If you follow a vegan diet, you understand how difficult it can be to find meal solutions that are healthy, taste good, and fit your plant-based healthy lifestyle. Vegan meal delivery services are a great solution, but there are several really great ones to choose from. We’ve taken a look at Sprinly and Purple Carrot and compared their vegan meals, along with a few other details, side by side.
About Sprinly and Purple Carrot
Sprinly wasn’t one of the early presences on the meal delivery scene, but they’ve been around long enough to establish a reputation as a great vegan meal delivery service. Sprinly is a Cleveland-based company that was founded in 2016 with the mission to make healthy eating something that’s convenient and accessible to more people.
Sprinly meals are designed by a team of chefs and nutritionists who understand that great taste and nutrition should go hand in hand. Sprinly offers ready-to-eat, prepared meals for your vegan or plant-based diet.
Purple Carrot has become one of the most popular vegan meal delivery companies. They’ve even expanded their line of pre-made meals into grocery stores, so their delicious meals are even more convenient.
Purple Carrot believes that there is a bounty of plant-based foods that can nourish the body and taste great when transformed into meals. With the idea that there are more than 20,000 edible plants on this earth to enjoy, Purple Carrot is determined to make the most of them with a combination of meal kits and prepared meals.
Sprinly
Pros
- Great tasting, plant-based meals
- Suitable for health goals, including weight loss
- The menu changes weekly to help you enjoy new healthy meals
- Strong focus on organic, non-GMO ingredients and sustainability
Cons
- Pricier than Purple Carrot
- Limited weekly menu
Purple Carrot
Pros
- Good flexibility of meal plans
- Meal kits and prepared meals
- Calories are listed on each meal, making weight loss easier
- Wider variety of weekly meals
Cons
- Not all meals are gluten-free
- Doesn’t use as many organic ingredients
Dietary Options
Sprinly
Purple Carrot
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One important consideration when choosing a vegan meal delivery service is whether or not they meet your standards as far as dietary options are concerned. Whether it’s a special diet, food allergies, or just your personal tastes that shape your food preferences, it’s important to know where a meal delivery service stands.
Purple Carrot offers delicious meals that help you eat healthier without sacrificing anything in terms of flavor. Because Purple Carrot meals are plant-based, they’re all dairy-free. Purple Carrot meals aren’t entirely gluten-free, but they do have plenty of gluten-free options on the menu. They also add tags to their menu like soy-free, high-protein, nut-free, or low calorie for weight loss to make it easy to find meals that fit your dietary needs.
Sprinly meals are also plant-based. For Sprinly, offering healthy meals to the masses means meals that aren’t only dairy-free but also completely gluten-free as well. Sprinly is also very conscious about what goes into their meals. You can rest easy knowing you won’t find sneaky, unwanted ingredients, like added refined sugars, in their meals.
Dietary Options Winner
As vegan meal delivery services, these two companies share a lot in common in terms of dietary options. Still, we give the award here to Sprinly mostly because we like that all of their meals are gluten-free, which means there’s no risk of cross-contamination for those with gluten allergies. However, if you’re looking to avoid ingredients like soy or nuts, Purple Carrot may be a better option for you.
Meal Prep & Variety
Sprinly
- 6
- Six Meals
Purple Carrot
- 24
- 3 meals for 2 people
Meal delivery services make your life easier by saving you the time you would have otherwise spent meal planning, grocery shopping, prepping, and in some cases, even cooking. There are two main types of meal delivery options. Those that offer heat & eat meals, and those that offer meal kits that provide all the ingredients you need, plus recipes and instructions for a delicious meal.
It’s really possible for meal prep to get much easier than it is with Sprinly. Sprinly offers ready-to-eat meals that can be ready in just a couple of minutes. Purple Carrot offers weekly menus for both vegan meal kits and heat & eat meals. This flexibility allows you to choose which weekly box will best suit your needs depending on much time (or desire) you have to spend a little time in the kitchen.
As far as variety is concerned, Purple Carrot’s weekly menu features about twelve plant-based meals in each of their categories, including heat & eat meals and vegan meal kits. With their meal kits, Purple Carrot offers selections for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a “Plantry” that has some add-on staples for you to enjoy.
Sprinly’s menu is a bit smaller, offering six meal options each week. We do like that their weekly menu changes, so you don’t have to worry about getting stuck in a rut of seeing the same meal selections pop up over and over again.
