Keto (short for “ketogenic”) is one of the more restrictive diets out there. It involves eating very low carb and high fat meals. Through eating this way, it puts the body into a state of ketosis. The body generally uses carbohydrates as an energy source but in ketosis the body burns fat and makes things called ketones.

Interestingly though, recent research suggests there are many unique health benefits related to the keto diet. These range from weight loss to help managing diabetes and more.

As someone who was in awe of these purported health benefits when the keto diet rose to popularity, I was perplexed as to how to best follow it.

As I learned, keto is not a forgiving diet. You either follow it meticulously so that you’re in ketosis or you don’t and you’re kicked out of ketosis and the majority of the benefits are nulled. What’s more is, if you get kicked out of ketosis, the side effects can be as severe as brain fog, fatigue, and an increased craving for carbohydrates. This is often called the “keto flu”.

I knew that if I wanted to follow a keto diet, I had to take it seriously right from the start. I also knew that I had to be realistic. I don’t have the time to be researching specific meals, planning everything, and cooking to ensure that I hit every macro I had to for the day.

That’s when I began researching keto meal delivery services.

When I originally wrote this article, years ago, there was very little choice when it came to food boxes that strictly adhered to the keto diet. Thankfully, today there are many more options to choose from. Which is why I’ve gone ahead and updated this article for 2021 to reflect the best keto meal delivery services out there.

Best Overall

Fresh n Lean

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What It Is: Fresh n Lean is a premade meal delivery service known for their wide variety of diet meal plans—keto being one of their more popular ones. What makes them stand out among the rest of the keto meal delivery services on this list is that they offer a huge amount of meal variety to choose from each week (around 17 meals).

Types Of Keto Meals Offered: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and additional meals.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $9.97

Our Favorite Fresh n Lean Keto Meals:

  • Coconut-Turmeric Salmon With Broccoli (10g carbohydrates, 36g fat, 41g protein)
  • Sesame Beef With Yellow Squash & Broccoli (10g carbohydrates, 34g fat, 32g protein)
  • Chicken Parmesan With Zucchini (5g carbohydrates, 31g fat, 35g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Fresh n Lean consistently delivers quality when it comes to their food. All of their meals are vacuum-sealed to keep the food as fresh as possible, they’re one of the few keto meal delivery services that is USDA inspected (FSIS), and they use fully organic ingredients.
  • Their meals have the lowest net carbohydrates and highest amount of fats that I’ve seen and tested in all my years researching meal delivery services.
  • They offer a huge variety of keto snacks such as their smoky BBQ almonds (8g carbohydrates) and teriyaki beef jerky (5g net carbohydrates).

Buy Fresh n Lean

Best Premade Option For Variety

Factor Meals

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What It Is: Factor Meals (previously known as Factor75) is a premade meal delivery service that focuses primarily on keto-specific meals. In fact, when they first launched, Factor was one of the only meal delivery services that catered to those following the keto diet. Today, they offer upwards of 9 premade keto meals each week. What’s more is they also have a marketplace of foods you can add to your box each week, in addition to the meals you get. These add ons range from soups and snacks to extra proteins like chicken breasts and burgers.

Types Of Keto Meals Offered: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $11.00

Our Favorite Factor Keto Meals:

  • Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken with Zucchini Noodles (15g carbohydrates, 53g fat, 40g protein)
  • Blackened Salmon with Smoked Gouda Cauliflower “Grits” & Broccoli (17g carbohydrates, 47g fat, 45g protein)
  • Keto Turkey Chili & Zucchini with Ancho Lime Crema (11g carbohydrates, 34g fat, 25g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Factor Meals is one of the few keto meal delivery services that truly sticks to the keto diet. Many other meal delivery services say that they are keto-specific but their meals are either not low-carb enough or not high-fat enough.
  • Their marketplace is filled with keto-friendly add ons such as nut mixes, eggs, and more. Watch our video unboxing and taste testing their soups and snacks here.
  • They are one of the few meal delivery services on this list to offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as a variety of add ons.
  • Their meals are very tasty. We’ve reviewed Factor Meals multiple times since 2018 and have always been impressed with the flavor and quality of their meals.

Buy Factor Meals

Best Tasting Premade Keto Meals

Snap Kitchen

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What It Is: Snap Kitchen is a premade keto meal delivery service that focuses heavily on quality. That means their meals have zero preservatives, antibiotics, artificial sweeteners, or hormones. All of their meals are also 100% gluten free.

