My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals | Meal Delivery Comparison Australia (2025)

There are so many reasons that prepared meals can be life-changing for many people. If you’re particularly busy, or unable to cook on a regular basis then it’s incredibly important to have healthy meals that you can rely on. Especially when you have the temptation of a takeaway just an ‘app’ away.

Prepared meals services have improved massively over the last 10 years, with incredible variety on offer. Two services with strong reputations are My Muscle Chef and Workout Meals, especially for anyone looking for a diet that matches their fitness efforts.

As both services offer very similar products at a quick glance, I wanted to take a deeper dive into comparing My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals. This comparison aims to help you decide which service is right for you.

My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals: Quick Comparison & Discounts

Our comparison will look in detail at each service’s offering, food and cost before making a final recommendation for which service is right for you.

My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals: The Offering

We’ll start by look at the various products and services that each company provides, identifying any differences that are important to consider.

My Muscle Chef

My Muscle Chef has been serving prepared meals since 2012, becoming easily the largest and most disruptive meal delivery service in Australia. A selection of their meals can often be found in supermarkets like IGA and Woollies, with their full range only available from them direct.

Subscription Options: My Muscle Chef offers flexible purchasing options through their Standard, PRO (higher protein), and PLUS+ (larger portions) ranges. It’s very easy to either purchase a one-off box of meals or subscribe to regular deliveries. Their menu includes options for various dietary preferences including vegan, keto, and low-calorie meals. Through their website, you can fill in a few questions about your goals and they’ll recommend a personalised meal plan that works for you.

Meal Variety: With a rotating selection of 70+ different meals available at any one time, there is always a good selection of meals to choose from. This includes 8 Plant-Based meals making the service suitable for vegetarians and even vegans. While the menu heavily features chicken (53%) and beef (26%) dishes to maintain competitive pricing, I’ve found there’s still enough variety to keep things interesting.

Delivery Options: Delivery to over 4,200 postcodes across Australia means you’re very likely to be able to receive a My Muscle Chef delivery. The available delivery dates depend on the area you live in, with delivery windows either during the day (8am-6pm) or overnight. From my experience with multiple deliveries, their service has been reliable and their insulated packaging keeps everything properly chilled.

Additional Products: My Muscle Chef offers a comprehensive range of additional products including side dishes (which I quite enjoyed to get my calories up on gym days), protein shakes, and breakfast options. They’ve recently expanded their range to include protein powders, high-protein jerky, and recovery bars. Their protein yogurts taste good without any artificial protein flavor, and the porridge portions are surprisingly generous. While some protein snacks like their cookies need improvement, their side dishes work well for boosting calories on training days. This makes My Muscle Chef a quite comprehensive service that could make up your entire diet.

Workout Meals

Founded in 2012 by Tomi Jurlina and Dean Deakin, Workout Meals has built its reputation on fitness-focused prepared meals. They source some ingredients from their farm in Kulnura, an hour north of Sydney, though the exact extent of farm-to-table ingredients isn’t clear. Unlike My Muscle Chef, their meals are exclusively available through direct online ordering – you won’t find them in supermarkets.

Subscription Options: Their website features an interactive quiz that asks for your gender, age and activity levels before recommending one of their core meal plans: ‘Weight Loss’, ‘Lean & Fit’, ‘Muscle Gain’ or ‘Meals for Anyone’. Each plan provides a full weekly menu covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, which you can then customize. They also offer fixed meal packs focused on specific goals like Low Calorie, High Protein and Gluten Free.

Meal Variety: The regular menu consists of 26 different main meals, with chicken featuring as the primary protein in about 50% of dishes. The remaining options include 8 beef dishes, 1 seafood option, and just 1 vegetarian choice. Unlike My Muscle Chef, meals come in a single portion size, which can be limiting for those with specific caloric needs. The breakfast menu is notably small with just 5 options including dishes like Cheese Pesto Omelette and Protein Porridge.

Delivery Options: Workout Meals delivers to over 3,000 locations across Australia, focused primarily on New South Wales, Adelaide, Brisbane and the ACT. They offer two delivery windows – overnight (12am-6am) or daytime (8am-6pm). While there’s a flat rate delivery fee of $15 for one-off orders, subscribers receive free delivery on both weekly and fortnightly plans. Upon delivery, you’ll receive a photo confirmation showing where their box has been left.

Additional Products / Extras: The service offers a small breakfast menu with 5 options including dishes like Protein Porridge and Shakshuka. Their additional product range is relatively limited compared to competitors, with just a few snack options available.

