Blue Apron 2026 Review: 6 Months After the Massive Relaunch
We have been using Blue Apron for more than 10 years – we published our first review here on AppMyHome in November 2015 and have done several refreshes and videos since.
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Blue Apron was the first meal kit we tried and we were big fans instantly. We enjoy cooking, but planning and shopping for meals at home is challenging, and with just the two of us it’s hard to buy enough ingredients without waste.
Over the years we’ve watched the market change dramatically. We’ve tried most of the major meal kit companies, including some that went out of business, as well as pre-made meals from companies like Freshly, Factor and Trifecta. But so far we have always come back to Blue Apron.
Wonder Group acquired Blue Apron in 2023 and they made some changes that we started noticing right away – improved delivery and some changes in ingredients. But they didn’t make too many changes until August 2025.
The NEW Blue Apron
In August 2025 Blue Apron completely changed and re-launched their service. The beginning was a little rocky, at least from my perspective as a regular subscriber. They kept the details pretty tight so I couldn’t edit or skip my upcoming boxes. But once they launched the new service, it was easy to see why – it feels like a completely new service.
Three ways to cook
Blue Apron now offers three types of meals:
- Meal Kits – traditional meal kits for 2 or 4 servings
- Assemble and Bake – one pan meals that are simpler to cook and prep
- Dish by Blue Apron – fully cooked individual meals to heat and serve
There are now 100+ choices every week, plus lots of other add-ons – soups, desserts, breakfasts, prepared proteins, smoothies and more.
Meal Kits
The meal kits are essentially the same kits we expect from Blue Apron, but with more selection. There are really simple meals like burgers and wraps, meal-size salads as well as the more traditional protein/veggie/starch kits.
With the increased selection – the prices also vary quite a bit based on the ingredients and the sophistication of the meal. For instance, one week the prices here ranged from $9.04 per serving for Roasted Romesco Chicken Sandwiches to $15.99 for Chicken Parm.
Assemble and Bake
Assemble and Bake meals are just as they described – these are simple, one-dish (or sheet pan) meals that are really easy to put together and cook in the oven. These meals include a lot of pre-made sauces and pre-cooked grains, and sometimes even come with their own pan.
They are moderately priced – as of this week they range from $9.49 per serving for Gnocchi Mac and Cheese Bake to $13.49 for Fiesta Rice and Cheesy Chicken Thighs.
Dish by Blue Apron
These meals are pre-made, single-serving, ready to eat, great for lunches or dinners. They also offer a couple of different breakfast burritos in this category. This week there are 24 choices here, with vegetarian, beef, pasta, chicken, fish, etc.
These are also the most consistently low calorie meals, with many in the 300-400 range and very few over 600 calories. These are the cheapest – as of this week they range from $8.39 per serving for a vegetable curry to $11.89 for a teriyaki salmon grain bowl.
Other Items
Blue Apron also has a wide selection of other add-ons – breakfasts, desserts, and additional proteins. The selection of meats, both fresh and pre-cooked things like pulled chicken and pork are decent values, not much more than at the grocery store, making it a convenient way to stock your fridge and freezer.
No Subscription Needed
In the past, ordering from Blue Apron required a subscription and a commitment to receive boxes every week. It was fairly easy to skip boxes from the website or in the app, but with a subscription you really needed to pay attention or you’d be receiving a box when you were on vacation.
The new Blue Apron doesn’t require a subscription. You can go onto their website today and buy meals and other items that will ship next week, without any ongoing obligation.
If you want to get on a regular schedule without a subscription, Blue Apron allows you to sign up for Autoship – which will ship a regular number of meals each week at a 5% discount. Without a subscription, shipping is $9.99 per order. More on that later.
Want to try the new Blue Apron?
Visit the website to see what’s cooking in your area.
Blue Apron+
Blue Apron replaced their former subscription with a service called Blue Apron+. For $9.99 a month, you get free shipping on all your orders, a free subscription to food network Tastemade, and other occasional perks and promotions.
When the new service started, we got a trial subscription to Blue Apron+ and once that ended, it made total sense for us to sign up. Since we get a box almost every week, just one week’s shipping pays for the subscription. We took advantage of the further discount to sign up for one year for $99.99.
Our experience
We have been using the new Blue Apron since it launched and we have tried a lot of the different selections. In our first new box, we got things from each part of their new menu – a meal kit, assemble and bake, and Dish, as well as breakfast burritos and some pre-cooked pulled chicken.