Types Of Keto Meals Offered: Lunch and dinner.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $10.50

Our Favorite Snap Kitchen Keto Meals:

  • Romesco Chicken with Grilled Kale & Mushrooms (11g carbohydrates, 25g fat, 33g protein)
  • Bruschetta Chicken with Balsamic Reduction (12g carbohydrates, 15g fat, 39g protein)
  • Buffalo Ranch Burger with Loaded Roasted Cauliflower (11g carbohydrates, 55g fat, 22g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Snap Kitchen is one of the only keto meal delivery services on this list to have local locations where you can go to pick up your meals.
  • Their meals have been consistently delicious.
  • They donate their unsold meals to food banks.

Buy Snap Kitchen

Best Keto Option For Weight Loss

Diet-To-Go (Keto Plan)

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What It Is: Diet-To-Go is one of the oldest premade diet meal delivery services on this list, having been founded in 1991. Their keto meal plan offers upwards of 15 different meals per week. They also allow you to customize your plan from the start based on your food preferences (for example, excluding seafood).

Types Of Keto Meals Offered: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sides.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $10.14

Our Favorite Diet-To-Go Keto Meals:

  • Baked Chicken with Goat Cheese (11g carbohydrates, 28g fat, 33g protein)
  • Chicken Parmesan over Ratatouille (13g carbohydrates, 29g fat, 30g protein)
  • Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine Sauce (16g carbohydrates, 32g fat, 31g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Diet-To-Go’s speciality is crafting premade meals for those looking to lose weight. They have multiple success stories of customers who have used their meal plans to shed upwards of 50 lbs.
  • All of their meals are frozen, which makes them good for people who may want to stock up on meals or freeze them for later use.
  • For frozen meals, they came out very delicious. I recommend preparing them in the oven, rather than the microwave, for best results.

Buy Diet-To-Go

Best Keto Meal Delivery Service For Big Eaters

Trifecta Nutrition

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What It Is: Trifecta Nutrition is a premade meal delivery service that is best known for their fitness and bodybuilding meals. Trifecta’s keto meal plan not only adheres very well to the restrictive nature of the keto diet, they offer a lot of meal variety (including additional daily meals). All of their keto meals use high-quality ingredients, including organic produce, humanely raised meats, and sustainably-caught seafood.

Types Of Keto Meals Offered: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and additional entrees.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $13.79

Our Favorite Trifecta Nutrition Keto Meals:

  • Beef Sloppy Joes (7g carbohydrates, 33g fat, 38g protein)
  • Roasted Chicken Thighs (4g carbohydrates, 25g fat, 32g protein)
  • Ground Beef Frittata With Asparagus (5g carbohydrates, 29g fat, 28g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • They are one of the few keto meal delivery services that allows you to add on an additional 3rd entree to your order. This makes them a good option for big eaters, bodybuilders, and athletes.
  • They use locally sourced ingredients.
  • They give you the ability to customize your meal plan by excluding shellfish, salmon, white fish, nuts, chicken, red meat, mushrooms, and turkey.

Buy Trifecta Nutrition

Best Keto Meal Kit

Green Chef

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What It Is: Green Chef is the only meal kit currently available that has keto-specific meals as well as a keto meal plan. Many others say they have keto meals but they’re really just low-carb and do not adhere to the strict nature of the keto diet. In addition to being the only keto meal kit option, Green Chef is also the only USDA certified organic meal kit on the market.

Types Of Keto Meals Offered: Lunch and dinner.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $9.98

Our Favorite Green Chef Keto Meals:

  • Blackened Barramundi With Dijonnaise (16g carbohydrates, 62g fat, 31g protein)
  • Cuban Chicken With Chimichurri, Red Bell Pepper, Snap Peas, Cabbage, Pepitas, Cotija (17g carbohydrates, 48g fat, 50g protein)
  • Shrimp Scampi Spaghetti Squash Noodles, Basil Pesto, Parmesan, Hazelnuts (21g carbohydrates, 57g fat, 28g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Green Chef is the only keto meal kit that is currently available.
  • They hold themselves to the highest standards when it comes to quality—using organic ingredients and some of the most eco-friendly packing materials.
  • Their meals are delicious. We’ve been ordering from Green Chef since 2017. Their meal quality and taste has been consistently high.

Buy Green Chef

Best Keto Soup Delivery

Proper Good

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What It Is: Proper Good is one of the few soup delivery services available on the internet. While they don’t offer a keto meal plan, they do offer many keto-specific soups. What makes Proper Good stand out among the rest of the keto meal delivery options on this list is that they are shelf-stable. This means you don’t have to store these meals in the fridge or freeze (just your pantry). This means they last months longer than all the other keto premade meals on this list.

