Fresh Prep vs Chefs Plate (Which is Best for You in 2026)?

Chefs Plate and Fresh Prep both deliver pre-portioned meal kits across Canada, and the choice between them comes down to one tradeoff: price against packaging. Chefs Plate is the cheaper kit on every plan; Fresh Prep is the one with reusable, zero-waste packaging and broader dietary coverage. We compared price per serving, dish diversity, meal plans, delivery coverage, and dietary support to work out which service fits which kind of cook.

While both services keep their meal kit prices reasonable and delivery free, Chefs Plate is typically cheaper. Both offer two and four-person plans. Chefs Plate became the “best value” brand in Canada after being acquired by HelloFresh in 2018, and the two still run as independent brands. When comparing prices for two people at three recipes per week, the most popular order in Canada, Chefs Plate has a lower cost per serving than any other meal kit delivery service.

Price is not the whole story, so below we weigh up the points that actually decide a meal kit subscription, and we share a current promo for each brand so you can cook and taste before you commit.

Our Verdict: Which Should You Choose?

Pick Chefs Plate if your priority is the lowest cost per serving, the widest weekly menu, and quick 15-minute dinners. It is the value choice and our top recommendation for most Canadian households. Pick Fresh Prep if reusable, zero-waste packaging and stronger vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free coverage matter more to you than saving a few dollars per serving. One thing to check first: Chefs Plate ships to nine provinces, while Fresh Prep currently reaches only BC, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, so outside those four Chefs Plate is your only pick of the two.

Chefs Plate: best for value and variety

Chefs Plate is best for cost-conscious cooks, families, and anyone who wants the largest weekly menu and the fastest prep. It is not ideal if you follow a strict gluten-free, dairy-free, or vegan diet, since its dietary range is narrower than Fresh Prep’s beyond vegetarian options. For most readers comparing these two, it is the kit we would start with, and a first-box discount means you can taste it before you commit. See the current Chefs Plate offer.

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Fresh Prep: best for sustainability and diets

Fresh Prep is best for cooks who want reusable packaging, a genuinely zero-waste delivery model, and a menu where roughly half the recipes are vegetarian or vegan with gluten-free and dairy-free options. It is not ideal if rock-bottom price is your main concern, as it sits a couple of dollars per serving above Chefs Plate. A first-box discount lets you try the reusable packaging without paying full price up front. See the current Fresh Prep offer.

Quick Chefs Plate vs Fresh Prep Comparison

Here is how the two services line up side by side before we get into the detail.

Detailed review	Chefs Plate Review	Fresh Prep Review
Established	2014	2014
Delivery area	AB, BC, MB, NL, NS, ON, PE, QC, SK	BC, AB, ON, QC
Number of meals to choose from each week	100	35
Сooking time (min)	15-30 min	30 min
Google Rating
Downloadable App
Lowest price per serving	$8.99	$10.99
Weekly Total (3 Recipes, 2 people)	$59.97	$80.94
	Get $100 off your first Chefs Plate recipe boxes Claim Promo Now	Get 50% off your first 1 Fresh Prep recipe boxes Claim Promo Now

Pros & Cons

Chefs Plate wins on price, variety, and add-ons; Fresh Prep wins on packaging and sourcing. Here is how the trade-offs break down on each side:

Chefs Plate vs Fresh Prep: Pricing

Chefs Plate is the cheaper of the two, at $8.99 to $11.99 per serving against Fresh Prep’s $10.99 to $13.99. It works out cheaper on every plan, not just the headline rate.

Chefs Plate

Chefs Plate runs $8.99 to $11.99 per serving across three food subscription box options, all priced similarly, with free shipping once you order more than two recipes for more than two people. It leans harder into quick meals than Fresh Prep does, with many dishes ready in just 15 minutes. Those 15-minute meals are honest about it: a stir-fry or a rice bowl where the prep is mostly opening packets and the cook is one hot pan, so they really do land on the table on a weeknight. The meals are simpler to prepare but just as fresh, and the first-time customer promotion applies to all of them.

