Daily Harvest vs Purple Carrot (2026): Purple Carrot Wins for Dinner, Daily Harvest for Snacks
Which is better, Daily Harvest or Purple Carrot?
It depends on what you value. Purple Carrot wins on full vegan dinners you cook, while Daily Harvest wins on plant-based breakfast and snack convenience. MealFan tested both services hands on for its 2026 comparison covering pricing, menus, and taste.
- Purple Carrot wins on full vegan dinners you cook
- Daily Harvest wins on plant-based breakfast and snack convenience
- Both services tested hands on by MealFan
Daily Harvest wins for fast plant-based convenience at 8 to 12 dollars per item with smoothies, bowls, and soups ready in under 5 minutes. Purple Carrot wins for structured vegan cooking with 100 percent plant-based meal kits at 9 to 12 dollars per serving and 25 to 40 minute recipes. Choose Daily Harvest if you want quick plant-based breakfasts and snacks. Choose Purple Carrot if you want to cook full vegan dinners.
But if you have to choose one, here is exactly what each delivers and where it falls short.
Last updated: June 2026. Prices and plan details verified against each service’s current website.
Quick verdict: Daily Harvest wins for vegan breakfast, smoothies, and snack convenience. Every item arrives frozen and ready to prepare in under 2 minutes. Purple Carrot wins for full vegan dinners. It delivers real meal kit cooking with complete, dinner-portioned plant-based recipes that can feed a household. If you need dinner, use Purple Carrot. If you need breakfast and snacks, use Daily Harvest. If you can only afford one and you need dinner, Purple Carrot wins.
- Daily Harvest items are 200-550 calories, not full dinner portions. Plan your meal structure accordingly.
- Purple Carrot is a cooking-required meal kit. Every recipe requires 30-40 minutes of prep and cooking.
- Daily Harvest arrives frozen and can be stored for weeks. Purple Carrot arrives fresh and should be cooked within 5 days.
- Both services are 100 percent vegan with no animal ingredients anywhere in their menus.
Daily Harvest vs Purple Carrot at a Glance
| Category | Daily Harvest | Purple Carrot |
|---|---|---|
| Price per item | $8.99-$11.99 | $11.99-$13.99/meal |
| Shipping | $9.99 | $9.99 |
| Format | Frozen plant-based items | Fresh vegan meal kit (you cook) |
| Diet | 100% vegan | 100% vegan |
| Item size | Breakfast/snack sized | Full dinner portions |
| Prep time | 1-3 min | 30-40 min |
| Storage | Freezer (weeks) | Refrigerator (5 days) |
| Best for | Vegan breakfast, smoothies, snacks | Full vegan dinner cooking |
Ratings Scorecard
| Category | Daily Harvest | Purple Carrot |
|---|---|---|
| Breakfast and smoothies | 10/10 | 1/10 |
| Full dinner replacement | 3/10 | 9/10 |
| Convenience | 9/10 | 5/10 |
| Price per item | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Shelf life | 9/10 | 5/10 |
| Plant-based variety | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Cooking skill development | 1/10 | 8/10 |
| Protein per serving | 4/10 | 7/10 |
Daily Harvest: The Vegan Snack and Breakfast Solution
Daily Harvest delivers plant-based frozen items in four main categories: smoothies, harvest bowls, flatbreads, and soups. The smoothies are the standout product. During my testing, a dragon fruit pitaya blend, a peppermint cacao option, and a tropical mango blend all blended in under 60 seconds and tasted genuinely fresh despite being frozen. The harvest bowls are solid 300-450 calorie light lunches. The flatbreads, at 400-550 calories, are the closest thing to a full meal on the menu.
The frozen format is a real advantage. A Daily Harvest box delivers enough variety to cover mornings and light lunches for 2-3 weeks without planning. Nothing expires. Nothing wilts in the refrigerator while you skip a cooking night.
Try Daily Harvest: Get $65 off your first Daily Harvest box. Offer varies.
Purple Carrot: Full Vegan Dinners with Real Cooking
Purple Carrot is the most serious vegan meal kit in the US market. Recipes are developed to deliver complete, satisfying dinners using plant-based proteins (tofu, tempeh, legumes, lentils), whole grains, and seasonal vegetables. During my testing, a miso-glazed tempeh bowl with crispy soba noodles and a coconut chickpea curry over jasmine rice were both impressive in flavor complexity and satiety. These were not compromise meals. They were genuinely excellent plant-based cooking that any diner would find satisfying.
Purple Carrot teaches you to cook vegan food well. The recipe cards explain techniques for maximizing flavor from plant-based proteins, building umami without meat, and balancing texture in a way that casual vegan cooking often misses. For households converting to or deepening their vegan cooking repertoire, Purple Carrot provides real culinary education.