Types Of Keto Foods Offered: Soup and seasonings.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $5.94

Our Favorite Proper Good Keto Soups:

  • Sweet Red Pepper & Meatball Soup (12g carbohydrates, 25g fat, 12g protein)
  • Broccoli Cheddar Soup (9g carbohydrates, 27g fat, 7g protein)
  • Cream Of Chicken (10g carbohydrates, 27g fat, 20g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • They are one of the lowest priced keto food boxes on this list, making them a great option for those on a budget.
  • Their soups are some of the best tasting premade soups I’ve ever had.
  • They are one of the few keto food boxes on this list that offers one-off orders as well as recurring orders. This allows you to try their soups out first, before commiting to a subscription.

Buy Proper Good

Best For Keto Bundles

518 Kitchen

What It Is: 518 Kitchen is a keto-only premade meal delivery service. This means that they only sell meals that fit into the keto diet. They allow you to order your keto meals in a variety of different ways—subscribing, one-off a la carte orders, and ordering keto meal bundles. They also have a huge selection to choose from, with over 35 different keto foods currently on their rotating menu.

Types Of Keto Foods Offered: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, sides, and desserts.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $6.99

Our Favorite 518 Kitchen Keto Meals:

  • Keto Chicken Pot Pie (10g carbohydrates, 44g fat, 32g protein)
  • Boneless Short Ribs with Broccoli Rabe (10g carbohydrates, 49g fat, 34g protein)
  • Philly Cheesesteak with Celeriac Fries (11g carbohydrates, 59g fat, 40g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • 518 Kitchen offers the most cuisine variety out of any option on this list. This ranges from traditional American meals like their keto chicken pot pie to Asian inspired sesame chicken.
  • By having so many different ways to order (a la carte or subscription) you can test them out before committing to a full subscription.
  • All of their meals are sent frozen so you can stock up on keto meals through one of their bundles or a la carte and have weeks or even months worth of keto meals at home, in your freezer.

Buy 518 Kitchen

Best Quality Premade Keto Meals

The Good Kitchen

What It Is: The Good Kitchen is a premade meal delivery service that focuses on using the highest quality ingredients in all of their keto meals. This means that they use 100% grass-Fed and grass-finished beef, pasture-raised poultry, pork, eggs, lamb and turkey, as well as Seafood Watch compliant seafood items.

Types Of Keto Foods Offered: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $11.87

Our Favorite Good Kitchen Keto Meals:

  • BBQ Rubbed Wings (0g carbohydrates, 44g fat, 56g protein)
  • Ranch Chicken With Buffalo Cauliflower (10g carbohydrates, 15g fat, 35g protein)
  • Korean Style Beef Bowl (16g carbohydrates, 30g fat, 42g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • They allow you to narrow down your keto meals by specific food allergies, such as dairy, egg, shellfish, and tree nuts. Plus, you can filter out by specific ingredients you may not enjoy, such as onions, mushrooms, nightshades, spicy foods, and pork.
  • They offer a variety of different ways to order—sample packs, a la carte, and subscriptions.
  • They sell their meals directly via their website as well as Amazon.

Buy The Good Kitchen

Best Frozen High Protein Keto Meals

Ice Age Meals

What It Is: Ice Age Meals is a premade frozen meal delivery service that started off as a paleo meal delivery service but has since shifted towards offering more low-carb meals that fit within the keto diet. All of their meals use zero gluten, grains, sugar, soy, corn, nuts, or dairy.

Types Of Keto Foods Offered: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $10.85

Our Favorite Ice Age Meals Keto Meals:

  • Smoked Pork Belly (10g carbohydrates, 97g fat, 48g protein)
  • Smoked Chicken and Chipotle Pineapple Punch BBQ Sauce (15g carbohydrates, 45g fat, 83g protein)
  • Smoked Brisket and Eggs (5g carbohydrates, 68g fat, 63g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Ice Age Meals has some of the highest protein keto meals that I’ve seen to date. This makes them a great option for those following the High Protein Ketogenic Diet.
  • They offer a variety of different ways to order—sample packs, build your own box, and more.
  • In addition to meals, they offer a variety of low-carb sauces and spices.

Buy Ice Age Meals

Best For Gourmet Keto Meals

Cookunity

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What It Is: Cookunity is a premade meal delivery service that works a bit differently than the others on this list. They partner with high-end chefs local to your area and work with them to craft dishes that are then sent directly to your door. This means that all of their meals are small batch and cooked with locally sourced (restaurant quality) ingredients.

Types Of Keto Foods Offered: Lunch and dinner.

