8.6/ 10
SCORE

Purple Carrot vegan meal kits

Pricing

Starts at $11/serving

Type

Meal kits

Recipes per week

8

Good for

Vegan, vegetarian, paleo, gluten-free, low-calorie

Score Breakdown

Taste/results 9/10Value 7/10Ease of recipes 8/10Recipe variety 9/10Healthiness 10/10

Pros

• Super fresh ingredients and healthy, flavorful recipes
• Simple meal plan and meal selection
• Great way to learn plant-based cooking
• No unhealthy fake meats

Cons

• Nutrition information wasn’t as easy to decipher as other services
• It’s on the expensive side
• Meals take longer than other services
• One of the recipes I made was bland

For those seeking plant-based meal kits, Purple Carrot is the only service that specializes invegan fare. Others including HelloFresh, Home Chef and Sunbasket provide meatless options each week, but no service has gone all in on vegetarian and vegan cuisine like Purple Carrot.

Most nutrition experts agree that eating more plant-based meals per week is good foroverall health, and there have never been more ways to do it. I’m a meal kit fanatic and chief reviewer for CNET. To see if Purple Carrot is worth the cost of admission, I enlisted the help of an editor who’s newer to cooking and a vegetarian wellness editor, and we put Purple Carrot to the test. I’d already tested two weeks’ worth of Purple Carrot meals in the past, so I asked my two fellow editors to cook another weeks’ worth of meals each to see how the popular vegan meal kit service ranks in 2025.

Purple Carrot is the only completely vegan meal kit service, and it takes plant-based cooking seriously. You’ll find few recipes that try to imitate meat; instead, there’s a wide range of dishes featuring vegan staples like lentils, legumes, cashews, grains, cauliflower, root vegetables and fresh greens.

Some Purple Carrot meals take longer to cook and require more effort and focus than the likes of HelloFresh and Home Chef, but you’ll taste that extra effort in the food. CNET has tested the service twice now, and Purple Carrot remains a firm pick. It’s the best meal kit service for vegan food in 2025. 

Here’s our firsthand review of the 100% vegan meal kit service and everything you need to know about Purple Carrot.

How Purple Carrot works

Purple Carrot works like many other meal kit companies in that it sends the ingredients and instructions to make lunch or dinner recipes at home. Because it’s all vegan, plant-based cuisine, you don’t have to choose from a slate of meal preferences since there’s only one: Vegan. It’s also worth noting that Purple Carrot is a subscription service, meaning meal kits will come every week, but you are free to cancel or pause anytime with no penalty, so don’t be deterred if you want to try it out. Now, Purple Carrot also offers prepared meals in addition to meal kits for even simpler meal planning.

When you sign up for Purple Carrot, you’ll start with a quiz to dig into your eating habits and dietary preferences. There are some other, admittedly odd, questions, including about gender and how often you go to the gym, that I assume the brand uses to glean marketing insights. 

The only big decision you’ll make upon signing up is how many servings per meal and meals per week you’d like to try. If you pick just three recipes per week and two servings per meal, it’s $13.25 per serving. Choose a four-serving meal plan with two or three recipes a week and the price drops to $11 per serving.

From there, you’ll have numerous vegan dinner recipes to pick from each week for the following week’s delivery. For the week of May 18, 2025, there are 17 dinner meal kit options, four lunch options and four breakfast options. Plus, there are also 26 premade meal options.

The grocery section of the website offers numerous add-ons you can add to your order, such as plant-based milk, vegan cheese, juices, cereal and much more.

Unlike some meal kit services, Purple Carrot picks your shipping day based on your proximity to fulfillment centers. Ingredients arrive in cooler bags and are said to keep for as long as 72 hours. That’s longer than most meal kits and is likely due to them not containing any meat. Shipping is always free, which helps offset the higher overall price 

What are Purple Carrot meals like?

Purple Carrot meals are 100% vegan and fairly healthy, although not necessarily low-carb or low-calorie. Most are centered on whole foods and vegetables with no meat, dairy or animal products of any sort. That might sound like a given, but I’ve noticed that many meal kit companies have incorporated plant-based meat alternatives like Impossible Beef and Beyond Meat into their vegan and vegetarian recipes. Not so with Purple Carrot. You’ll find some tofu but not a lot of the newfangled lab-produced imitators.

