Daily Harvest Review: Plant-Based Breakfast With No Subscription Required

8.3 / 10

Score

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Daily Harvest

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Pros

• Healthy beverages and oat bowls made from high-quality ingredients
• Most take less than 5 minutes to prepare
• Great for breakfast
• No subscription required

Cons

• On the expensive side for smoothies

At one point, Daily Harvest was known simply for its tasty smoothies, but in recent years, the healthy meal delivery service has added protein oat bowls, high-protein smoothies, elixirs (wellness shots) and even its own protein powder.

After multiple rounds of testing, Daily Harvest vaults to the top of the pack as one of the best vegan breakfast and beverage delivery services available in 2026. For newbies, Daily Harvest lets you try its offerings at a discount. You can get 15% off with the code GO15 or receive a free smoothie essential kit (reusable cup, pouch and straws) with the code FREESMOOTHIESESSENTIALKIT.

How does Daily Harvest work?

Daily Harvest delivers elixirs, high-protein oat bowls, classic smoothies and high-protein smoothies that can be kept thawed or stored in the freezer until you're ready to whip them into quick meals or beverages. Smoothies are blended with milk or a liquid of your choice before serving, while oat bowls can be prepared like overnight oats or heated up in the microwave. The elixir cubes can be added to water or milk, then heated in the microwave, mixed or blended.

Prospective customers start by building a box on the company's website and although you can either subscribe to save, a subscription is no longer required. If you do opt for the subscription, you can have meals delivered weekly or monthly, and it's easy to skip a week, pause or cancel with no finicky long-term contracts to sign. 

Ordering

Ordering is easy and intuitive, with nutrition facts and ingredients for each item available before you add them to your order. There are also user reviews and ratings linked to individual Daily Harvest items, which I found helpful. Selections are added and removed from time to time, but most items, especially the bestsellers, are always available. 

You can easily filter the options by your dietary needs and likes and dislikes, so if you don't like coconut or avocado, for instance, you can filter out items with those ingredients. 

What are Daily Harvest items like?

In a word, healthy. Daily Harvest smoothies, bowls and elixirs all contain loads of healthy superfoods, fruits, vegetables, greens and nuts. If it's been a trending health food in the past decade -- avocado, acai, kale, chlorella, reishi -- you can likely find it in Daily Harvest creations. 

Daily Harvest is completely vegan and gluten-free. If you prefer dairy-based smoothies, you can add yogurt or dairy milk to the frozen ingredients before blending, instead of nut, soy or oat milk.

How much does Daily Harvest cost?

The smoothies are between $8.49 and $9.49, while the oat bowls are $7.49. The elixirs, which have about six servings per bag, are $13. For the most part, this service offers considerable value, especially factoring in that Daily Harvest uses expensive, high-quality and often organic ingredients such as avocado, chia seeds, organic fruits and vegetables and nuts. 

Are Daily Harvest items easy to prepare?

The smoothies, oat bowls and elixirs are extremely easy to make. All you need is a blender or a microwave. If you don't have a microwave, you can prepare the oats the night before and enjoy them cold in the morning.

What we made and how we liked it

The Daily Harvest culinary team makes a clear effort to mix up the spice blends, veggie and fruit combinations and grains to keep things interesting. Everything tasted fresh and mostly balanced with nothing ever turning out way too sweet, salty, spicy or bitter. 

Smoothies

Daily Harvest smoothies ($8.49-$9.49) are solid, with a handful of recipes to pick from and some flavors that come and go. You can blend the frozen ingredients with any milk or liquid of your choosing.

Vanilla and cacao with chickpeas, apples and coconut cream: I liked it but didn't love it and quickly decided that perhaps chickpeas don't belong in a smoothie. 

Mixed berry protein smoothie: Complete with 20g of organic, plant-based protein, this smoothie offers a tasty mixture of strawberries, blueberries, banana, kale, flaxseed and pea protein.

Dark chocolate protein smoothie: We loved this smoothie, as it tasted like a dessert. As a bonus, it contained 20g of plant-based protein and 11g of fiber. It also sneakily included chickpeas and zucchini, getting in an extra veg and legume.

Cold brew, banana and almond butter smoothie: This is similar to a smoothie I make often at home and was excellent, perhaps my favorite smoothie of them all. I mixed it with almond milk, as suggested, and it was like a healthy version of a Starbucks frozen coffee.

Chocolate blueberry smoothie with greens, organic banana and almond butter: I also liked this one a lot. I wasn't sure how the greens would play with cacao and blueberry, but they mostly faded into the background. It felt as if I'd tricked myself into eating a salad for breakfast.

Mint cacao smoothie: Another dessert-like smoothie, CNET wellness editor Anna Gragert was happy to see that this one contains spinach for iron and potassium, cashews for protein and magnesium, and chlorella algae for iron and more protein.

