Our Extensive Soulara Review (2025): Are These The Best Vegan Meals In Australia?

As someone trying to eat less meat without sacrificing convenience or flavour, I was intrigued by Soulara – Australia’s first completely plant-based prepared meals service. After seeing their impressive 4.4/5 rating on Product Review and hearing about their focus on local ingredients, I decided to put their meals to the test.

Like many Australians, I’m not strictly vegan but want to reduce my environmental impact through more plant-based eating. Could Soulara’s ready-made meals make this transition easier?

After trying over 30 different dishes from their menu, I’ve got a thorough understanding of what works (their curries are fantastic) and what doesn’t.

In this hands-on review, I’ll share my experience with Soulara’s portion sizes, meal variety, delivery service, and most importantly – how the food actually tastes. Whether you’re a committed vegan or just looking to add more plant-based meals to your week, you’ll discover if Soulara is worth adding to your meal rotation.

Get $200 off your first 8 orders with code GET200New customers get $25 off each of their first 8 Soulara orders!

Back in 2017, Soulara became the first Australian meal service to focus purely on plant-based meals, and they’ve stuck to those roots ever since. Like most prepared meal services I’ve tried, it’s a simple setup – they deliver pre-cooked meals to your door that just need a quick zap in the microwave. Perfect for those weeks when I really can’t face meal prep (which, let’s be honest, is most weeks).

If you’re new to prepared meal services, I’ve written about how they generally work in my guide to prepared meal services.

Getting started with Soulara

Getting started with Soulara couldn’t be much simpler. You browse through their menu of 50+ seasonal dishes and pick the ones you fancy. You can choose between weekly or fortnightly deliveries to suit your schedule and eating habits.

I particularly like how they rotate a few meals each week – it keeps things interesting while letting me reorder my favorites (that Earthen Seer Curry has definitely appeared in multiple orders).

They’ve actually made the service more flexible since I first tried it. Instead of rigid meal plans, you can now order whatever combination of meals you want, with better discounts kicking in for larger orders.

One of my favorite changes came in 2023 when they introduced both Medium (350g) and Large (450g) portions. As someone who’s always hunting for more protein in plant-based meals, those larger portions make a real difference. They’re particularly handy if you’re looking to build muscle.

When you’re choosing your meals, everything’s laid out really clearly with proper photos (that actually look like what you get delivered). Each meal comes with detailed nutritional info – not just calories, but specific details about fiber, calcium, and other nutrients I usually forget about.

If you want to try Soulara without ordering home delivery, you can find a smaller range stocked in Woolworths stores across Australia, alongside meals from services like My Muscle Chef.

Soulara meal variety and options

Soulara’s offering includes Main Meals, Breakfasts and Extras with over 50 different products available each week.

Their main meals are fairly well varied (all ~39 of them) with plenty of curries, soups, pastas and bowls. I’ve found that Soulara aren’t lazy in their search for replacing meat in dishes, leveraging fantastic foods such as beans & pulses, mushrooms, eggplant, jackfruit and tofu.

Despite this, I still find the protein content is relatively low (on average) compared to meat-based meal delivery services. If that’s important to you, you may still need additional protein supplements. However, there are a few great high-protein options they’ve added since my original review was posted. Great to see!

You’ll find that there are at least 2-3 new meals to discover each week as Soulara switches to recipes using in-season ingredients. With the range and variety, it’s definitely enough to keep you interested every week.

The extras available include various cold-pressed juices, kombuchas and protein bars. These can really add a few extra important antioxidants and vitamins to your diet, right in line with Soulara’s mission.

Special diets and food intolerance

Being completely plant-based, Soulara is naturally free from all animal products – no eggs, no dairy, nothing. That makes it an obvious choice if you’re vegan or vegetarian, or if you’re dealing with dairy intolerance.

Most of their meals are gluten-free too, but it’s important to be aware that like most commercial kitchens, their facilities handle various allergens. Here’s their official disclaimer:

Made in a facility that also processes peanuts, tree nuts, soy, sesame, sulphites, lupin, gluten and wheat.

Soulara Product Disclaimer

As with most meal delivery services, Soulara aren’t able to guarantee there is no cross-contamination of various allergens.

Delivery options

Soulara charges a flat fee of $15 for delivery on all orders. Fortunately, they’ve improved in the last few years by starting to offer free delivery on orders over $150. That would be 14-15 meals.

Delivery areas are not made particularly clear on the Soulara website, although they do appear to serve a vast majority of towns / cities in Australia.

 Check Soulara Delivery AreasUse this handy tool to see if Soulara deliver to you

The delivery schedule is pretty rigid – you’ll need to work with their set delivery days. Here in Sydney, I can choose between Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday deliveries. Rural areas typically have fewer options. You can pick between weekly or fortnightly deliveries, which helps with planning your meals.

Soulara only promises to deliver the box at some time between 8am and 6pm. You’ll receive a text the night before with a slightly more accurate delivery window which can help plan your day.