Try Purple Carrot: Get $60 off your first Purple Carrot box. Offer varies.
Pricing Comparison
| Items per week | Daily Harvest total | Purple Carrot total |
|---|---|---|
| 6 items | ~$60 + $9.99 ship = ~$70 | ~$78 + $9.99 ship = ~$88 |
| 10 items | ~$100 + $9.99 ship = ~$110 | ~$130 + $9.99 ship = ~$140 |
| 14 items | ~$140 + $9.99 ship = ~$150 | ~$182 + $9.99 ship = ~$192 |
Using Both Together
Many vegan households use Daily Harvest and Purple Carrot simultaneously. Daily Harvest covers weekday mornings with smoothies and light lunches with harvest bowls. Purple Carrot covers weeknight dinners with full-kit cooking. The two services solve different problems and do not overlap in what they deliver. For a vegan household with a realistic food budget, the combination costs $19.98 in shipping per week plus the cost of items, which is comparable to what other households spend on a single full-service meal kit.
Who Wins on What
Breakfast and smoothies: Daily Harvest wins decisively. Purple Carrot does not serve breakfast.
Full dinners: Purple Carrot wins. Daily Harvest items are not dinner-portioned.
Convenience: Daily Harvest wins. Frozen items ready in under 2 minutes beat a 35-minute cooking process.
Shelf life: Daily Harvest wins. Frozen storage beats the 5-day refrigerator window.
Protein per serving: Purple Carrot wins. Full dinner portions with legume and tempeh proteins deliver more protein per serving.
The Final Call
If you need dinner, Purple Carrot wins. If you need breakfast and snack convenience, Daily Harvest wins. If you can only subscribe to one, choose based on which meal of the day is hardest to solve: Purple Carrot for dinner, Daily Harvest for morning and midday.
For more context, see Sunbasket vs Daily Harvest for how a non-vegan meal kit compares to Daily Harvest, and Purple Carrot vs Green Chef for how Purple Carrot compares to another USDA organic multi-diet service.
Ingredient Quality and Food Freshness
Daily Harvest is fully plant-based and mostly organic, flash-frozen so its smoothies, harvest bowls, flatbreads, soups, and snacks hold nutrient density until you prepare them. Both it and Purple Carrot are all-vegan, so the sourcing story is similar; the real difference is format and meal slot. Daily Harvest is frozen, single-serve, and built for breakfast and lighter occasions, ready in under two minutes with no cooking. That is why it lands at the same 7.6 as Purple Carrot rather than above or below it: they are both strong vegan services that happen to own different parts of the day, and Daily Harvest owns the morning and the quick lunch.
Purple Carrot is also fully vegan and organic-leaning, but it is a cook-at-home dinner kit rather than a frozen grab-and-go service. Where Daily Harvest hands you a frozen cup to blend or heat, Purple Carrot hands you a full recipe (grain bowls, curries, pasta, tacos, stir-fries) with produce chosen to carry the dish. The ingredient quality is comparable to Daily Harvest, which is why the two share a 7.6 score; the divide is that Purple Carrot cooks real dinners and Daily Harvest covers breakfast and snacks. If you want fresh vegan ingredients to actually cook into a household dinner, Purple Carrot is the one built for that.
Ingredient quality: evenly matched. Both Daily Harvest and Purple Carrot are fully vegan with organic-leaning sourcing, which is why they share a 7.6 score. The decision is not about ingredient grade but about format: frozen breakfast and snacks from Daily Harvest, or fresh-cooked vegan dinners from Purple Carrot.
Who Gets the Most from Each Service
Choose Daily Harvest if the meals you keep skipping are breakfast, smoothies, and quick plant-based lunches. Both services are vegan and score the same 7.6, so this is purely a meal-slot decision: Daily Harvest's frozen, under-two-minute format owns the morning and midday, exactly where Purple Carrot's cook-at-home dinner kit does not compete. Switch to Daily Harvest over Purple Carrot when your dinners are already handled and you need the first half of the day solved with no cooking. If it is dinner you cannot cover, Purple Carrot is the better single pick, and plenty of vegan households run both.
Choose Purple Carrot if you want to cook full vegan dinners rather than blend a frozen smoothie. Purple Carrot is a complete plant-based dinner kit, grain bowls, curries, pasta, tacos, stir-fries, with enough variety for a long subscription, and it shares Daily Harvest's 7.6 because they excel at different meal slots rather than at different quality levels. Switch to Purple Carrot over Daily Harvest when dinner is the gap and you want real cooking that can feed a household, not single-serve frozen cups. If breakfast and snacks are what you actually miss, Daily Harvest is the more useful choice.