Here are the prices per serving on the different weekly plans with Chefs Plate:

Fresh Prep

Fresh Prep runs $10.99 to $13.99 per serving, with delivery and taxes already included in the listed rates. It offers two and four-person packages, and each week you can order two, three, or four meals per person from around 35 recipes, a mix of individual portions and family-size meals for four. That puts Fresh Prep on par with most rivals, with Chefs Plate the main exception on price.

Here are the prices per serving on the different weekly plans with Fresh Prep:

Packaging: Fresh Prep vs Chefs Plate

Fresh Prep wins on packaging. Both brands take waste and emissions seriously, but Fresh Prep’s reusable model goes further than Chefs Plate’s recyclable one.

Chefs Plate keeps it recyclable and compostable:

• Boxes are 100% recyclable and go in your regular household recycling.
• Kit bags and cool pouches are compostable. Remove the sticker from the bag and the zipper from the pouch, then compost them or use your green bin.

Fresh Prep runs a genuine reusable loop, which is what sets it apart from most meal kit companies. Food arrives in reusable cooler bags with reusable ice packs, and some meals come as Zero Waste kits packed into reusable plastic containers with a compartment for each ingredient instead of single-use plastic. There is no extra charge or deposit. The loop is simple once you are in the rhythm of it: you rinse the containers, fold the empties back into the insulated cool bag, and leave the bag out on your next delivery day for the driver to swap. Fresh Prep then cleans everything on a contactless conveyor dishwasher before reusing it. The only habit to build is remembering to put the bag out, since a missed week means it piles up by the door.

Dietary Options Compared

Fresh Prep wins on diets. Roughly half of its weekly menu is vegetarian or vegan, and it tags gluten-free and dairy-free recipes each week, so cooks with restrictions usually have several options to pick from.

Chefs Plate is more limited. It carries a solid vegetarian selection and labels every recipe with its ingredients and allergens, but it does not run dedicated gluten-free, dairy-free, or vegan lines the way Fresh Prep does. So does Chefs Plate have gluten-free options? Not as a marked menu category. You can read the allergen labels and choose recipes that happen to suit, but if gluten-free or dairy-free cooking is a hard requirement, Fresh Prep is the better fit.

Chefs Plate vs Fresh Prep: Menu and Meal Plans

Chefs Plate wins on menu size and speed. It sources seasonal produce, meat, and fish locally and runs vegetarian, family, and 15-minute meal options. If your household eats everything, it is the easy pick, with the most diverse selection of meat, fish, and vegetarian meals. Some dishes take 30 minutes, others just 15. Each week you can order two or four servings across two, three, four, or five meals.

Fresh Prep’s menu spans pork, beef, poultry, seafood, cheese, and vegetables, with best sellers in its mushroom recipes and 100% vegan meals. Its weekly menu is smaller than Chefs Plate’s, but the food quality is on par, and it leans toward classic dinners in two or four portions. The cooking runs a little longer than Chefs Plate’s quickest meals, more like a real 30-to-40-minute dinner with a couple of pans on the go, so it suits an evening when you actually want to cook rather than just refuel. Both plans assume a standard household, so neither suits odd serving counts well.

Chefs Plate vs Fresh Prep Meal Choices

Both services now reach far beyond their Western Canada roots and deliver to major metros including Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton, alongside the rest of their coverage areas. Fresh Prep answers the nightly “what’s for dinner?” question with chef-created meals you finish at home. Sample Fresh Prep meals:

• Pork Banh Mi & Carrot Fries with Pickled Daikon & Spicy Mayo
• Rare Seared Yellowfin Tuna Focaccia with Curry Mayo, Ambrosia & Cucumber Salad
• Chorizo & Sweet Potato Tacos with Pineapple Cilantro Lime Aioli & Salsa

The Chefs Plate menu draws on spices and flavours from across the world, and each meal’s ingredients come packed in a single bag, so prep stays simple and there is no hunting through the fridge to figure out which carrot belongs to which dinner. Sample Chefs Plate meals:

• Sweet and spicy pork rice bowls with pickled carrots and stir-fried bok choy
• Cauliflower mac and cheese with two kinds of cheese and baby spinach
• Ultimate maple-glazed salmon with bacon green beans and garlic-parmesan potatoes

Fresh Prep keeps its plans simple:

• Two choices: 2-Person Meals (2 servings per recipe) or a Family Plan (4 servings per recipe).
• Pick 2 to 4 recipes per week inside either plan.
• Fine-tune the rest in your account settings around your nutritional and taste preferences.