My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals Service Comparison

These are the key differences you should consider when choosing between My Muscle Chef and Workout Meals:

Overall, My Muscle Chef offers greater flexibility, variety, and accessibility across all aspects of their service, though both companies maintain a strong focus on fitness-oriented prepared meals.

My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals : The Food

Knowing the difference in the options provided by these two meal delivery services, it’s important to talk about how good their actual food is! This definitely comes down to a lot of personal preference, but hopefully I can give you a good idea about what you’ll receive.

My Muscle Chef Meals

Packaging: Meals now arrive in distinctive bright red trays with a cardboard sleeve and unique vacuum-seal technology. Unlike other services that require peeling corners or piercing film, the vacuum seal automatically expands during cooking, which helps maintain freshness and makes preparation effortless. Just pop it in for 90 seconds in the microwave and you’re ready to eat, although I’ve found 2 minutes works better in some microwaves.

Flavour: Let me be clear: these meals completely redefined what I thought possible from microwave meals. The flavoring is consistently bold and restaurant-quality, going well beyond the simple seasoning typical of many prepared meals. Their Salmon Risotto genuinely surprised me with restaurant-quality taste. After 8+ years perfecting these recipes, their experience shows in every bite.

Texture: The vacuum-seal packaging creates some kind of magic. You won’t find the typical mushy vegetables or dry meat common in other microwave meals. Even traditionally difficult dishes like risotto maintain the perfect bite, while most proteins remain tender and juicy. Some meals can be slightly watery and a few have an overly acidic taste, but these are rare exceptions to their usually excellent quality.

Additional Products: Their protein yogurts taste genuinely delicious without any artificial protein flavor, and the porridge portions offer surprisingly generous servings. The protein snacks vary in quality (the cookies particularly need work), but their side dishes work perfectly for boosting calories on gym days. These larger portion sizes and additional options make it easy to build a complete meal plan that meets higher calorie needs.

My favorite My Muscle Chef meals include the incredible Salmon Risotto, Korean Beef, Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl, and Chicken Nasi Goreng. All of these I’d happily eat again and again. I discuss all of these in my full My Muscle Chef review.

‘Workout Meals’ Meals

Packaging: Workout Meals uses black plastic trays with vacuum-sealed film, similar to My Muscle Chef’s system. The vacuum-seal technology eliminates the need to pierce or peel the film before microwaving, which I found particularly convenient for office lunches. Every meal requires a standard 2-minute microwave time, making preparation consistent.

Flavour: After testing 20+ different meals, I found Workout Meals to be notably hit and miss. At their best, dishes like the Peppercorn Steak & Chips are genuinely outstanding. Despite looking watery when heated, it delivered restaurant-quality taste that genuinely surprised me. Their Mongolian Beef and Turkey Mince Poke Bowl were other standouts that I’d happily order again.

However, some meals missed the mark significantly. The Feta & Almond Chicken tasted overwhelmingly of vinegar, while their attempt at Chicken Karaage resulted in an oddly mushy coating. The Naked Turkey Burger suffered from dryness without adequate sauce to compensate. These inconsistencies suggest a need for better quality control and recipe refinement.

Texture: When Workout Meals gets it right, their meals genuinely taste home-cooked rather than mass-produced. However, I encountered some concerning quality issues, including undercooked meatballs in the Sticky Asian Meatballs dish that arrived worryingly pink in the center. While their chicken dishes were consistently well-cooked, this experience raised questions about their cooking standardization.

My favourite Workout Meals dinners included the Turkey Mince Poke Bowl, Beef Bolognese & Pasta and Peppercorn Steak & Chips. You can discover more at my Workout Meals review.

After extensively testing both services, My Muscle Chef consistently delivers a higher standard of meals. Their experience shows in their well-refined recipes and reliable cooking processes, making even traditionally difficult microwave dishes like risotto genuinely enjoyable. While not every meal is perfect (some can be watery or overly acidic), their quality control ensures a consistently good experience.

Workout Meals, while capable of producing some outstanding dishes like their Peppercorn Steak, suffers from significant inconsistency. When they get it right, their meals truly taste home-cooked and delicious. However, quality control issues like undercooked meat and poorly balanced flavors make it harder to confidently recommend their entire menu. Their best dishes rival My Muscle Chef’s, but the hit-and-miss nature of their offering means you’ll need to carefully select which meals you order.

Get Up To $120 Off Your First 6 My Muscle Chef OrdersClick this link and use code SAVE120

Before I compare the cost of each service, it’s worth considering the discounts you can get with each service. Taking advantage of a discount when you subscribe will make your first box incredibly good value, allowing you to make your own decision about the food. Simply click one of our unique discount links to get access to your money off.