I’ve found their delivery process quite reliable. Their courier service (Be Cool Couriers) sends you a photo of your delivered box and a text confirmation, which gives me peace of mind that my food has arrived safely.

To make things even easier, boxes can be delivered even if you aren’t home. They are designed to last up to 12 hours (8 on a hot day) outside without needing additional refrigeration.

How much does Soulara cost?

Let’s talk about what you’ll actually pay for Soulara meals. There are two portion sizes to choose from:

• Medium Meals – $10.95
• Large Meals – $11.95

The smart move is to order more meals at once, as Soulara offers better discounts on larger orders:

Meals	Discount
12	5%
20	10%

This means that Soulara’s ‘Medium’ portions get as low as $9.85 when ordering 20+ meals at once, whilst ‘Large’ meals get as low as $10.75. This puts them right in the middle of the market, neither budget nor expensive from our investigation into the cheapest meal delivery services in Australia.

This pricing structure means that the larger meals are only $1 more expensive per portion than the ‘Medium’ meals. It’s hard to ignore the value of $1 for an extra 100g of food if your lifestyle/diet suits the larger meals.

My Soulara review box

I’ve had a couple of boxes delivered from Soulara, and the timings have varied quite considerably. Sometimes this is before 9am or my latest box arrived at 2pm. I have been receiving tracking details in the morning with a 2-hour delivery window which has really helped.

Although I would prefer the ability to narrow down the delivery times when ordering, I’ve had no issues with Soulara delivery. The box arrived in good shape and it looks highly professional.

Are Soulara Meals Enjoyable?

I’ve tried over 30 Soulara meals, enjoying many different types of meat substitutes and types of meal. Overall, I was impressed by the quality, taste and texture of the ingredients, albeit I was not blown away.

The curries are where Soulara really shines – their Earthen Seer Curry has become a regular in my orders. I was particularly impressed with how they handle tofu, which can be notoriously tricky to get right. Instead of the bland, rubbery texture you might expect, their tofu actually adds to the dishes rather than just being a meat substitute.

There were no genuinely ‘bad’ meals, although some tasted fairly average. In particular, I wasn’t a big fan of the pasta-based dishes such as the Puttanesca.

I did find that most dishes tended to be quite watery, which is an easy trap to fall into with microwave meals and is perhaps hard to solve when mass producing meals.

I also found that meals tended to be fairly low in calories and protein compared to my goals (male, fairly active) so I needed to either have multiple meals or supplement with additional calories.

Despite having tried the larger meals, I would still have personally preferred slightly larger portion sizes. It’s likely you won’t have the same challenges as me, especially if you are looking to go onto a controlled diet.

How easy are the meals to prepare?

Preparation is pretty straightforward – most meals need about 3 minutes in the microwave.

Though there’s one tip I learned the hard way: always check for sauce sachets before heating! Trust me, you don’t want to deal with an exploded sauce packet in your microwave.

The process is simple: peel back the film corner, remove any sauce packets, and heat for 2.5-3.5 minutes. In my experience, 3 minutes usually hits the sweet spot for even heating.

What about the extras?

I decided to try Soulara’s Berry Smash Kombucha alongside my meals. If you’re a green tea fan, you’ll probably enjoy it – that flavor really comes through strong. While I liked it, at $9.98 for three 350ml bottles (working out to $10/litre), it’s quite a bit pricier than what you’d find at your local supermarket.

They’ve got other drinks and snacks available too – various cold-pressed juices and protein bites that look interesting, though I haven’t tried them myself yet.

Soulara meal ingredients

It’s hard not to love the whole mission and ethos around Soulara’s meal service, delivering meals that are good for you and for the planet.

I particularly appreciate how much care and attention has gone into their ingredients list, even calling out the health benefits of those ingredients. Soulara always gives you the full ingredient list even when they don’t need to.

In the example below, they could easily have listed “Lemon Juice” but clearly it’s important to Soulara that every single ingredient is counted.

My final thoughts on Soulara

Here’s the bottom line: Soulara makes eating plant-based not just easy, but genuinely enjoyable. As someone who typically eats meat, I was genuinely surprised by how satisfying these meals are, especially their curries which have mastered the art of making tofu actually taste great.

The service isn’t perfect – some meals can be watery, and active people might need larger portions. But these are minor issues compared to what Soulara gets right: thoughtfully created meals that are ready in 3 minutes, ingredients you can trust, and a flexible ordering system that rewards larger orders with free delivery.

For anyone considering Soulara, here’s my advice: if you’re already vegan or vegetarian, it’s an obvious choice. But where Soulara really shines is as a gateway to eating more plant-based meals.

Whether you’re looking to reduce your meat intake or just want convenient, healthy meals in your fridge, Soulara delivers quality that makes the transition to plant-based eating feel effortless.

Get $200 off your first 8 orders with code GET200New customers get $25 off each of their first 8 Soulara orders!

Found my Soulara review helpful? Let me know in the comments below!