MacroPlate Review: Great Ingredients, One Big Catch
I tried MacroPlate for two weeks because, on paper, it was pretty much exactly what I wanted in a prepared meal service. The ingredients were fantastic, the protein portions delivered and I still cancelled. Here’s why.
Affiliate disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through one, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. That never changes what I recommend.
I really wanted MacroPlate to be the one
Of all the prepared meal services I researched, MacroPlate was the one I was most excited to try.
The ingredient standards are fantastic. They actually tell you what oils they cook with. They name their meat suppliers. Their seafood sourcing is specific. And when I discovered they deliver to Arizona, I was ridiculously excited because their service area is still pretty small.
Basically, this was the meal service that looked the most like food I would actually choose to keep in my own house.
So naturally, I cancelled after two weeks. 😂
But not because the food was bad.
That is where this review gets interesting.
The short version
If a friend asked me, “Should I try MacroPlate?” I would actually say yes, with two pretty important caveats:
You need to be okay with them choosing your meals, and personally, I’d skip breakfast.
MacroPlate does a lot right. Their sourcing transparency is probably the best I’ve found in prepared meal delivery so far. I chose the High Protein plan and the protein portions were legitimately stellar. There were meals I really liked.
But you don’t scroll through a menu each week and choose exactly what sounds good. You tell MacroPlate your preferences and goals, and they choose for you.
For some people, that is going to be glorious.
For me, it ultimately wasn’t.
Quick verdict
Best for: Someone who prioritizes ingredient quality and protein and would LOVE to stop making decisions about what to eat every week.
Probably not for: Picky households, anyone who wants control over individual meals or someone for whom an uneaten $18 meal is going to make them twitch.
Fresh or frozen: Fresh
What I paid: $154/week for eight High Protein meals including delivery, or $19.25 per meal all-in.
Meal choice: No individual meal selection when I subscribed. MacroPlate builds your box from your preferences.
Availability: Regional. Southern California, the Phoenix metro area and parts of Nevada when I ordered.
Would I try it again? Actually, yes. But I would configure my plan differently.
The ingredient standards are REALLY good
This is the thing MacroPlate does better than almost every prepared meal company I’ve looked at.
A lot of companies say things like “clean ingredients,” “premium proteins” and “thoughtfully sourced.”
Okay. Cool. What does that mean?
MacroPlate gets unusually specific.
Their primary cooking fat is 100% cold-pressed organic avocado oil. They also use organic extra-virgin olive oil and organic coconut oil in some dishes. They specifically state that they do not use canola, soybean, sunflower, vegetable or other seed oils.
Their beef comes from Snake River Farms and Black Hawk Ranch. Their poultry comes from Mary’s Free Range Farm. Their seafood is primarily wild-caught and sourced from Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and California. They prioritize local Southern California produce, organic and non-GMO when available.
That matters to me.
I’m not expecting every meal I eat to achieve some mythical state of nutritional perfection. I also eat in restaurants and I assure you nobody is running out of the kitchen to tell me which bottle of oil they just grabbed. 😂
But if I’m paying someone to stock my refrigerator with most of my meals for the week, ingredients matter more to me.
And I especially appreciate companies that tell me what they’re actually doing instead of giving me a cloud of wellness adjectives.
Naming your suppliers is different from saying you use “premium beef.” I can look up Snake River Farms. I know what claim you’re making.
That level of transparency is surprisingly rare in this category.
What does MacroPlate cost?
MacroPlate isn’t cheap.
When I ordered, meals ranged from $16 to $18 each depending on the program:
| Program | Price per meal |
|---|---|
| Traditional | $16 |
| Paleo Lite | $16 |
| Vegetarian | $16 |
| Paleo | $17 |
| High Protein | $18 |
I chose High Protein, which was the most expensive option at $18 per meal, but it was also the one that made the most sense for what I wanted.
My plan included four breakfasts and four dinners each week. Eight meals at $18 came to $144, plus a flat $10 delivery fee.
Total: $154/week.
Or $19.25 per meal once delivery is included. I paid $308 over the two weeks I subscribed.
That is not budget meal delivery.
But the High Protein plan was worth the upgrade to me because the protein portions were excellent. More on that in a minute.