Cancellation, Pausing, and Subscription Management
Both Daily Harvest and Purple Carrot allow cancellation through account settings with no contract and no cancellation fee. Daily Harvest allows cancellation through account settings with no fee; weekly or monthly delivery frequency can be paused or adjusted at any time. Purple Carrot allows cancellation through account settings with no fee; the weekly cutoff is five to six days before the scheduled delivery date. Both services charge for deliveries when the weekly ordering cutoff is missed, typically five to six days before your delivery date, so setting a recurring calendar reminder prevents unwanted charges. Account credits for ingredient quality issues are available from both services; contacting customer service within 24 hours of a delivery produces the fastest resolution on either platform.
Packaging and Delivery Experience
Daily Harvest: Frozen items, smoothies, harvest bowls, flatbreads, and bites, arrive in individual cups and containers packed with dry ice, each one pre-portioned and ready to blend or heat with no ingredient bags or measuring. That is a sharp contrast to Purple Carrot's recipe kits, which come with labeled ingredient bags to cook from. The cups are designed to minimize packaging and have shifted toward compostable materials, and the outer box is plain corrugated cardboard with no separate insulated liner, relying on the dry ice to hold temperature.
Purple Carrot: Ships 100% plant-based ingredients in an insulated box with eco-friendly materials, organized by recipe in labeled bags, unlike Daily Harvest's ready-to-blend cups these are components you cook. Plant-based proteins often arrive pre-marinated or pre-seasoned, and the full-color recipe cards go deep on technique. Purple Carrot has worked to cut plastic per box and has eliminated some single-use portions that still show up in competitor kits.
Packaging: roughly even. Daily Harvest: Minimal and efficient, no ingredient waste, small footprint per item. Dry ice reliance means careful handling is required. Purple Carrot: Strong eco-credentials for a plant-based brand. Organized, labeled bags. Recipe cards are high quality and technique-forward.
App and Digital Experience
Daily Harvest: Daily Harvest's app (iOS 4.7 / Android 4.3) is among the cleaner apps in the plant-based food space. Browse by food type (smoothies, flatbreads, soups), filter by dietary needs, manage your box contents, and track past orders. The app is fast and well-designed; unboxing and tracking content is intuitive. Subscription management (pause, skip, change box size) is handled cleanly.
Purple Carrot: Purple Carrot's app (iOS 4.6 / Android 4.0) manages meal selection, delivery scheduling, and access to the recipe archive. Dietary filtering (nut-free, gluten-free, soy-free) is useful for the health-conscious plant-based audience. The recipe archive is a genuine resource for vegan cooking. The interface is functional without being exceptional; it does the job well.
App edge: Daily Harvest. One of the better apps in the frozen plant-based category. Clean, fast, and good for managing a rotating selection.
Customer Service and Account Management
Daily Harvest: Daily Harvest offers chat and email support with a strong self-service portal. Chat response times are typically under 10 minutes. The account portal makes it easy to swap items, skip weeks, pause, or cancel. Refunds for quality issues (thawed items, damaged cups) are processed quickly. The cancel flow is accessible from account settings without requiring contact.
Purple Carrot: Purple Carrot offers chat and email support with business-hours availability. As an Oisix brand, the support infrastructure is competent but less resourced than HelloFresh-family brands. Chat response times average 10-15 minutes. The portal handles skips, pauses, and cancellations. The cancel flow is multi-step. Refunds for damaged or missing items credit within 48 hours.
Customer service: comparable. Daily Harvest: Good, fast chat, clean self-service, accessible cancel flow. Solid performance for a D2C frozen food subscription. Purple Carrot: Adequate, chat and email, no phone. Slower than HelloFresh-family brands. Self-service portal covers the basics.
Dietary Options and Special Diets
Daily Harvest is 100 percent plant-based across its whole catalog: smoothies, harvest bowls, flatbreads, soups, and snacks, with no animal products and most items organic. Smoothies need liquid blended in while bowls and soups microwave in a few minutes. Rather than replacing dinner the way Purple Carrot's full plant-based entrees do, Daily Harvest is built to fill breakfast and lunch with clean plant-based options. For committed plant-based eaters, or anyone trimming meat at specific meal slots, it covers a gap Purple Carrot's dinner focus leaves open.
Purple Carrot is 100 percent plant-based, every meal vegan with no meat, dairy, or eggs, and its recipes stay ingredient-forward and creative, think miso-glazed eggplant, spiced lentil bowls, and black bean enchiladas, rather than simplified. For fully or mostly plant-based households it handles the full range of dinner occasions without substitutions, which is where it goes further than Daily Harvest's breakfast-and-lunch cups. For mixed-diet homes the all-vegan model is a real constraint. Purple Carrot is certified plant-based and uses organic ingredients when available, though it does not hold full USDA organic certification.
