The Cost of Veganism

“Veganism is expensive!”

So as a reminder this site is about me! So this is my personal take on the cost of veganism, living in London among other diets for comparison. If you think it’s insanely inaccurate, please let me know

The Ground Rules

Here are some ground rules I made for this comparison:

• Only the protein-heavy stuff counts. Breakfast is 40g of oats(~4.5g of protein from Flahavans Irish Organic Porridge 1Kg), Lunch and dinner could be rice (~5.4g of protein for 150g of cooked brown rice) or pasta (~8g of protein for 180g of cooked pasta). So through the day, I’ll have around 20g of protein from these staples.
• Huel for breakfast. I also always have huel every morning which is vegan anyway and provides 40g of protein per serving.
• Every day hits roughly 140g of protein. This is assuming I go to the gym 5-6 times a week and need a high protein intake to support my training.
• The vegan days gets extra protein. Plant protein is a little less digestible than animal protein (it scores lower on protein quality scores like DIAAS), so a common rule of thumb is to aim for around 10% more on a fully plant-based diet. The vegan day below has about 158g to make up for it.
• Meat is halal. All meat included is halal because I usually follow a halal diet.

So for all diets I’m minusing 60g of protein from the total, since that’s coming from the staples (20g) and Huel (40g) which are already accounted for.

Prices are per portion, not per pack!

Data for this chart was sourced from Tesco and Ocado on 20th October 2026

Results are in

Play with the chart and a few things jump out:

1. Vegan came out cheapest, at about £2.80 a day, compared with £4.44 for the omnivore day, even with the extra protein.
2. Even “easy vegan” keeps up. Skipping the homemade seitan and buying everything ready-made (like the pre-made mock meats), and it’s about £4.63 a day, about the same as the omnivore and vegetarian days, but with the extra protein.
3. Plants give you more protein for your money. Switch the chart to £ per 10g protein and both vegan days come out on top.
4. Homemade seitan is the hack: 37.5g of protein for about 38p. Shop-bought seitan costs a lot more, so I’ve marked it as homemade (honesty is the best policy). I use this recipe. It doesn’t take too long and the ingredients are usually found in health stores. The seitan cost is an estimate for now. I’m working on a full recipe cost breakdown for transparency (TBD).
5. Omnivore days are easier: Let’s be honest, cooking with meat to get protein is easier. There are only three items and they’re simple to prepare (oil + salt and fry it up). So you for sure need to be more conscious when it comes to the other diets. It’s not hard to do a vegan diet, but it’s harder than an omnivore day.

So Why Does Everyone Think It’s Expensive?

Vegan food can be expensive like the mock meats and speciality vegan cheeses. Sometime I do the easy vegan days where I rely on these “luxury” items, and I’d say it’s similar to the days when I ate meat where I’d get a fillet steak or something like that.

The everyday staples (beans, lentils, tofu, chickpeas, peanut butter) are some of the cheapest protein in the whole supermarket. If anything, being vegan made my food shop cheaper, not more expensive.

But it’s not meat so they aren’t complete proteins!

We look into what a complete protein is and how to get all essential amino acids on a vegan diet here