Best Monthly Subscription Boxes – 21 Ideas for Inspiration

Subscription boxes have become a massive force over the past few years, from Dollar Shave Club to Pepsi’s new snack store. Who wouldn’t love coming home to a package full of goodies on your doorstep?

For those of you who are behind the eight-ball, starting a subscription box is quite simple — and so is the concept. 

Basically, people subscribe to receive goods like athletic apparel, stationary, makeup, self care, or dog treats from a supplier on a regular basis. 

A custom box of useful and exciting products is sent to your door each month, making you happier than a kid on Christmas! Be it skin care products, a book of the month, healthy snacks or coffee, a subscription box is a gift that keeps on giving.

The type of monthly subscription boxes you could order are endless.

Go here if you’re looking for quarterly subscription box ideas instead.

Best Monthly Subscription Boxes For The Foodie

Freshly

How Much You Pay: approximately $49.99/week or $8.49/meal. Freshly offers four plan sizes: 4, 6, 10, or 12 meals per week.

What You Get: Healthy, handcrafted, and fresh meals delivered weekly.

Why We Love It: Cooking is hard and unless you’re great at it, you can pretty much guarantee meal time to be a fiasco – even when you’ve got instructions. Freshly takes the grunt work out of meal prepping by delivering healthy, handcrafted meals that you handpicked yourself straight to your door. Every Freshly meal is ideally sized for one person, and takes just a couple of minutes to heat up in the microwave. The best part is that the meals are not frozen. Enjoy freshly-cooked escovitch steak with hot sauce, a savoury-sweet chicken teriyaki bowl, cauliflower-shell bolognese, turkey stroganoff, honey-peach BBQ chicken, Mexican-style shredded beef and other mouth-watering dishes at the press of a button. As we’ve mentioned before, you can select from four, six, ten, or twelve meals a week, so it’s possible to adjust how many you need based on your schedule. 

Buy yours here

Mantry

How Much You Pay: $75 bi-monthly (every two months)

What You Get: Six full sized food products fit for a man.

Why We Love It: Without any doubt, Mantry is one of the best monthly subscription boxes for men who appreciate good food. This is a subscription box that even Ron Swanson himself would buy. Every box is carefully put together (seriously, their packaging is great) and filled with downright delicious snacks that revolve around a common theme such as “Bacon Nation”, “Bourbon Breakfast” or “Tailgate Tour” to give you a new and exciting food experience every month. The Mantry crate includes quality gourmet food and beverage items from artisan partners that can’t be bought in most supermarkets across the country. Is the idea of dude-friendly snacks a little ridiculous? Sure. But honestly, we’re here for it.

Buy yours here

Boxwalla

How Much You Pay: $29.95-49.95/box

What You Get: Unique and absolutely delicious goods. Choose from the Beauty box ($49.95) the Film Box ($49.95) or the Book Box ($29.95).

Why We Love It: Boxwalla focuses on finding artisans who make small batch, high quality, and natural ingredient goods. Every product is the best one that could have been found in its given category, so you know it’s going to be good.

Buy yours here

Turntable Kitchen

How Much You Pay: $25/month

What You Get: Dinner and a vinyl.

Why We Love It: If you’re looking to really impress your dinner date, then look no further. The Pairings Box Subscription gives you three seasonal recipes to choose from and a perfectly paired vinyl to… ahem… set the mood, this box is basically your ultimate wingman. The first box comes with a vinyl and three recipes, along with a digital mixtape and one to two ingredients for each recipe. Listen to the vinyl while you cook — each selection is handpicked with mood in mind. For instance, one month’s subscription box featured Scandinavian-inspired recipes paired with music by the duo Cathedrals, and another combined pizza with music by Local Natives. You’ll be totally amazed by the variety Turntable Kitchen offers: from indie rock to metal, folk, and electronica coupled with mind-blowing recipes from around the world, such as vegetarian ramen or persimmon prosciutto.

Buy yours here

Best Monthly Subscription Boxes For The Sports Enthusiast

We love this category, fitness and wellness make amazing subscription boxes and gifts. Promoting health and fitness whilst treating yourself doesn’t get any better, are we right?

Sportsman’s Box

How Much You Pay: from $25-83/month

What You Get: Choose from The Starter, The Original and The Denali. Receive field-tested hunting gear and monthly supplies to keep you well prepared for the season ahead.

Why We Love it: Whether you like to hunt on land or in water, Sportsman’s Box will let you fully customize your box and will carefully curate it around your preferences. The Sportsman’s Box is a monthly subscription box filled with gear and supplies that hunters and fishermen need such as apparel, snacks, gun cleaning pads, and game bags. Featuring millions of different, world-famous brands, you’ll be likely to find only approved and previously tested hunting gear in your box to satisfy your inner hunter.

Buy yours here

Mullybox

How Much You Pay: $200/quarter

What You Get: Training aids and golfing gear that enhances different parts of your golf game.

Why We Love It: It’s not just an ordinary golf equipment quarterly subscription box. The team at Mullybox truly give their best to deliver a curated box filled with tools, gadgets, and accessories that will improve different aspects of your golf game and help you raise the bar. Perhaps you already have a natural ”sharpshooter” in you, you just may not actually realise it before you subscribe to Mullybox.

Buy yours here

Gainzbox

How Much You Pay: $32/month (plus shipping)

What You Get: A curated box filled with training essentials for the crossfit enthusiast delivered straight to your doorstep monthly.