One thing I actually appreciated about the price
There was no giant:
WELCOME!!! 50% OFF YOUR FIRST BOX!!!
followed by three increasingly expensive boxes while I tried to figure out what this thing actually costs. 😂
MacroPlate didn’t offer me a first-order discount. I paid full price immediately.
Is $154/week expensive? Yep. But honestly, you get what you pay for, and for this level of quality I was happy to pay.
And at least I knew the real number from day one.
I’ll take expensive-and-transparent over introductory-pricing calculus.
They ask a LOT of questions when you sign up
This was another thing I really liked.
You don’t just choose “High Protein” and hope for the best.
MacroPlate asks how many meals you want per day and which program you want. Then you get into allergies, protein preferences, meal types and additional dietary preferences. You can also choose goals such as improving health, building muscle, saving time, boosting energy, losing weight or eating cleaner.
One option that caught my attention during signup was GLP Support. I haven’t found a good explanation on MacroPlate public site of exactly what that preference changes, so I wouldn’t read too much into the label. But given the genuinely generous protein portions, I was interested to see it included.
Overall, it’s a surprisingly thorough intake.
But here’s the distinction I didn’t fully appreciate until after I subscribed:
MacroPlate offers substantial personalization without giving you meal-by-meal control.
And I don’t remember seeing anything during signup that clearly said, “You won’t choose your individual meals.”
I think I assumed that after answering all those questions, there would eventually be a menu-selection step.
There wasn’t.
When I later asked customer service about it, they confirmed that at this time members couldn’t select their meals and that the Dietary Preferences section was instead used to customize what was sent. They also told me their team was working on adding meal selection.
That would be a big upgrade for me.
Because the personalization is genuinely impressive. I just wish the distinction between “we personalize your meals” and “you choose your meals” had been more obvious before checkout.
But how was the actual food?
First, the protein portions were stellar
I chose the High Protein plan, so if I’m paying $18 a meal, I don’t want a decorative scattering of chicken sitting on a mountain of rice.
MacroPlate delivered here.
A few examples from my boxes:
- Chicken Stir-Fry: 52g protein, 481 calories
- Ground Turkey Bowl: 47g protein, 484 calories
- Lomo Saltado: 45g protein, 510 calories
- Grilled Teriyaki Salmon: 45g protein, 520 calories
- Tiramisu Chia Pudding: 33g protein, 481 calories
- Pesto Omelette: 32g protein, 444 calories
- Beef Chorizo Egg White Muffins: 32g protein, 410 calories
- Smoked Sausage Scramble: 32g protein, 444 calories
That’s legitimately high protein.
The Lomo Saltado had steak, broccolini, sweet potato, cherry tomato, red onion, bell pepper and aji verde. There was actual steak in there. A lot of it.
In fact, some of the portions worked so well that my tween daughter and I could share a meal, add another vegetable on the side and both be satisfied.
So yes, when MacroPlate calls this plan High Protein, they’re not making the word high do all the work.
Do yourself a favor and use a pan
MacroPlate gives stovetop reheating instructions in addition to microwave directions.
Use them.
At least when you have the extra few minutes.
I reheated the Lomo Saltado in a pan with a little water and it made a surprisingly big difference. The vegetables still had texture and the steak actually browned.
It felt much closer to reheating something I had cooked myself than pulling a tray out of a microwave.
Is the microwave faster? Of course.
Would I stand at the stove for 20 minutes defeating the entire purpose of prepared meals? Absolutely not.
But a few minutes in a pan? Worth it.
Especially for steak.
Because microwaved steak has a personality, and it is not one I particularly enjoy.
There were meals I genuinely liked
The Lomo Saltado was good enough to be the meal I keep using as my example, and the protein portion was fantastic.
The Grilled Teriyaki Salmon was another one I was genuinely happy to see in the box. A prepared salmon meal with 45 grams of protein is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for from this plan.
And the surprise winner?
Tiramisu Chia Pudding.
Really good.
Also 33 grams of protein, which is not what I generally expect from something with “tiramisu” and “pudding” in the name.
Two weeks isn’t enough time for me to pronounce judgment on an entire rotating menu. I can tell you what showed up in my refrigerator. I can’t tell you what every MacroPlate meal across every season tastes like.