Expect lots of hearty bowls filled with grains, nuts and veggies from Purple Carrot, as well as filling lentil soups and rib-sticking stews like vegan chili or West African peanut stew. There are also generally a couple of delicious-looking vegan pasta dishes on a given week’s menu, including lemon zucchini pasta with cashew cream sauce and artichoke hearts. 

There’s often a plant-based taco recipe or sandwich option to choose from. While some meal kit companies play it safe with familiar flavors, Purple Carrot takes some big swings with flavorful curries, sauces and spice mixes to add some welcome pizazz to its vegan recipes. In addition to being fully vegan, many of the dishes are also gluten-free.

Is Purple Carrot healthy?

Our wellness editor notes that just because meals are plant-based and vegan, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re healthy. While Purple Carrot does include basic nutrition facts on the back of its recipe pamphlets, it doesn’t list everything — including the daily value percentage, which can provide a helpful reference point of what you’re meant to consume each day. As a result, she recommends looking up the full nutrition label online to see exactly what you’re eating and if it’s in line with your daily values.

For instance, for the Marry-Me Cauliflower recipe she made, the back of the pamphlet reads: 37g of fat. However, when you view the full nutrition label online, you’ll see that it includes 97% of your daily value of saturated fat, which likely comes from the coconut milk.

In terms of ingredients, Purple Carrot has a nice variety of greens, veggies, healthy grains, beans and vegan and plant-based proteins, which are some of the healthiest ingredients and foods that everyone should have in their daily rotation.

Meal add-ons: Breakfast, lunch and snacks

In addition to the weekly meal kits, Purple Carrot has breakfast and lunch meal kits as well as snacks you can add to your delivery a la carte. Lunch meal kits are two servings and clock in at $9 a serving while breakfast kits, like tropical coconut pancakes with fresh fruit, are under $5 a serving but come in four-serving portions only. Snacks are priced individually and include sweet and savory munchies such as mushroom jerky, vegan chocolate and peanut butter truffles.

CNET’s wellness editor, Anna, was sent the Seven Sundays maple sea salt sunflower cereal (a gluten-free, seven-ingredient cereal made of upcycled sunflower protein) and Táche Pistachio Milk. She loved them both and now plans to buy on her own.

How easy are Purple Carrot meal kits to prepare?

One thing to note about Purple Carrot is that meal kits are, on average, more difficult to prepare and take longer than other services. Purple Carrot meals don’t require high levels of cooking skill but they have a good deal of prep and recipes contain more directions and steps than competitors, such as Blue Apron and HelloFresh. 

Most Purple Carrot meal kits take about 30 to 40 minutes while others take longer, sometimes as long as 50 minutes or so. The cooking times are all listed on the menu each week so you can always select the quicker meals if you don’t think there will be time for a longer session that week.

Our flex editor — and self-proclaimed novice cook — noted that these recipes did take longer for her to make than the other meal kits she has tested. She also felt like the steps weren’t as detailed as others. For example, for a pasta dish she made, two of the ingredients read, “1 lemon, zested and juiced (divided) and 0.5 oz basil, roughly chopped.” Because of the wording, she thought this meant these steps were already done, but in fact, the produce still needed to be prepped and this wasn’t detailed in the instructions anywhere.

For someone new to cooking or meal kits, this could be confusing if you simply start at step one, which started with boiling pasta and creating a breadcrumb topping. However, these are fairly easy hurdles to overcome, so it’s not a deal-breaker by any means, but it’s something to keep in mind when you start using this service.

Our wellness editor liked that some packaged ingredients had cut lines, making them easy to open, and also included the amount for easy identification. However, not all ingredients had this. She also appreciated that some of the ingredients were also pre-diced, which would be great for someone who struggles with chopping.

What we cooked and how it went

• Red lentil soup with parsnip ribbons and tamarind sauce: The whole dish worked but the sweet roasted parsnip ribbons were my favorite part of this meal. 