Lowest Price Per Meal: $10.49

Our Favorite Cookunity Keto Meals:

  • Keto Meatloaf With Celery & Cremini Mushrooms (10g carbohydrates, 31g fat, 49g protein)
  • Meatloaf With Broccoli & Cremini Mushrooms (20g carbohydrates, 28g fat, 34g protein)
  • Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breast (15g carbohydrates, 62g fat, 39g protein)

Why It Made The List:

  • Cookunity’s meals are as close to having a private gourmet chef as you can get with meal delivery services. We’ve reviewed them many times and tried multiple of their boxes. Every time I have been impressed with how delicious their meals have been.
  • Working with chefs in your local area means that their meals are sent to you fresh.
  • They offer some of the most eco-friendly packaging out of any premade meal delivery service that we’ve reviewed. It is both compostable and recyclable.

Buy Cookunity

The Basics Of The Keto Diet

The keto diet in a nutshell is a low-carb, high-fat diet. However, the diet itself is actually broken up into many different subsets—standard ketogenic diet, cyclical ketogenic diet, targeted ketogenic diet, and high protein ketogenic diet are the most popular. Each of these versions of the keto diet have slightly different rules:

  • Standard Ketogenic Diet: This is the variation of the diet that most people refer to when they say “keto”. It requires your daily meals to contain 70% fat, 20% protein, and only 10% carbs.
  • Cyclical Ketogenic Diet: This variation of the keto diet requires you to rotate when you eat carbohydrates. Going from 5 ketogenic days to then 2 high carbohydrate days.
  • Targeted Ketogenic Diet: This variation of the keto diet is geared more towards athletes due to the fact that it allows you to add in carbohydrates around workouts. This allows your body to have the carbohydrate fuel needed to perform your workouts at peak energy levels.
  • High-Protein Ketogenic Diet: This variation is similar to the Standard Ketogenic Diet but includes more protein. The macro ratio is usually 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

What Is Ketosis?

The basis of the keto diet revolves around getting your body into ketosis. Ketosis is the state in which your body is able to use fat as energy called “ketone bodies” or “ketones” for short. This allows your body to burn fat for fuel rather than carbohydrates. As you can probably tell, this is the reason why it’s necessary to adhere to strict low-carb, high-fat meals when following the keto diet. Or else, you could get kicked out of ketosis.

What Are The Benefits Of The Keto Diet?

The keto diet has sprung up in popularity due to the fact that there are a variety of research-backed benefits to following it. Here are some of the most interesting benefits:

  • It may help promote weight loss. According to a 2013 meta-analysis, researchers found that people who followed a keto diet lost 2 lbs more than those following low fat diets over the period of a year.
  • A 2014 study found that it may work as a complementary treatment used alongside chemotherapy and radiation therapy in people with certain cancers.
  • According to the Epilepsy Foundation, doctors recommend a ketogenic for children whose seizures have not responded to several different seizure medicines.
  • A 2017 review of studies of humans and animals adhering to the keto diet showed that showed that some experienced a significant drop in levels of total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad cholesterol, and triglycerides, and an increase in high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good” cholesterol.
  • A 2019 review suggested that the ketones created in the body through the keto diet provide neuroprotective benefits. This means it could help manage conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

What Are The Benefits of Using a Keto Meal Delivery Service?

So you’ve read our list of keto-friendly meal delivery services but you’re not sure if it’s right for you. That’s okay—these meal delivery services are right for some people and not others. Our goal in creating Food Box HQ is to help you make the right meal delivery decision.

Let’s go over the benefits of using a keto meal kit so you can see if it’s in line with what you’re looking to get out of it…

Ability To Stick To Keto Without The Hassle Of Guessing Macros

Has your biggest struggle with the keto diet been trying to figure out your daily macros? It was for me. Counting the fat, protein, and carbohydrates in every single one of your meals can be a little overwhelming and time-consuming. Ultimately, it could deter you from sticking to keto-friendly meals for the long haul. Thankfully, using a meal delivery service can help eliminate that hassle.

All of the options on this list have keto meals or meal plans that adhere to the 70% fat, 20% protein, 10% carbs macro ratio.

If you need extra help tracking your macros, I highly suggest either looking into a keto tracking app such as Carb Manager. Or, another option is to use Trifecta Nutrition and download their all-in-one app. It allows you to schedule and plan your meals, track your workouts, and track your macros for the day.

Perfectly Portioned To Avoid Overeating Or Undereating

Following any kind of diet can be a little stressful and involve a lot of planning. What should I eat? When should I eat? And how much am I supposed to be eating at each meal? There’s a lot to figure out if you want to ensure you’re feeding your body properly and getting in all the essential nutrients.