Customer Reviews

Fresh Prep scores higher with customers, leading on both Trustpilot (4.4 vs 3.6) and Google (4.5 vs 3.8). Both brands have thousands of ratings, and the patterns in those reviews show where each kit shines and where it slips. Here is how they stack up, with scores current as of June 2026.

Trustpilot

Customers give Chefs Plate (Canada) an average star rating of 3.6 out of 5. On the whole, customers like the variety, portion sizes, how easy the recipe cards are to follow, and how fresh the ingredients are. Some customers have mentioned that more kid-friendly meals would help and that they’d like to be able to swap vegetables and not just the protein portion of a meal.

Fresh Prep averages 4.4 out of 5. Reviewers like how fresh the food is, though overripe avocados come up often. Plenty single out the packaging, calling the reusable cool bags and zero-waste kits one of the best things about the service.

Google

Chefs Plate sits at 3.8 out of 5 stars on Google. Many customers love how tasty the meals are and how easy they are to cook, and plenty post photos of what they’ve made. Most say the freshness and quality of the food is one of their favourite aspects, though some had the opposite experience and received vegetables that were wilted or had gone rotten.

Fresh Prep earns 4.5 out of 5 stars on Google. A few note that some items still arrive in single-use plastic bags, but most say the recipes are simple to follow and that they get to sample new ingredients and flavours they would not have tried otherwise.

In Summary: Fresh Prep vs Chefs Plate

Everything above points the same way for the value pick. The cooking is quick and simple, the menu is the larger of the two at around 100 weekly dishes, and nothing else in Canada beats its cost per serving. Try Chefs Plate.

Fresh Prep is the kit to choose when sustainability and diet support outweigh price. Its ingredients arrive pre-cut and pre-portioned, which cuts steps and onion-chopping out of the cooking, and the internationally inspired recipes keep weeknight dinners from getting dull. Try Fresh Prep.

Chefs Plate also saves you meal-planning and grocery-shopping time, with restaurant-quality results for far less, and recipe cards that walk a beginner through every step.

Both Canadian meal kit delivery services have solid customer service, so skipping a week or cancelling is straightforward, just let them know. The simplest way to settle it is to try Chefs Plate and Fresh Prep yourself and taste the difference.

Read about other meal kits comparison articles

• HelloFresh VS GoodFood VS Chefs Plate
• Chefs Plate VS GoodFood
• Chefs Plate VS HelloFresh
• Fresh Prep VS HelloFresh

Looking for the cheapest meal kits? Use our cost comparison tool to find your best budget-friendly option now!

Not sure which meal kit is right for you? Compare Canada’s top meal kit delivery services and find your perfect match!

Chefs Plate Review

• Budget-friendliness
• Flexible ordering system

Get $100 off your first
Chefs Plate recipe boxes

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Fresh Prep Review

• Extensive meal variety
• Highest quality food

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1 Fresh Prep recipe boxes

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Frequently Asked Questions:

Is Fresh Prep the same as Chefs Plate?

No, these companies aren’t the same. Both deliver nationally: Chefs Plate covers most of the country, and Fresh Prep now serves British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec after acquiring Cook It in 2024. Chefs Plate is the more budget-friendly choice, whereas Fresh Prep is the better fit if you want pre-cut ingredients you just cook or assemble.

Is Fresh Prep healthy?

Yes, Fresh Prep is typically very healthy. Much of its weekly menu is dedicated to vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free meals. The ingredients are of the highest quality, so you know that everything is fresh and as healthy as possible.

Is Chefs Plate healthy?

Yes, Chefs Plate can be considered healthy. The weekly menu offers extremely healthy options like salads, or you can choose from higher-calorie options like burgers. The choice is yours and each recipe is clearly labelled with ingredients and allergens.

Does Fresh Prep let you choose your meals?

Yes, Fresh Prep lets you choose your meals. You can see the upcoming weekly menu choices a few weeks in advance if you want to plan ahead.

Does Chefs Plate let you choose your meals?

Yes, Chefs Plate lets you choose your meals. You can see the upcoming weekly menu choices a few weeks in advance if you want to plan ahead.