| $10.49 | Delivery Cost | $9.99 |
| No | Regional Delivery Fee | Yes |
The major difference between EveryPlate and Marley Spoon for delivery is in the areas that EveryPlate don’t deliver to.
If you’re in the Northern Territory, or in Tasmania, you won’t be able to order EveryPlate.
Marley Spoon also have a larger delivery network across regional areas, especially across Western Australia as they have a fulfilment centre located in Perth.
Whilst Marley Spoon have a slightly higher flat fee of $10.49 for each delivery, this is only $0.50 more than EveryPlate. A maximum of $26 over the course of an entire year.
This makes Marley Spoon a cheaper option for some regional areas like Bundaberg, Gladstone, Mildura, Townsville, and more who receive a variable regional delivery fee on EveryPlate. Marley Spoon delivery fee is the same on all orders.
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Delivery Options Winner
Marley Spoon
Website Ease of Use
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| Yes | Mobile App | Yes |
| Yes | Pause / Cancel Subscription Online | Yes |
Both Marley Spoon and EveryPlate (owned by HelloFresh) invest heavily in making their website incredibly easy to use.
Ordering and selecting your meals is very easy, and with both services you can choose your meals up to 3 weeks in advance.
I’ve never had any issues updating my contact details, but it can be a little tricky cancelling your order. Both Marley Spoon and EveryPlate make you go through 4-5 different pages answering questions before allowing you to cancel your subscription.
That means you can fully manage your order online, but they just try and make it a little bit difficult.
They both also drop a point for a pet peeve of mine: not displaying the delivery areas and times before you submit your personal details when signing up.
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Menu Size & Variety Winner
Draw
Recipes / Instructions
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| Yes | Physical Recipe Cards | Yes |
| Yes | Ingredients Packaged by Recipe | No |
Marley Spoon’s recipe cards arrive on large, professionally printed cards with plenty of pictures to help you understand the recipe. Along with the ingredients all packaged in a single bag per meal, means it’s super quick to start cooking each meal.
I’ve rarely had any issues following along with Marley Spoon recipes, however I do find that some recipes have slightly strange ordering that makes it easy to overcook/undercook food. My theory is that trying to develop 50+ recipes each week means they don’t get tested as thoroughly as they should.
In contrast, EveryPlate recipes come printed on small (A3) pieces of card, which makes them slightly harder to read than the large Marley Spoon recipes.
I’ve always found EveryPlate recipes well written and easy to follow, helped by the fairly simple meals you’re cooking. There were a few times I was confused with the order/timing of certain steps, likely due to the fact they need to squeeze the recipe onto a small card.
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Recipes / Instructions Winner
Marley Spoon
Meal Quality & Taste
To anyone concerned that the cheaper EveryPlate would result in lower quality ingredients, I’ve never found this to be the case. Instead, their cost savings come from using fewer, cheaper ingredients to bulk out meals. Most EveryPlate meals consist of 6 or fewer ingredients.
That means EveryPlate meals are often very simple but they don’t lack in flavour through the clever use of dried herbs and spices. I’d consider EveryPlate meals to be like good, comforting home cooking.
In contrast, Marley Spoon recipes are (on average) more complex and build flavour through multiple elements. Most dishes are boosted by the presence of fresh herbs either mixed through or as a garnish at the end.
In my opinion, that makes Marley Spoon meals more enjoyable and certainly more impressive if you’re entertaining.
Marley Spoon also require you to have fewer staple ingredients, as well as more commonly prepping some ingredients for cooking. An example would be EveryPlate sending a block of cheese for you to grate, compared to Marley Spoon sending a bag of grated cheese you can use immediately.
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Meal Quality & Taste Winner
Marley Spoon
Nutritional Balance
These values are an average taken from a sample of meals supplied by each meal kit, along with values UoS research.
| Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | |
| 690 | Calories (kcal) | 680 |
| 41.9 | Protein (g) | 36.8 |
| 30.3 | Fat (g) | 32.4 |
| 56.8 | Carbohydrates (g) | 66.3 |
| 10.9 | Sugars (g) | Not Researched Yet |
| 779 | Sodium (mg) | Not Researched Yet |
It’s important to first consider that having more variety of meals available allows you more options select healthier meals to be part of your delivery. Not all meal kit recipes are created equally, so how “healthy” your meals are depends mostly on what you select.
As a result, all other things considered equal, it will be easier to select healthy meals on Marley Spoon.
The two services offer virtually the same number of calories per meal, suggesting that EveryPlate’s lower cost doesn’t result in smaller portions, which lines up with my own experience.
Marley Spoon recipes tend to get their calories more from protein sources rather than carbohydrates, which suggests a slightly better nutritional balance. However, 30g of Fat is still quite high considering the recommended daily intake is between 44 – 78g (MyProtein).
EveryPlate save money by bulking meals out with carbohydrates and using slightly fattier cuts of meat, which is clear from their average nutritional values.
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Nutritional Balance Winner
Marley Spoon
Price (Value for Money)
EveryPlate take the award for Australia’s cheapest meal kit, so it’s unsurprising that they’re significantly cheaper than the premium Marley Spoon.
How much money could you actually save by going with EveryPlate instead of Marley Spoon?
Total price of a weekly meal kit
| People | Meals | Marley Spoon | EveryPlate |
| 2 | 3 | $74.94 | $48.00 |
| 2 | 4 | $95.92 | $60.00 |
| 2 | 5 | $114.90 | $70.00 |
| 2 | 6 | N/A | $80.00 |
| 4 | 3 | $131.88 | $80.00 |
| 4 | 4 | $159.84 | $100.00 |
| 4 | 5 | $169.80 | $120.00 |
| 4 | 6 | N/A | $130.00 |
EveryPlate comes in 37% cheaper than Marley Spoon on average. It’s hard to understate how big this difference is, which could save you thousands of dollars every year.
For example, a couple who order 4 meals a week will pay $4,987 with Marley Spoon but only $3,120 with EveryPlate. That’s over $1,800 saved on groceries every single year.
Cost per portion comparison
As you’d expect, EveryPlate have cheaper portion costs across all box sizes. This is especially pronounced at the lower portion sizes where EveryPlate is a massive $4.49 cheaper per portion when ordering a 10-portion box.
As you get to the larger boxes, that difference becomes less stark and Marley Spoon becomes more appealing. At the 20 portion range, Marley Spoon is ‘just’ $2.49 more expensive per meal.
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Service Options Winner
EveryPlate
Overall Comparison: Marley Spoon vs EveryPlate
Marley Spoon is a clear winner when taking into account every different area we compare meal kits on. However, that doesn’t mean Marley Spoon is right for everybody.
The key difference for most people when comparing these two services is going to be budget. With EveryPlate, you are going to save a significant amount of money each week in comparison to Marley Spoon. Although you might be choosing the budget option, you aren’t compromising on ingredient quality and still get the ability to cook tasty, nutritious meals.
The only other area where EveryPlate beats Marley Spoon is on providing 6 portion, or 6 meal boxes that would work well for larger families.
In contrast, Marley Spoon is going to cost you extra but in return you get more exciting meals, better recipe cards and much greater meal variety with a really strong meal kit service. It’s also hugely beneficial that Marley Spoon have a wider delivery area as well as providing options for vegetarians and people with dietary intolerances.
Interested in Marley Spoon or EveryPlate? Check out these discounts for new customers, specially created for Food Box Mate readers!
These aren’t the only meal kits on the market. It’s also worth exploring your options with Dinnerly, HelloFresh and Pepper Leaf. Check out my comparisons with the links below.
