Sometimes you’re so busy that you don’t have time to eat. Literally. And preparing a healthy and delicious meal takes at least an hour of your precious time. Even though there are many meal replacement shakes, powders, and drinks, they are usually filled with sugar, and artificial ingredients, and are low in quality.
But, what if I told you there are a few brands who truly did their best to make your life easier and healthier?
In this review, I will compare Huel and Soylent, their products,ingredients, and I will answer the golden question – which one is better?
If you want to know about other meal replacement shakes such as Ka’Chava, check out this article.
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Table Comparison
Here are the main differences and the things the two brands have in common.
| Huel vs Soylent: Which Meal Replacement Is Better? |  |  |
|---|---|---|
| Based in | UK | USA |
| Products | Powder-based products: Huel Hot and Savory Huel Black Edition Huel Powder v3.0 Huel Gluten-free v3.0 Huel Complete Protein Drinks: Huel Ready-to-drink Bars: Huel Complete Protein Bar Huel Bar v3.1 | Powder-based products: The Original Complete Meal Protein Shake Cacao Complete Meal Protein Shake Drinks: Complete Meal Complete Protein Complete Energy |
| Free shipping | Yes, on orders over $59 | Yes, on orders over $50 |
| Returns policy | Huel products can be returned unused within 30 days | Soylent food products can’t be returned. |
| Subscription | Yes | Yes |
| One-time purchase | Yes | Yes |
| Website: |
About Huel
Huel was founded in 2015 by Julian Hearn. The name comes from a combination of the words Human and Fuel. The brand relies on 26 essential vitamins and minerals, protein, essential fats, carbs, fiber, and phytonutrients that every single product contains. This makes Huel products beneficial in many ways and an excellent meal replacement option.
Also, Huel cares a lot about the environment as well. The company makes products with minimal waste and minimal environmental impact.
Huel Meal Replacement Products
Huel offers a variety of meal replacement products – from powders and ready-to-drink beverages to protein bars.
Let’s have a look at some of the best sellers.
Huel Black Edition
Huel Black Edition is a nutritionally complete shake that is gluten-free and filled with 26 essential vitamins and minerals. All you have to do is mix powder and water in your Huel shaker and your meal is ready.
Besides the essential vitamins and minerals, the powder contains 40g of protein, 17g of carbs, green tea extract, zero artificial sweeteners and so much more.
Check out the entire ingredients and nutritional information here.
Huel Black Edition powder comes in 10 different flavors and they’re all gluten-free.
Huel Ready-to-drink
Huel Ready-to-drink beverage is one of the most popular products. It’s a delicious, nutritionally complete, ready-to-drink meal that comes in a handy bottle. It contains 27 essential vitamins and minerals along with 22 grams of protein, phytonutrients, omega-3, and omega-6.
Huel Ready-to-drink comes in 10 different flavors and none of them are gluten-free. Each Huel Ready-to-drink contains sustainable ingredients including oats, tapioca, rice, peas, flaxseed, and coconut.
Huel Bar v3.1
Nutritionally complete snack perfect for any time of the day. Besides 27 essential vitamins, this amazing snack bar contains a balance of carbohydrates, protein, essential fats, fiber, and phytonutrients.
Huel Bar v3.1 comes in 6 amazing flavors – Peanut Butter, Raspberry & White Chocolate, Chocolate, Coffee Caramel, Salted Caramel, and Chocolate Orange. Also, you can pick Variety Box and try every flavor of Huel’s delicious bars.
PROS
- The products are healthy and beneficial in many ways
- The products contain 26 essential minerals and vitamins
- Free shipping
- Returns within 30 days
- Flexible subscription
CONS
- Some consumers complain about the taste of the shakes.
About Soylent
Soylent has a very interesting story. The company’s co-founders are software engineers who were working under the same roof in Silicon Valley back in 2013. While working, they continuously ate frozen meals and ramen noodles. It became so frustrating that Rob Rhinehart, along with Matt Cauble, John Coogan, and David Renteln developed Soylent as an experiment. Since they were engineers, they simply wanted to build better food for themselves.
The key ingredient of all Soylent products is soy protein isolate. Why? In terms of protein, soy is the most complete plant. Besides soy, Soylent products contain 39 essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids.
Soylent Meal Replacement Products
Everything started with a powder. Today, Soylent offers, powder products, bars, and drinks.
Original Soylent Powder
Everything started with this product. Original Soylent Powder contains 28 essential vitamins and minerals that support your immune system along with 20 grams of protein. Soylent Powder comes in the cacao version as well. If you want to try new flavors, Soylent offers so-called powder flavor boosts. You can add matcha, caramel, strawberry, or peanut butter flavors to your shakes, smoothies, or even oatmeal.