• Black pepper tofu with brown rice and chard: This was as good as restaurant takeout and took less than 30 minutes to make. It was my favorite of the bunch, although it wasn’t the healthiest meal I made.

• Cauliflower steak with red lentil skordalia and garlic green beans: This meal took a while to prepare but was tasty in the end. Cauliflower steak is always a bit of a letdown but the red lentil skordalia more than made up for it.

• Green curry lentils with brown rice and vegetables: I had to psych myself up for this one since I like lentils but would be lying if I said they excite me. But it was so, so good. Amazing balance of sweetness and heat and a big portion. I joyfully finished the leftovers for lunch the next day. 

• Butternut squash gnocchi: This one was also tasty and filling, and it’s a good fall or winter meal. It was easy to prepare and had excellent flavor throughout.
• Peanut and avocado Buddha bowl: This one was good but not very exciting. It was the only one I finished eating, considered the price, and then thought to myself, “Was this worth the money?”

• Marry-me cauliflower: This took our wellness editor 35 minutes to make and while she enjoyed the taste, she did note that the dish is higher in saturated fat (19 grams) than some other options, because of the coconut milk. Sodium is 1,150mg (50% of your recommended daily value), but you get 13g of protein, 12g of fiber and calcium, iron and potassium. She enjoyed cooking with tarragon (an herb she doesn’t normally use) and also liked the vegan Parmesan cheese. However, she did not have vegetable oil on hand to brown the cauliflower and used olive oil instead.
• Miso-leek pasta: Our wellness editor also enjoyed the taste of this dish and was pleasantly surprised to see Treeline cheese, a popular vegan cheese brand, in her meal kit. Again, she got to cook with an ingredient she doesn’t normally use, leeks, so she appreciated the variety. She did note that the calories may be slightly high for some at 740 calories per serving.

• Crispy lemon chick’n: While our wellness editor enjoyed the brown rice and gai lan (also known as “Chinese broccoli”), she didn’t like the lemon chick’n. This may be because she didn’t have the vegetable oil to fry it and used olive oil instead. She also chose to reduce the amount of sugar in the lemon sauce, but she found the chick’n wasn’t tasty enough for her to finish. She was also careful about the amount of salt added, since it contains 1,300mg (56% of your daily value). Calories may also be high for some at 730. In the end, she also had leftover lemon zest, despite using the recommended amount.

  Our flex editor also received this meal and liked it a bit more. She was especially happy with the texture of the tofu and how it crisped up nicely, thanks to the cornstarch coating. The microwaved brown rice also exceeded her expectations. However, her one complaint is that she would have appreciated it if the recipe detailed a more specific amount of lemon juice needed for the sauce. She used the juice of a full lemon since the recipe said to, but it felt like way too much and made an overly tangy flavor. Luckily, the gai lan did balance it out, but she understands why this dish wouldn’t be everyone’s favorite.

• Puerto Rican rice and beans: The adobo-roasted tofu had our wellness editor wanting more from this dish. The block of tofu was simply cut in half and rubbed in the spice mixture, which didn’t provide the right ratio of spice to tofu. Instead, she wishes the tofu was cut into cubes or that the spice mixture was a marinade that could better penetrate the tofu. She also ended up with leftover turmeric, which she will use, but which defeats the purpose of a meal kit that isn’t supposed to have ingredients go to waste.

Our flex editor tried the same meal and agrees that the tofu would have probably been better if it were cut into cubes. But for two servings, she had plenty of spice mixture for her tofu block after it was cut in half, so it still boasted a good flavor. She also really liked the bean and squash mixture and could have eaten that as a meal on its own.

• Penne pesto alla Trapanese: This was the easiest dish for our flex editor to make, and it was tasty. She liked the vegan cheese and gluten-free breadcrumbs, and they complemented each other well.

• Vibrant falafel bowl: This premade meal was our flex editor’s surprise favorite. The falafel was delicious and the orzo and veggies were tender and perfectly flavored. It had an almost sweet flavor, and she said she would happily order it again.