Explore Workout Meals with a $40 DiscountClick here and use code 'NEW40' for your discount!

My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals : The Cost

Both of these services offer meals at different prices, allowing you to choose whether to eat the cheaper or more expensive meals. To try and create a fair comparison, I will take a median price for each service and then apply any bulk discounts you might get.

You might be interested to find my industry analysis of the cheapest meal delivery service, allowing you to compare My Muscle Chef and Workout Meals against all the other prepared meal services.

Base Meal Pricing

Service	Standard Meals	Premium/Specialty Meals	Minimum Order
My Muscle Chef	$10.95 – $12.95	$12.95 – $13.95	$99 (~10 meals)
Workout Meals	$11.95 – $13.95	N/A	$60 (~5 meals)

At first glance, Workout Meals is slightly more expensive per meal, with their standard meals starting at $11.95 compared to My Muscle Chef’s $10.95. However, their lower minimum order of $60 makes them more accessible if you’re just wanting to try the service or need fewer meals per week.

Bulk Discounts

Service	Discount Tiers	Lowest Possible Price
My Muscle Chef	2.5% off 13+ meals 5% off 16+ meals 10% off 21+ meals 15% off 25+ meals	$9.31 per meal
Workout Meals	No bulk discounts	$11.95 per meal

My Muscle Chef clearly wins on bulk ordering with their tiered discount system. The potential to save up to 15% on orders of 25+ meals brings their lowest possible price down to $9.31 per meal. Workout Meals doesn’t offer any discounts for larger orders, making them considerably more expensive for regular customers ordering multiple meals.

Delivery Costs

Service	Standard Fee	Free Delivery	Additional Costs
My Muscle Chef	$15 – $20	With subscription	+$5 per box after 30 meals
Workout Meals	$15	With subscription	None

Both services offer free delivery with subscription, making this an important consideration if you’re planning to order regularly. My Muscle Chef does charge extra for very large orders requiring multiple boxes, while Workout Meals maintains a simpler pricing structure with no additional fees.

Which Service Offers Better Value?

The best value depends on your ordering habits:

• Trying for the first time? Workout Meals has a lower barrier to entry with their $60 minimum order
• Regular orders 10-20 meals? My Muscle Chef offers better value with lower base prices
• Large orders (20+ meals)? My Muscle Chef becomes significantly more cost-effective with their bulk discounts
• Weekly subscription? Both services offer free delivery, but My Muscle Chef’s lower base prices and bulk discounts make them the better value

Remember that both services frequently offer introductory discounts for first-time customers that can make your first box significantly cheaper.

Should I buy My Muscle Chef or Workout Meals?

After extensively testing both services, My Muscle Chef emerges as the clear leader with a rating of 9/10 compared to Workout Meals’ 7.5/10. This difference comes down to three key factors:

1. Quality and Consistency: My Muscle Chef’s years of experience show in their well-refined recipes and reliable quality control. While Workout Meals can produce outstanding dishes like their Peppercorn Steak, quality inconsistencies and cooking standardization issues make it harder to confidently recommend their entire menu.
2. Value for Money: My Muscle Chef’s lower base prices ($10.95 vs $11.95) combined with substantial bulk discounts (up to 15% off) make them significantly more cost-effective for regular users. While Workout Meals’ lower minimum order ($60) makes them more accessible for first-time buyers, the lack of bulk discounts means costs add up quickly for larger orders.
3. Menu Flexibility: With 70+ meals across different portion sizes (Standard/PRO/PLUS+) and 8 plant-based options, My Muscle Chef offers greater variety and adaptability compared to Workout Meals’ limited 26-meal menu and single portion sizes.

Choose My Muscle Chef if you:

• Plan to order regularly and want to take advantage of bulk discounts
• Need variety in your meal plan with multiple portion size options
• Follow a plant-based diet or have specific dietary requirements
• Want consistently good meals

Choose Workout Meals if you:

• Want to try prepared meals with a lower minimum spend ($60)
• Prefer farm-sourced ingredients (though extent of farm-to-table unclear)
• Are specifically interested in their standout dishes like the Peppercorn Steak
• Live in their delivery areas and want a simpler pricing structure

For most people, I recommend starting with My Muscle Chef for the best overall prepared meal experience. However, both services offer first-order discounts, so you can try them yourself with minimal risk.

Check out my reviews of other meal delivery services for more alternatives.

Get Up To $120 Off Your First 6 My Muscle Chef OrdersClick this link and use code SAVE120

Explore Workout Meals with a $40 DiscountClick here and use code 'NEW40' for your discount!