While we don’t order them regularly anymore, the few Dish pre-cooked meals we’ve tried have been really good. Definitely the best of the pre-cooked meals from other services we’ve tried in the past. We weren’t fans of the breakfast burritos – we thought they were pretty dry and not very flavorful. The pulled chicken was fine but not something we use regularly but it was nice to try it. I would consider ordering more of those al-a-carte proteins in the future.
We continue to enjoy the traditional meal kits and we have added some assemble and bake selections into our weekly routine as well. With more of a selection, it does feel like the meals are a little simpler than they used to be with fewer specialty ingredients.
We also notice that we tend to get a lot of common vegetables across different meals in the same week – for instance, three meals that all have carrots or zucchini. This week we got two meals with Romanesco. It makes sense – when the vegetables are in season it’s good to incorporate them and it’s more sustainable all around.
One of the ways Blue Apron has made cooking faster is by sending pre-cooked pastas and grains. This does shorten the prep time, but we aren’t big fans. For things that are baked, like a dish with pasta, it’s not that big a deal, but we really haven’t liked the pre-cooked rice. For me, I’d rather have fresh rice or pasta even if it adds ten minutes to the overall cooking time.
Healthy Choices
One of the reasons we continue to use Blue Apron is that it really helps us stay consistent with our diet. Every meal has nutrition facts available and you can filter by number of calories, grams of proteins, and by type of protein – including vegetarian options.
I also find now that there are more options to alter the proteins within the meals to make them vegetarian, swap chicken for shrimp, etc. They have improved the app and the website to show the calorie counts prominently beneath all of the meals so you can see it at a glance.
I like to try to keep our meals under 600 calories per serving but occasionally I will make an exception for something like one of our favorites, the pork and rice cakes in peanut sauce. Yum.
Delivery and Customer Support
I won’t lie – the first couple of months of the new Blue Apron were rough. We had a few late deliveries, one week where our box never arrived, and, most heartbreaking for me – a couple of times when the box was too late and we had to throw it out.
Blue Apron has also changed their customer support infrastructure. They used to have an in-app chat feature as well as integrated email support. In the past, I’ve had shipping and product quality problems from time to time – it’s to be expected when you use a service every week. If it was not urgent, I would just send an email with whatever the issue was – a picture of a leaking bag or a floppy carrot – and I’d hear back the next day. When something was urgent like my box never arrived, I would use the chat.
With the new Blue Apron, if you need support of any kind it launches a text message conversation. At first this was really slow, but now it works a lot better and I get a response pretty quickly. Sometimes it starts with a bot but I still get a resolution within a few minutes. Blue Apron is really good about providing credit for ingredient quality or other issues. For things that are more serious like a missing box they credit back the card, so far without me having to ask.
The app also does a better job of tracking delivery status and I get an email and notification from the app when my box is on its way, late or delivered. You can tweak these notifications in the app settings.
Autoship
Instead of a mandatory subscription, if you want to make sure you’re getting a regular shipment, Blue Apron has the option to turn on Autoship. You can choose up to 5 meal kits per week with 2 or 4 servings, and up to 10 pre-made meals. You pick the delivery date and the frequency, and then Blue Apron will select meals and ship them to you on your schedule, with a 5% discount.
You can save your protein preferences in your profile which helps you make sure they don’t send something you won’t eat. You can go in the app or the website and change or skip meals. They usually have meals available to choose from two to three weeks out.
As a long time customer, Autoship is an area where I feel there is room for improvement. I used to be able to go into my account and skip meals six weeks out – this is great when we will be traveling so I don’t have to worry about a box showing up.
Also, when there was less selection, Blue Apron did a better job of choosing appropriate meals for us. Now I have to set a reminder to go and check the autoship every two weeks and tweak the meals so I get what I want. I would love it if they would allow me to save more preferences for things like calorie count and/or meal types.
Something I do like is the ability to tweak my shipment with less notice, to change the items or the delivery day. When we first started getting Blue Apron we only had a couple of days to choose from, now we can choose any delivery day except Sunday.
Summary
All in all, we still like getting our Blue Apron meals and have the service on Autoship every week we are home. The subscription to Blue Apron+ was natural for us with the free shipping. We haven’t used the Tastemade+ subscription yet so can’t say whether or not that is worthwhile.
The service has continued to improve but we’d still like to be able to plan further out and save more of our preferences for future shipments.
We still prefer the meal kits since we don’t mind spending 30-45 minutes preparing a fresh meal. But we understand that Blue Apron is changing to attract new customers and a lot of people want less complicated options. We’d like to see them be successful so we can keep getting fresh meals to cook for years to come.