But the food itself was not why I cancelled.
Breakfast, though…
Breakfast was the miss for me.
Specifically, reheated eggs.
And here’s the important distinction: they still nailed the protein.
My Pesto Omelette had 32 grams. The Beef Chorizo Egg White Muffins had 32 grams. The Smoked Sausage Scramble had 32 grams.
Nutritionally, they did exactly what I ordered.
Taste-wise, reheated eggs are just… reheated eggs.
There may be no technology currently available to humanity that makes yesterday’s scrambled eggs fantastic. 😂
They get that rubbery reheated-egg thing going on, and enough of my breakfasts leaned heavily on eggs that I stopped looking forward to them.
So I don’t think my takeaway is MacroPlate makes bad breakfast.
My takeaway is much simpler:
If I ordered again, I wouldn’t order breakfast.
So why did I cancel?
I wanted to choose my own food
This ended up mattering much more than I thought it would.
MacroPlate takes all those preferences you give them and thoughtfully builds your box.
But I couldn’t sit down once a week and say:
Yes.
Yes.
Absolutely not.
Oooooh, that one.
Two of those, please.😂
And I’m not just feeding myself.
If you’re feeding multiple people with opinions, having someone else choose eight $18 meals becomes risky pretty quickly.
Because here’s the number I actually care about:
The price per meal isn’t $18 if nobody eats it.
The number that matters is the price per meal somebody actually eats.
At $19.25 all-in, a perfectly good meal sitting sadly in my refrigerator because nobody wants it is expensive food waste.
But this is also where I want to be fair to MacroPlate.
For somebody else, not choosing is the feature.
If Sunday rolls around and the last thing you want to do is scroll through 80 pictures of chicken trying to decide what Future Wednesday You might want for dinner, MacroPlate has solved that problem.
Tell them what you eat.
Tell them your goals.
Food appears.
There is absolutely a person for whom that sounds like heaven.
I’m just apparently not that person.
If I tried MacroPlate again, here’s what I’d do differently
This is probably the most useful thing I can tell someone considering it.
I would skip breakfast and configure my plan around lunch and dinner.
Almost everything I liked was on the dinner side. The breakfasts were where I struggled.
When I subscribed, MacroPlate available combinations included options that allowed you to avoid breakfast. You could choose Lunch only, Breakfast & Dinner, Lunch & Dinner or Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Plans can change, though, so I’d check the current configurations before ordering.
For me, lunch + dinner would be the first place I’d choose.
And if MacroPlate adds individual meal selection?
Well, I just might be back!
Because the sourcing was already the part I wanted other meal companies to copy.
A quick note about the packaging
Both of my MacroPlate deliveries arrived in cardboard boxes with insulated liners and ice packs. The meals themselves came in plastic trays with snap-on lids rather than heat-sealed film.
I actually liked the lids because if we split a meal or didn’t finish it, I could put the lid back on and return it to the refrigerator without transferring everything to another container.
Three containers in my first delivery arrived with broken lids. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. Things break during shipping. I didn’t consider it MacroPlate’s fault and I didn’t contact customer service.
I later found MacroPlate own food-safety guidance, though, and they specifically say not to eat a meal if its container arrives broken because damaged packaging could compromise the food.
Well. Good to know. 😬
I honestly don’t remember whether we ate those particular meals, but knowing that now, I’d handle it differently. If a container arrived damaged, I’d photograph it, contact MacroPlate and not eat that meal.
My entire second delivery arrived intact, so this wasn’t a recurring problem during the two weeks I subscribed.
The meal packaging itself also carried a Certified Plastic Neutral designation through rePurpose Global, which commits the company to funding removal of an equivalent amount of plastic from nature to what it uses in its packaging.
Who I think MacroPlate is REALLY good for
MacroPlate makes a lot of sense if ingredient sourcing is one of your highest priorities, you want legitimately generous protein portions and you’d actually prefer having someone else decide what you’re eating.
It’s also a much easier fit if you don’t have a household full of people vetoing meals and roughly $16 to $18 per meal plus delivery works for your budget.
And especially if meal planning itself is part of what you’re trying to outsource.
That last one matters.
CookUnity gives enormous choice but less confidence in the ingredients.