Strawberry peach smoothie: Strawberry, peach, banana, raspberry and goji berry come together to create a smoothie that is a perfect balance of sweet and tart.

Vanilla bean protein smoothie: Though this smoothie was still tasty, it was Anna's least favorite. While it was similar to a vanilla milkshake, the taste of the protein powder was more pronounced. However, it does give you that 20g protein boost.

Strawberry banana protein smoothie: There wasn't a single smoothie that Corin tried and didn't like, but this was her favorite and it was surprisingly filling too.

Tropical greens protein smoothie: This is one of those smoothies that makes you feel like you are doing healthy eating right. It's packed with organic pineapple, organic mango, organic spinach, organic pea protein, and organic hemp seeds.

Nutty banana protein: There's more ingredients in this one than some of the others we tried, but it balanced out the protein flavor.

Sunny Reset Tropical Smoothie: This limited-edition smoothie tastes like a less sugary Dole Whip with its blend of pineapple, passionfruit, banana and mango. I was surprised to see carrot and tahini on the ingredient list, as it doesn’t taste like them. Sunny Reset is also full of vitamin C (a whopping 50% of your daily value), which is great for your immune system.

Breakfast oat protein bowls

Breakfast bowls are $7.79 each and we've tried a handful of them.

Apple cinnamon: A tasty apple oatmeal that offers extra iron and fiber. Hidden inside, you will also find cauliflower for folate, vitamin C and fiber. This was both Anna's and Corin's favorite oat bowl.

Blueberry maple pecan protein oat bowl: This one was tasting and filling thanks to the pecans.

Mixed berry protein oat bowl: This was one of my least favorite ones because the fruit got a bit mushy, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't microwaved it and instead enjoyed it as cold overnight oats.

Elixirs

Golden Chai Immunity Support: Tasty and easy to make. With a bag coming in at $13 and making 6 servings, that's less than $2.20 per serving, which you typically won't find anywhere else.

Mixed Berry Antioxidant Support: Anna enjoys this elixir cold, and loved its fruity taste with a subtle warmth from the added ginger. It also contains 100% your daily value of vitamin C.

What makes Daily Harvest different from other prepared meal delivery services?

Daily Harvest is incredibly consistent. Although the menu isn't as robust as other prepared meal delivery services, it still has great and tasty options, especially if your goal is to add more protein to your daily diet. We also appreciate the all-vegan ingredients that are mostly high in nutritional value.

However, the service is limited to smoothies, oat bowls and elixirs, so it isn't a traditional meal delivery service.

Who should try Daily Harvest?

If you struggle to find a quick, healthy breakfast and don't love the idea of making it yourself, Daily Harvest is a natural fit. Daily Harvest is great for saving time around meals and keeping nutrition goals on track since the food is made from healthy, whole and often organic ingredients. Daily Harvest food is all gluten-free and dairy-free, so it's good for anyone avoiding those foods. 

We'd also recommend Daily Harvest to anyone looking for ready-made smoothie combinations that you simply have to add to a blender with liquid. Many of the brand's smoothies also contain added plant-based protein. The oat bowls are great for a fast and healthy breakfast.

Best Vegan Meal Delivery for 2025 See at Cnet

Who should skip Daily Harvest?

If you're looking for prepared dinners or are the carnivorous type, Daily Harvest meals may not be a good pick for you. While a lot of the smoothies and bowls get a protein punch from ingredients like lentils, beans, nuts and kale, and most are all chock-full of vitamins and antioxidants, there are no meats, fish or alt-meats to be found.

Because the menu is limited, Daily Harvest isn't a great pick if you want prepared dinners.

Daily Harvest packaging and environmental friendliness

The only items from Daily Harvest's line that are recyclable are the smoothie lids and protein powder scoops. From the packaging your order arrives in, the box, liner and divider are recyclable. As for the dry ice, it comes in a plastic bag that can’t be recycled curbside and may require in-store drop-off. However, for all recycling questions, check with your provider.

Changing or canceling your Daily Harvest order

You can cancel your order or subscription anytime and at no charge as long as it's before the cutoff -- Sunday, 3 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET) of the previous week.  

The final verdict 

If your goal is to eat a healthier breakfast on the regular but suffer a lack of discipline, Daily Harvest is one of the best ways to save yourself from, well, yourself. For healthy, high-protein meals that take almost no effort to prepare and taste darn good, Daily Harvest offers as good a value as any service we've tried. 

We appreciated the quality of ingredients and diversity of flavors, and we genuinely liked most of what we tasted. I don't know that I'd aim to eat these smoothies and oat bowls daily, as the name suggests, but having a stash on hand for healthy and quick breakfasts certainly takes the heat off, especially during busy times. While not every smoothie or oat bowl blew us away, they were all pretty tasty, healthy and incredibly easy to make. Plus, the protein smoothies are also a great option for a mid-day snack.