Seven Sundays sunflower cereal and Táche unsweetened pistachio milk: This was added into our flex editor’s box and she’s grateful it was. The cereal will now be a welcomed addition to her weekly grocery run. It was her first time having pistachio milk and as an oat-milk enthusiast, she’s still unsure about it, but that comes down to personal preference. Overall, she’s impressed with the grocery options at Purple Carrot and thinks it’s one of the main draws to trying the service.

Purple Carrot support materials 

There’s nothing extraordinarily good or bad about the recipe cards. They’re mostly clear and concise, with some helpful footnotes for beginners and helpful cooking tips I may not have considered otherwise. I also appreciated the quick little explainers for any unusual recipes. 

Our wellness editor also liked that the box her meal kits came in provided information about the produce country of origin. She also appreciated that she was able to see the brands for items such as the vegan cheese, beans and coconut milk.

Who should try Purple Carrot?

These meal kits are great for existing vegans or folks trying to incorporate more plant-based cooking into their diet. For me, it was a good way to learn to cook vegan staples and work with ingredients I’m not as familiar with cooking such as lentils, nori, parsnips and butternut squash. 

Our wellness editor would also recommend Purple Carrot for people concerned about allergens, since the brand includes allergen information on both the recipe pamphlets and ingredients.

Who should not try Purple Carrot?

Besides the obvious answer, meat eaters, Purple Carrot is also not great for those trying to keep to specific diet plans like keto, paleo, the Mediterranean diet or others. There aren’t tons of weekly choices and, despite being healthy overall, many of them contain a substantial amount of carbs, calories or both. It is also on the expensive side, though not the priciest we’ve tried, so that also might take it out of the running for some.

If you’re looking for a truly budget-friendly meal kit, see our list of the best cheap meal delivery services. 

How much do Purple Carrot meal kits cost?

Purple Carrot meals are either $11 to $13.25 a serving, depending on how many servings per meal you order. A box of three meals per week for two people will cost $79.50.

Most meal kit services offer a trial discount for new customers and Purple Carrot is no exception. If you’re new to the plant-based meal delivery service, it’ll knock 50% off your first order.

Purple Carrot packaging and environmental friendliness

Purple Carrot is not too much better or worse than other meal kit services when it comes to packaging. The meals were each separated in plastic bags while some companies use paper but Purple Carrot’s cooler bags are recyclable and the ice packs are biodegradable. Our wellness editor does appreciate that the the brand provides a full recycling breakdown, but like with the other meal kits she’s tested, she does wish there was a way to send back the ice packs or donate them for reuse.

Many of the Purple Carrot ingredients come in plastic jars and bottles, which some communities recycle curbside, but our wellness editor thinks they’re nice enough quality to keep on hand for storing smaller amounts.

Changing, skipping or canceling a Purple Carrot order

You can add, change or cancel meals easily through the app or the website. You can also skip a week’s delivery or cancel anytime before the weekly cut-off.

Final verdict on Purple Carrot 

While some meal kits drive home the value proposition and others lean into the speedy convenient aspect of meal kits, Purple Carrot has kept a consistent ethos over the years. A plant-based diet can do wonders for your health and Purple Carrot is committed to authentic vegan recipes without compromising on quality. 

I found most of the meals I made to be healthy but still surprisingly craveable. The portions were also bigger than most services: A recipe meant for two often yielded more like three or four servings. Plus, the ingredients were super fresh and much of it was organic.

As someone who still enjoys meat and has no plans to dice it out of my diet completely, I’m not sure I’d want to cook Purple Carrot meals every night. But since you can skip weekly shipments whenever you want, I love the idea of having recipes and ingredients for interesting vegan meals showing up semi-regularly. 

While our wellness editor enjoyed Purple Carrot overall and appreciates that it’s 100% vegan, she did find certain components of her recipes lacking. Mainly, she wishes the proteins, like the tofu and chick’n, had better flavor and would have preferred having no leftover ingredients. However, she loved the add-ons included in her box and likes that Purple Carrot offers that option.

If you want a weekly stream of meal kits but don’t want to commit to eating 100% vegan, try Sunbasket or Blue Apron which have excellent recipes with and without meat. If it’s mostly meatless food you’re looking to cook, you won’t find a service that teaches you more important vegan cooking skills than Purple Carrot.