MacroPlate gives me fewer decisions, but I know that if it’s something I like, I don’t need to pull out my cheaters to read the fine print of the ingredients.
Neither is automatically better. They’re solving slightly different problems.
Who should probably skip it
I’d think twice about MacroPlate if you have strong opinions about exactly what you want to eat each week.
Same if you’re feeding kids, partners or anyone else who looks at an unfamiliar dinner and suddenly becomes a Michelin inspector.
I’d also hesitate if $18-ish per meal only works financially when every single meal gets eaten.
And obviously, if you’re outside their current delivery area, MacroPlate will make the decision for you.
How does it compare with the other services?
The interesting thing about trying MacroPlate first and CookUnity second is that they’re almost mirror images.
CookUnity gives you a giant menu and lets you choose every meal. It’s also meaningfully cheaper at the quantity I ordered. But there isn’t one company-wide sourcing standard comparable to MacroPlate’s. The meals come from individual chefs and ingredient choices vary accordingly.
I think of CookUnity ingredients a little more like restaurant ingredients. There’s full ingredient disclosure for individual meals, but I have to read the fine print to find out.
So yes, CookUnity has its own pros and cons.
Shocker. They all do. 😂
Thistle is high on my list to try because the cleaner, plant-forward approach appeals to me, although it’s a very different nutritional proposition from Macroplate’s High Protein plan.
Factor is also waiting in the wings. I appreciate that they publish a fairly comprehensive list of ingredients they don’t use, so Factor and Thistle are currently fighting over who gets my refrigerator next.
Check out my Best Prepared Meal Delivery Services (2026) article here.
So… would I subscribe to MacroPlate again?
Yes, under the right circumstances.
Which surprised me a little considering I cancelled after two weeks.
I didn’t leave because the food was bad.
I left because I couldn’t choose it.
If I could configure the plan around lunch and dinner, avoid the reheated-egg situation and either get better at surrendering control or eventually choose individual meals, I’d absolutely consider MacroPlate again.
Because I still haven’t found another prepared meal service whose ingredient standards line up quite as closely with what I want stocked in my own refrigerator.
That’s why this isn’t a bad review.
It’s also not a glowing five-star review.
It’s a “dammit, you were SO CLOSE to being exactly what I wanted” review.
And those may be the most useful kind.
Check Current MacroPlate Menu & Delivery Area →
MacroPlate FAQ
How much does MacroPlate cost?
When I subscribed, meals ranged from $16 to $18 depending on the program, plus a $10 weekly delivery fee. My High Protein plan included eight $18 meals, bringing my total to $154/week or $19.25 per meal including delivery.
Can you choose your own MacroPlate meals?
Not when I subscribed. You choose your program, dietary preferences, proteins and goals, then MacroPlate uses those preferences to choose the individual meals in your box.
I confirmed this with customer service after subscribing. They told me their team was working on adding individual meal selection, so this is one feature worth checking before you sign up.
Does MacroPlate use seed oils?
MacroPlate states that it does not use canola, soybean, sunflower, vegetable or other seed oils. Its primary cooking fat is cold-pressed organic avocado oil, with organic extra-virgin olive oil and organic coconut oil used in select dishes.
Is MacroPlate high protein?
The High Protein plan certainly was during my trial. My dinners ranged from 45 to 52 grams of protein, while the breakfasts I photographed had 32 to 33 grams.
This was one area where MacroPlate absolutely delivered on what I ordered.
Is MacroPlate available nationwide?
No. When I subscribed, MacroPlate was regional, serving Southern California, the Phoenix metro area in Arizona and parts of Nevada.
Definitely check your ZIP before you get emotionally attached.
Can you cancel MacroPlate?
Yes. I cancelled after two weeks by emailing their customer service address. I explained that I have some picky eaters in the house and they were very gracious about it and took care of it quickly. They did have very responsive customer service.
Is MacroPlate worth it?
I think it can be, if what MacroPlate does well matches what you value.
If ingredient sourcing, generous protein portions and not having to choose your meals sound fantastic, it’s one of the more interesting prepared meal services I’ve tried.
If you want to choose every individual dish, I’d look elsewhere.
Affiliate disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through one, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