Soylent Original Protein Nutrition Shake
This convenient ready-to-drink shake contains 39 essential nutrients, 20 grams of protein, and only 1g of sugar. The shake is the perfect meal replacement in the morning or mid-day when you’re the busiest. It’s gluten-, nuts-, and dairy-free, as well as plant-based/vegan.
Soylent Chocolate High Protein Nutrition Shake
This high-protein shake contains 30g of protein, 0g of sugar, and 28 essential immune-supporting vitamins and minerals. One bottle of this shake contains 60% of the daily recommended value of protein.
Besides protein and essential vitamins and minerals, Soylent High Protein Nutrition Shake contains 9 essential amino acids, 5 grams of BCAAs, and 250 calories. Just like Original Protein Nutrition Shake, this shake is gluten-free, nut/dairy-free, and plant-based/vegan.
Soylent Chocolate Protein + Energy Nutrition Shake
Protein + Energy Nutrition Shake is a delicious, creamy drink ready to boost your focus when you need it the most. It’s packed with 5 natural energy and focus-supporting Nootropics, 15g of protein, and 28 immune-supporting minerals and vitamins.
The shake contains 3 grams of sugar and no gluten, dairy, or nuts.
PROS
- Healthy shakes based on soy protein isolate
- Variety of products
- Free shipping
- Flexible subscription
CONS
- Shakes can’t be returned even unused.
- Not so many flavors
Subscription
Both brands offer one-time purchases and subscriptions. If you subscribe to Huel you’ll get 10% off on all products, free shipping, and you can cancel or edit your subscription anytime. Speaking of delivery frequency, you can choose when to receive your favorite Huel – from every week to every 10 weeks.
Subscribing to Huel is quite simple. When you decide what product you want to buy, instead of a one-time checkout option, pick Subscribe 10% off and after filling in the form you’re all set.
If you subscribe to Soylent, you can receive your favorite products every 15, 30, 45, or 60 days. Next, you get free shipping on orders over $50, 10% off on every order, and access to exclusive offers and promotions. Also, you skip or delay orders if you have more than enough Soylent products.
What I like about Soylent is that you can easily swap flavors when you’re ready to try something new, and you can easily make quick edits via SMS. Furthermore, you can cancel your subscription anytime.
Speaking of returns, you can return Huel products within 30 days from the date of purchase. To be eligible for a refund, your items must be unused and in the same condition that you received them.
Now, Soylent has quite a surprising policy – the company decided that meals and shakes are not eligible for return/exchange after purchase for food safety reasons. Now, this is a huge drawback, but we can’t judge them since we’re talking about food.
Head to Head
Let’s compare the two amazing brands, head to head, and see who does better in terms of products, subscription, shipping, and return policies.
Both Huel and Soylent have a decent variety of products. Huel has more products and flavors to offer (shakes, ready-to-drink beverages, and bars) while Soylent tries to make it up with powder flavor boosts.
Speaking of the ingredients, Huel relies on 26 essential nutrients and sustainable ingredients that each product contains. Soylent presents soy protein isolate as the star of all ingredients in each product. Besides soy protein isolate, Soylent products are filled with essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc.
Both brands offer free shipping on orders over $59 (Huel) and $50 (Soylent). Furthermore, they have excellent subscription options. The subscriptions are flexible and you can cancel anytime. It seems that the Soylent subscription is slightly more flexible and simple since you can quickly make edits via SMS. Also, you can swap flavors and delay orders.
The main difference between the two brands is their return policies. If you want to return any of the purchased Huel products, you can do so within 30 day if the products are unused.
Soylent doesn’t offer any refund or return options on the food products due to food safety.
The Verdict
This comparison is an even one, that’s for sure. If I really, really, had to choose, I’d go with Huel, because it offers more products, flavors, and more frequent deliveries. Simple as that. I’m not saying that Huel has more quality products. Both brands did their best to make outstanding meal replacement shakes and drinks. Their subscriptions are amazing and super flexible. Huel offers more frequent deliveries (10 options from 1 to every 10 weeks) while Soylent allows you to make changes easily and quickly. Also, Soylent offers an option to delay the deliveries or swap flavors. Soylent has a huge drawback when it comes to the return policy, but if I’m on gluten-/nut-/dairy-free diet, I’d go with Soylent since all the products are gluten-,nut-, and dairy-free.
The bottom line is, whichever brand you go with, you won’t make a mistake, you will get a nutrient-filled, healthy meal replacement and more time for yourself.