Meal Prep & Variety Winner
We choose Purple Carrot as the winner in this category for a couple of reasons. First, we like that they offer the choice between heat & eat meals and meal kits. Their menu is also about twice as large as Sprinly’s, regardless of what type of meal prep option you choose. If you’d like to try out Purple Carrot before subscribing, you might be able to find some of their frozen meals in your local grocery store.
Ingredients
Sprinly
- Non-GMO
grass Organic- Grass Fed
- Wild-Caught
Ingredient quality is a huge factor when choosing a meal delivery service, especially when you’re following a plant-based diet and the freshness and integrity of every ingredient really counts.
Sprinly’s meal service uses almost entirely all organic ingredients. They place a high value on organic farming but realize that sometimes outside factors take control and limit the availability of organic produce. In these cases, Sprinly might opt for high-quality non-organic, but they do really strive to be as organic as possible.
All of Sprinly’s ingredients are gluten-free, so if you’re avoiding gluten either for any reason, including having an intolerance or allergy, Sprinly is a safe meal option where you don’t have to worry about cross-contamination of gluten with their ingredients. There is no artificial junk in Sprinly’s meals, and when oil is used, they use only the highest quality healthy organic oils. A little bit of oil should enhance the flavor and quality of your meal, not just fill it with added calories and saturated fats.
Purple Carrot also makes providing its customers with fresh ingredients a top priority. They also strive to include as many organic foods in their prepared meals and meal kits. They focus heavily on organic when it comes to their non-produce items. This includes ingredients like tofu, vegan cheeses, nuts, nut milk, and beans.
However, with produce, while organic is the goal, Purple Carrot also pays attention to details like sourcing constraints, how far an organic ingredient would have to travel to reach them, and availability. They really like to include a more diverse selection of ingredients in their meals, and sometimes that means choosing fresh non-organic produce. The same philosophy applies to non-GMO ingredients as well.
Ingredients Winner
To be honest, we really wanted to give the award in this category to Purple Carrot because the freshness of their ingredients really shines through. However, we also really respect Sprinly’s commitment to using as many organic and non-GMO ingredients as possible. Their menu is smaller, and they take advantage of that when it comes to sourcing high-quality, organic ingredients.
Taste & Sample Meals
Sprinly
Purple Carrot
When you subscribe to healthy meal delivery service, you want the meals to taste really good. Both Sprinly and Purple Carrot do their best to make it easy and delicious to eat healthy, nutritious foods.
Purple Carrot’s menu is unique in that it offers both meal kits and heat & eat meals. There are a few other meal companies that do this, but for the most part, you’ll find that they offer one or the other, not both.
When you order Purple Carrot’s meal kits, you receive all the pre-portioned ingredients that you need, along with recipe instructions, to create an easy, healthy meal. Their prepared meals are even simpler. All you need to do for those is pop them in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
Purple Carrot’s meal kit and prepared menus are different, so you’re going to find different choices on each.
Purple Carrots meal kits are available in breakfast, lunch, and dinner options, although dinner is the largest portion of the menu. Some dinner meal kit options from Purple Carrot include Tamarind Cauliflower, Tuscan Stuffed Zucchini, and Mango Curry.
For breakfast from Purple Carrot, you can look for some tasty options like Tropical Chia Pudding and Caper Dill Bagels. Purple Carrot also offers a Plantry with items like chocolate tahini and vegan pesto.
For pre-made meals, Purple Carrot offers options like Thai Noodles, Indian Butter Tofu, and Elote-Style Corn with black beans and rice.
Sprinly’s menu of pre-made meals is smaller but equally delicious. We like that their menu changes weekly, so you always have something new to look forward to. Some favorites on Sprinly’s menu include the Citrus Detox Salad, Chile Con Queso with fajita crumbles, and Zucchini Noodle Pesto with Sundried Tomato Cakes.
Taste and Sample Meals Winner
Purple Carrot wins this category because they offer more options overall, and their flavors are generally well-received. Their meals are flavorful and unique, without being so different that they’re offputting to more sensitive palates. We also like that Purple Carrot is a pre-made meal and meal kit delivery service, giving you more options to choose from.
Pricing
Sprinly
MEALS PER WEEK | WEEKLY PRICE | PRICE PER SERVING |
6 Meals | $109 | $18.16 |
12 Meals | $199 | $16.58 |
18 Meals | $289 | $16.05 |
Purple Carrot
MEALS PER WEEK | PRICE PER SERVING |
Six | $13.00 |
Eight | $13.00 |
Ten | 13.00 |
When you sign up for Purple Carrot, you can choose between their meal kit box or the prepared meal box. The prices are a bit different for each, although they are in a similar range.
