Meal Prep Calculator
Plan your weekly meal prep by calculating grocery amounts based on the number of people, meals per week, and calorie targets.
Meal prep portioning and cost per meal helps you plan a week’s worth of meals in advance — calculating exactly how much food to cook, how many servings it yields, and what each meal costs.
Core formulas: Total Servings Needed = Meals per Day × Days Prepped × People Ingredients per Batch = Recipe Ingredient × (Servings Needed ÷ Recipe Yield) Cost per Meal = Total Grocery Cost for Prep Session ÷ Total Meals Produced
Macronutrient portioning (general fitness guidelines):
| Goal | Protein | Carbs | Fat | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight loss | 35% | 35% | 30% | 300–450 kcal/meal |
| Maintenance | 25% | 45% | 30% | 450–600 kcal/meal |
| Muscle gain | 30% | 45% | 25% | 500–700 kcal/meal |
Turning macros into a shopping list
This is the step most meal-prep calculators get wrong, and it is worth spelling out. A 500 kcal maintenance meal wants about 31 g of protein. That is not 31 g of chicken. Raw boneless chicken breast is roughly 23% protein by weight, so 31 g of protein means about 135 g of chicken, which is a bit under a third of a pound. Get that conversion wrong and your grocery list comes out at a quarter of what you need.
The three conversions used here:
| Macro | Food | Density used |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | Raw chicken breast | 23 g protein per 100 g |
| Carbohydrate | Cooked rice | 28 g carbs per 100 g, 185 g per cup |
| Fat | Cooking oil | 14 g per tablespoon |
Swap in different foods and the weights move. Salmon is fattier and less protein-dense than chicken; lentils bring protein and carbohydrate together. Treat the output as a starting basket, not a prescription.
Vegetables sit outside the macro math here. They contribute few calories for their bulk, so this plans them at about a third of a pound per meal, which is the volume most people actually want on the plate rather than a nutritional target.
Common meal prep foods and bulk cost estimates (2025 US prices):
| Food | Cost per lb | Servings per lb | Cost per serving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | $3.50–$5.00 | 3–4 | $0.90–$1.65 |
| Brown rice (dry) | $1.00–$1.50 | 8–10 (cooked) | $0.10–$0.18 |
| Broccoli (frozen) | $1.50–$2.00 | 4–5 | $0.30–$0.50 |
| Eggs (dozen) | $3.00–$5.00 | 12 | $0.25–$0.42 |
| Oats (rolled, dry) | $0.80–$1.20 | 14–16 | $0.05–$0.09 |
| Black beans (can) | $1.00–$1.50 | 3–4 | $0.25–$0.50 |
Worked example — 5-day lunch prep for 2 people: Meals needed = 1 meal × 5 days × 2 people = 10 meals
Chicken (3 lbs × $4.50) = $13.50 → 10–12 servings Brown rice (2 lbs × $1.20) = $2.40 → 18 servings Broccoli (2 lbs frozen × $1.75) = $3.50 → 10 servings Seasonings/oil: $2.00 Total: $21.40 | Cost per meal: $2.14
Compare that to buying lunch out. The gap is large enough that it survives whatever the prices happen to be in your area, which is the honest way to put it: every dollar figure on this page is a rough US grocery price from 2025 and will drift. Price your own basket and run the numbers again rather than trusting a table.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
SuperGlobalCalculator is independently built and maintained. See how we build and verify our calculators.