Cancelled Your Meal-Prep Delivery? Keep the Sorted Week, Lose the Bill

If you've had ready-cooked meal prep delivered (Simmer Eats, Frive and the like), you know why people love it. The fridge is full of labelled, high-protein meals. The macros are printed on the lid. There's nothing to decide at 6pm.

You also know the moment the bill stops feeling worth it. Usually it's when the introductory discount ends.

What ready-cooked meal prep actually costs

We checked the providers' own pages in October 2026:

• Simmer Eats: meals start from £7.49 each, with a minimum of six meals per order and a £6.99 delivery fee on every order (Simmer's help centre).
• Frive: plans work out at about £7.42 a meal before discounts (Frive's plans page).

So six dinners a week for one person at Simmer's starting price comes to about £52 a week once delivery is added, or roughly £2,700 over a year. That covers six dinners. Breakfast, lunch, snacks and the seventh dinner still come out of your normal shop.

Both brands lead with big first-week discounts, which is why the full price can come as a shock in week two or three. Prices change, so check your own account before you decide anything.

What you're paying for

None of this is a rip-off. You're paying for three real things:

• The cooking. Someone else shops, preps, cooks and portions.
• The thinking. Meals chosen, macros worked out, variety handled.
• The delivery. Chilled, to your door.

If you don't have the time, the kitchen or the energy to cook, that's worth paying for, and you should keep doing it.

But plenty of people find that what they actually valued was the *thinking*: never having to decide what to eat, and knowing the protein was sorted. If you're happy to spend an hour or two cooking at the weekend, that part doesn't need to cost £7.50 a meal.

Keeping the plan without the delivery

Here's what a cooked-at-home version of the same routine needs:

• Every meal planned in advance, not just dinners, so there's no 6pm decision left to make
• Meals built around your own calorie and macro targets, with protein planned into each one
• Batch-friendly dinners, so you can cook once and eat from the fridge for a few days, just like a delivery
• A shopping list you can trust, with the cost known before you go

That's what Plan X Prep does. It plans your whole week (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks) around your targets, from a library of 1,500+ recipes. Every recipe is costed against real prices from Aldi, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda, and the app checks your kitchen before it writes your list.

What the numbers look like

• Per meal: most main meals cost £1.10–2.50 a serving.
• Per week: for one adult eating about 2,000 kcal a day, a varied week of *every* meal typically comes to £50–55 at Aldi prices.

So for roughly what six delivered dinners cost, you can cook a full week of meals, plus £6.99 a month (or £49 a year) for the app.

The honest trade: you cook it and you shop for it. That isn't a saving of time. It's a saving of money, in exchange for your time.

If you're switching, do it in this order

• 1Set up the plan first. Cancel the deliveries before you have a replacement and you'll be back to takeaways by Thursday.
• 2Check your provider's cut-off. Simmer, for example, takes payment every Tuesday at 1pm for the next order, so changes made after that apply to the following week.
• 3Start with what you already like. Pick batch dinners close to your favourite delivered meals (curries, chilli, rice bowls) for the first couple of weeks.
• 4Cook twice a week. One big session at the weekend and a top-up midweek keeps fridge meals fresh.

The bottom line

Ready-cooked meal prep proved that people will pay to have their week decided and their protein sorted. If cooking is the part you were paying to avoid, keep it. If the planning was what you really valued, you can keep that and cook the food yourself for much less.

Want the planned, macro-built week without the delivery bill? Join the Plan X Prep waitlist and we'll email you the day we launch.