For Purple Carrot’s prepared meals, you can choose between two or four servings per meal and then two or three meals per week. This means that the smallest box you can order from Purple Carrot is four meals (two servings of two meals), and the largest box is twelve meals (four servings of three meals).
You do get a bit of a discount when ordering larger meal boxes from Purple Carrot. For example, the smallest meal box runs a little over $13 per meal, while the largest meal box costs about $11 per serving.
Sprinly offers three different meal plans that you can choose from. When you sign up with Sprinly, you can choose to have either six, twelve, or eighteen meals delivered to your door each week. Similar to Purple Carrot, the more meals you order each week, the more significant the savings.
Sprinly meals are a bit pricier than other plant-based meal service options. The largest Sprinly box, which is eighteen meals, currently costs about $289 per week. With this size box, you’re paying about $16 per meal. If you go for the smallest Sprinly box, which is currently selling for $109, it averages out to about $18 per meal.
Pricing Winner
Purple Carrot wins this category hands down for offering plant-based meal plans that are more budget-friendly. We know that quality and integrity in ingredients and preparation costs a little extra, but Purple Carrot makes a solid effort to keep their prices low enough to fit into more budgets. Sprinly is definitely on the pricier side and, because of that, less accessible to as many people.
Packaging & Recycling
Sprinly
Purple Carrot
Packaging might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to choosing a meal plan, but it’s one that’s still very important. The packaging needs to withstand shipping while keeping all the meals you’ve chosen for you4 meal plan nice and fresh and at the right temperature.
There’s also the issue of disposal. Nobody wants to have a pile of non-recyclable waste piling up at their house every week. The materials a company uses are important for both of these reasons.
Sprinly does a good job of packaging their meal boxes for freshness and quality without going overboard on the packaging. We like that they use recyclable packaging materials that include a sturdy but completely recyclable box, cotton insulation, and recyclable ice blocks. The plastic packaging that Sprinly meals are shipped in is made from 40% recycled plastic and can be tossed in your curbside recycling bin when you’re done enjoying them.
With Purple Carrot, their main priority is to make sure that all of their meals and meal kits arrive at your doorstep as fresh as possible. They use quality packaging materials, including non-toxic ice packs. Currently, most of the packaging that Purple Carrot uses is recyclable, and they offer a handy guide on their website that offers advice on how to either reuse or recycle their packaging materials.
Packaging & Recycling Winner
Both companies do a great job of minimizing packaging and using recyclable packaging materials. We give the award to Sprinly because they use less packaging overall than Purple Carrot.
Customer Service
Sprinly
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Purple Carrot
- Up to 10 Weeks
- Difficult
Customer service is an important feature of meal programs like Sprinly and Purple Carrot. You want their site to be easy to use, and you don’t want any hassle when it comes to modifying your order, pausing your subscription, skipping weeks, or even canceling.
With Purple Carrot, you can completely manage your account online. You can skip a week up to four weeks in advance, and if you need a longer break, you can simply log into your account to pause or cancel your subscription. Customers can also choose their own meals a la carte style or let the trained chefs at Purple Carrot send you a great-tasting curated box.
Sprinly also offers a no-commitment service, which means you can pause, skip, or cancel any time you want. This is also easy to do right from your account on the Sprinly site. Sprinly customers always have the opportunity to choose their own meals from a menu that changes weekly.
Customer Service Winner
Both Sprinly and Purple Carrot offer similar benefits in terms of managing your account online and choosing your meals. We give Purple Carrot the award in this category because overall, they have some really good customer reviews for their customer service department.
Winner
Purple Carrot
In this battle of Purple Carrot vs. Sprinly, we choose Purple Carrot as the best vegan meal delivery service. We choose them for their variety, taste, and more affordable pricing. Still, both companies have a lot to offer, and Sprinly might be a better choice for you. Here are a few things to consider before you take the plunge.
Choose Sprinly if you:
- You appreciate organic and non-GMO ingredients
- Don’t mind paying a bit more for ingredient quality
- You like the fact that their menu changes weekly
- You have gluten allergies or intolerance
Choose Purple Carrot if you:
- You like having the option of both prepared meals and meal kits
- Have dietary preferences that aren’t severe allergies
- You want a bit more variety to choose from every week
- Are looking for a more affordable vegan meal service
- Appreciate a solid customer service reputation