Using a keto meal delivery service will help eliminate some of that stress and take care of all the planning for you. They’re especially great for keeping you on track when it comes to portion sizes. All of the meals you’ll receive will be perfectly portioned so you don’t have to worry about overeating or under-eating. You’ll get the macros your body needs to stay in ketosis.

Factoring in Time, I’ve Found It More Budget-Friendly Than Making It Yourself Or Eating Out

One of the things that holds people back in signing up for a meal delivery service is that they’re worried about the cost. While some of the meal delivery services on this list might seem high in price, you have to think about where you’re saving in terms of both money and time.

These services are either providing you with pre-made meals or fresh ingredients to cook the meal yourself. It all depends which one you go for. Either way, it’s going to cut down on the amount of food you’ll have to purchase at the grocery store each week since your breakfasts, lunches, and/or dinners are going to be taken care of for you. I’ve found that this can help save money because you often have to buy more of one ingredient than you need for a recipe. And then, sometimes you have food that goes to waste and has to be thrown out. Shockingly, nearly 40% of food is thrown away each year!

Any of the keto meal delivery services on this list are going to help you cut down on food waste, thus saving money in the long-run. Plus, you’re  going to be saving time, which is the one thing we can never get back.

It Provides The Opportunity To Try Unique Keto Meals

We’re all guilty of getting stuck in a rut when it comes to food. When we find something we like and that’s also easy to make, we fall into the trap of making it over and over again. And the reality is, that gets boring after a while. We need a little variety in our lives when it comes to the meals we make.

Instead of scouring the web for new recipes to try, you can use a keto meal delivery service to provide you with unique dishes to taste. This way, you aren’t always repeating the same recipes and you’ll get to try new things that you probably wouldn’t have made otherwise. It expands your palate as an eater and can step-up your cooking skills in the process when you learn how new flavors work together.

For instance, Green Chef has a keto-friendly meal plan with a menu that rotates each week. What I’ve found very helpful is saving the keto recipes I enjoy from Green Chef and making those dishes on my own in the future.

What to Consider When Choosing a Keto Delivery Service

When putting together this list of keto-friendly meal delivery services, we wanted to approach it as methodically as possibly. We used the questions/points below to find and narrow down this list. You can learn more about our review process here.

Do They Have a Keto-Friendly Plan or Just a Low-Carb Plan?

Some people want to stick to a keto diet in order to be in ketosis while others are looking to use it to simply lose weight. We specifically included only meal delivery services that offer keto meals and keto meal plans. This is the reason you will not find meal delivery services such as HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Sunbasket, or Freshly on this list. They only offer low-carb meals, not keto meals.

How Much Variety of Keto Meals Are Offered?

Variety is definitely important to consider because no one wants to get into a food rut eating the same exact meals day after day. You should change it up and experience new flavor combinations to keep it interesting and exciting. This way, you’ll actually look forward to keto rather than dreading the meals.

The keto meal delivery services included in this list all offer a variety of meal options. This is to ensure that you don’t get bored with the meals and that the meals are properly balanced in terms of taste and nutrition.

Quality of Ingredients

Quality is key when it comes to diet as well as flavor. When researching and reviewing options for this article, we wanted to make sure that the keto meals offered by the meal delivery service had to prioritize quality. We specifically narrowed down this list to include services that used organic produce, grass-fed beef, and other ingredients that were additive/chemical free.

Overall Cost of the Meals

Everyone has different budgets. Some can afford to be spending over $10 per meal, others cannot. We took that into consideration when putting together this list by making sure we included keto meal delivery services that had more budget friendly options. For example, Proper Good offers delicious and filling keto soups for around $5 to $6 per serving. On the flip side, services such as Cookunity or Trifecta offer more expensive “gourmet” keto meals.

Reliability of Service

Is the keto meal delivery service reliable? That is an extremely important point to consider and one we took very seriously when creating this list.

If you scroll down to the comments, you can see that some of our readers complained about services that we previously included, where they had poor experiences. We updated our list since then to reflect the real-life experiences of our readers.

All of the services on this list are established businesses, in good standing with the BBB, and have been in business for 5 or more years.

Meal Types

Last, we included meal delivery services that offered a variety of different types of meals—from different cuisines to different meal options and snacks.

We wanted to make sure that our readers have options that fit into their specific lifestyle. Some of which may want every aspect of their food to be covered (for example, using Fresh n Lean). Whereas others may want to simply try out new keto dinners (for example, using Green Chef).

Have you tried any of the keto meal delivery services on this list? Have a question we didn’t answer? Let us know in the comments below!