Getting Started: Welcome Offers and First Box Experience
Daily Harvest typically offers $40 to $65 off the first order, then prices items $7.99 to $14.99 depending on type, with smoothies at the low end and harvest bowls higher. You can ship weekly or monthly and cancel in account settings with no fee. Because these are single-serve items rather than Purple Carrot's two-person dinners, the fairest comparison is against buying the equivalent yourself, organic smoothie ingredients, frozen bowls, and prepared lunches picked up individually at the grocery store.
Purple Carrot typically offers $30 to $50 off the first box, then charges $11.99 to $14.99 per serving, in line with mid-range meal kits but limited to plant-based menus. Plans serve two or four people at two to four meals a week, and cancellation is in account settings with no fee. Compared with Daily Harvest's single-serve items, this is priced as full-meal cooking, and for a household fully committed to plant-based eating it matches what organic plant-forward kits cost across the market.
Who Gets the Best Value Long-Term
Daily Harvest ($7.99 to $14.99 per item) and Purple Carrot ($11.99 to $14.99 per serving) are both fully plant-based and organic-forward, but they cover different meal occasions. Daily Harvest handles smoothies, bowls, and snacks at breakfast and lunch with minimal prep. Purple Carrot handles dinner with full vegan meal kits requiring 30 to 45 minutes of cooking. These services pair well in a fully plant-based household: Daily Harvest for the first half of the day, Purple Carrot for dinner. For a household choosing one, the question is which meal occasion is harder to cover: dinner (Purple Carrot) or breakfast and lunch (Daily Harvest).
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Daily Harvest or Purple Carrot better for vegans?
Both are 100 percent vegan. Daily Harvest wins for breakfast, smoothies, and snack convenience. Purple Carrot wins for full vegan dinners with complete cooking. Many vegan households use both simultaneously for different meals of the day.
Does Purple Carrot have ready-to-eat options?
No. Purple Carrot is a cooking-required meal kit. Every recipe uses fresh, pre-measured ingredients that require 30-40 minutes of prep and cooking. There is no heat-and-eat or no-cook option.
Is Daily Harvest cheaper than Purple Carrot?
Daily Harvest items start at $8.99 versus Purple Carrot at $11.99 per meal. However, Daily Harvest items are snack and breakfast-sized, not dinner portions. For full-dinner caloric content, Purple Carrot delivers more food per dollar.
Can you use Daily Harvest and Purple Carrot together?
Yes, and many vegan households do. Daily Harvest covers breakfast smoothies and weekday snacks. Purple Carrot covers weeknight vegan dinner cooking. They cover different meals of the day with minimal overlap.
2026 Pricing: Daily Harvest vs. Purple Carrot
Both plant-based services, but Daily Harvest focuses on smoothies and bowls while Purple Carrot delivers full cook-at-home meal kits.
| Detail | Daily Harvest | Purple Carrot |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $8.99/cup | $10.99/serving |
| Cook time | 3-5 min | 30-45 min |
| Full dinners | Partial (some bowls) | Yes (all meals) |
| Shipping | $9.99-$11.99 | $9.99 |
| Plant-based | 100% vegan | 100% vegan |
If you want full plant-based dinners you actually cook, Purple Carrot is the choice. If you want ultra-fast smoothies, bowls, and grab-and-go items, Daily Harvest fits. Many households use both: Purple Carrot for dinners, Daily Harvest for breakfasts and lunches.
Where to Order in Your City
Both services deliver nationwide. See how meal kit delivery options stack up in the largest U.S. markets:
- Meal delivery in Los Angeles
- Meal delivery in New York
- Meal delivery in Chicago
- Meal delivery in Houston
- Meal delivery in Phoenix
- Meal delivery in San Francisco
- Meal delivery in Seattle
- Meal delivery in Austin
See also: Daily Harvest review, Purple Carrot review, and our best meal delivery services guide.
Cancel Guide Links
Need to cancel one of these services? Our step-by-step guides walk you through the process:
Browse Actual Meals from Each Service
Before deciding, see exactly what you'd be cooking. Our meal index covers 6,000+ meals across 13 brands with full nutrition, ingredients, and step-by-step instructions:
Considering Alternatives?
Not sure either service is right for you? Browse our full alternatives guides:
Related Guides
- Best Plant-Based Meal Delivery 2026, both services rank in our top 3
- Best Vegan Meal Delivery 2026
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See also: How To Cancel Purple Carrot 4 Alternatives
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