What this comparison actually adds up
A cost comparison between takeaways and home cooking asks one plain question: for a given meal, which one costs less per portion, once every cost is counted. That sounds simple. In practice most people only count part of each side, which is why the sums often feel wrong even when the maths is right.
Our takeaway vs home cooking cost comparison tool does this arithmetic for you. Put in what you'd typically order and what you'd cook instead, and it works out a cost per portion for both. It's a calculator, not an oracle: it can only work with the figures you give it, and if a price is out of date or an ingredient gets missed, the answer will be wrong in the same direction. Treat the result as a starting point for your own numbers, not a verdict.
The takeaway side of the sum
The number on the app is the easy part. A curry at £11.50 or a pizza at £9 looks like the whole cost, and for a single order it more or less is. The complication shows up over a week or a month, when small extras start to repeat.
The price on the app isn't the whole cost
Delivery fees, service charges and the tip you add at the end often sit on top of the menu price, sometimes adding a few pounds per order. Order for four people and the total splits across four portions, which brings the per-head figure down. Order for one after a long day and it doesn't split at all. None of this makes takeaways a bad choice. It just means the number worth comparing is pounds per portion actually eaten, not the total on the receipt.
The home cooking side of the sum
Home cooking has its own version of the same trap, just running the other way. It's easy to price a meal using only the ingredients that go in the pan, and forget everything else that made the meal possible.
Costs that are easy to forget
- Oil, seasoning, and store-cupboard basics that get used a little at a time rather than bought fresh for one dish
- Energy for the oven or hob, which varies by appliance and by how long something needs to cook
- Food that goes off before it's used, which is a real cost even though nobody rings it up at the till
Costs that are easy to overcount
The opposite mistake happens too. If a recipe calls for half a tin of chickpeas, the fair cost is half a tin, not the full price of the tin. Ingredients bought for one meal but used across several, like a bag of onions or a block of cheese, should be split across those meals rather than loaded onto the first one. Batch cooking makes this easier to get right, because the cost of one big shop spreads across several dinners at once. Cook a large pot of chilli on a Sunday and Tuesday's dinner is already paid for, alongside Sunday's.
Using the calculator well
The comparison only tells you something useful if the inputs reflect what actually happens in your kitchen, not an idealised version of it. A few habits make the result more trustworthy.
- Price your usual takeaway order, including delivery and any extras you always add, not the cheapest thing on the menu
- Price the home version using what you'd genuinely buy, not the most efficient shopping list imaginable
- Divide by the number of portions you'd actually eat, including leftovers you'd freeze rather than throw away
- Run the sum again after a few weeks, because prices at the supermarket and on delivery apps both move
Prices vary by retailer, region and time of year. A figure that holds in one supermarket on one week won't necessarily hold in another. Use the tool to spot the general pattern, not to pin down an exact saving to the penny.
What the numbers are for
The point of doing this sum isn't to prove that cooking always wins. Some weeks it won't, particularly if you're cooking for one, working long hours, or reaching for a takeaway because there's genuinely nothing in the fridge. The point is to see the gap clearly enough to make a choice on purpose, rather than by default because deciding what to cook feels harder than opening an app.
Households that plan meals a week at a time tend to order in less, not because they've been told to, but because there's already an answer to "what's for dinner" before the question gets asked at half past six. That's the gap the comparison is really measuring: not just pounds per portion, but how much of the decision has already been made for you by the time you're hungry and tired.
For more on how Cookly approaches this, see our story and what we stand for. If you'd like to talk through how the comparison applies to your own household, you can get in touch.