Why We Love It: Gainzbox brings all the essentials a person needs to get gainz in the gym. This monthly box features workout apparel, equipment, self care products, snacks and supplements, other fitness items and a gift card. Every month, subscribers receive between four to six products. You’ll also find a full-color brochure that provides you with a description of the contents of the box and some advice on how to use them. So if you’re a crossfit fan, just create your athlete profile, state your preferences and wait for the box to be delivered to your door. There’s a wonderful and rewarding rewards program included as well!

Buy yours here

Best Monthly Subscription Boxes For The Fashion Guru

Gentleman’s Box

How Much You Pay: $29/month or $100/quarter

What You Get: 4-6 handpicked accessories (monthly) or 4-5 (quarterly).

Why We Love It: It’s hard to be trendy when you’re a corporate man. Blue suits and boring shirts will only go so far after all. Gentleman’s Box ensures that you can let your personality shine with fun but stylish socks, ties, pocket squares, and other lifestyle accessories. Each box contains 4-6 premium items based around fashion, technology, and lifestyle.

Buy yours here

Trunk Club

How Much You Pay: $25 styling fee for every trunk + clothing you keep

What You Get: Stylist-picked clothing based on your style profile.

Why We Love It: Trunk Club is basically like having a personal stylist, but at a fraction of the cost. Their men’s and women’s style quiz is super thorough to ensure that each “trunk” is filled with clothing you’ll love. What’s even better is that you can approve its contents before it’s shipped to your door. Once you try everything on, you choose what to keep (and pay for) and send back the rest for nothing. You can do this on a monthly basis, or whenever you feel like you need to spruce up your wardrobe.

Buy yours here

Switch

How Much You Pay: $29-69/month

What You Get: 1 piece of designer jewellery.

Why We Love It: Not everyone is fortunate enough to be dripping in designer jewelry. With Switch you can rent pieces from high end brands like Chanel and Hermes, for next to nothing. Well, compared to retail price anyways. In addition to these luxury brands, Switch also has 18K gold and diamonds. When you’re ready for a new piece, just ship it back and the next one will be on its merry way. What is more, Switch offers three plans to meet their customers’ needs. The “Gold” plan allows you to rent one piece of jewelry for $29 per month. With the “Platinum” plan, you’ll get two pieces of jewelry for $49. The highest “Black” plan gives you access to three pieces for $69/month. Amazingly, no matter what plan you select, you get access to every item in the Switch collection.

Buy yours here

Best Monthly Subscription Boxes For The Beauty Fanatic

Beauty related boxes are one of the most popular categories of the best subscription boxes. Understandably, we all want to look beautiful and treat ourselves with quality makeup and self care products. Let’s take a look at our selection of the best beauty subscription boxes.

Birchbox

How Much You Pay: $13-15/month

What You Get: 5 beauty samples.

Why We Love It: High quality beauty products are expensive and a gamble. Birchbox is a curated beauty subscription box filled with makeup, hair and skin care products for men and women based on their beauty profile. What is more, the service allows you to rate each item in order to further customize your next order. You get to try out high end products to see what works best for you for next to nothing, and if you find something you like then you can purchase the full size version directly from their website. Plus, you’ll get $1 back in Loyalty Points for every $10 you spend in the shop.

Buy yours here

Scentbird

How Much You Pay: $14.95/month

What You Get: A trial size fragrance of your choice.

Why We Love It: With the number of perfumes out there, it can be hard to find your signature scent. Even when you do find one you like, you’re usually so over it by the time you reach the bottom of the bottle. Scentbird allows you to mix up your perfume and cologne game each month with 450+ high end scents to choose from – leaving you smelling fresh as a flower. Each scent comes in a travel-friendly, eight-milliliter vial filled with around 140 sprays, which is enough for a month’s use. The vial cosily fits in the classy silver atomizer case you will find in your first box. Scentbird is one of the best subscription boxes for women and men, without any doubt.

Buy yours here

Boxed Glam

How Much You Pay: $167/month

What You Get: Exclusive selection of 35 to 48 makeup items delivered in a box on a monthly basis.

Why We Love It: Not only does the team at Boxed Glam help you connect and get a hold of exclusive products from one of the world’s most renowned brands, it also helps you connect with some of the best bloggers and influencers in the industry to help curate your beauty box. This is not only a box that you’ll use to treat yourself — Boxed Glam is a perfect fit for both male and female entrepreneurs in the industry who want a curated selection of makeup on a monthly basis.

Buy yours here

Dollar Shave Club

How Much You Pay: from $1/month but it varies via customization

What You Get: Clean razor blades.

Why We Love It: The grandfather of modern monthly subscription boxes. Shiny, sharp, and clean razor blades delivered to your front door every month for only a few bucks. Need we say more? The first box features a starter pack, which includes two replacement cartridge refills, a handle and shave butter. After two weeks, you’ll get a restock shipment of razor cartridges and shave butter. You can customize both your Dollar Shave starter kit and restock shipments to also include self care products such as body wash, face wash, shampoo, toothpaste and a toothbrush. One of the best subscriptions ever, indeed.

Buy yours here

Best Monthly Subscription Boxes For The Pet Person

Buster Box

How Much You Pay: £17.99 / €21.99 per month on the 12-month plan.

What You Get: Treats, toys, and chews for your best friend.

Why We Love It: There aren’t just your standard Petsmart goods. Each box comes with unique and frankly adorable toys that your pupper will love — not to mention natural and healthy snacks for when your four-legged friend is being a particularly good boy.

Buy yours here

KitNip Box

How Much You Pay: $19.99-$29.99/month

What You Get: The Happy Cat KitNipBox comes with 5 goodies. It is perfect for households with one cat. The Multi-Cat KitNipBox is $29.99/month and comes with 7 goodies.

Why We Love It: Are you a cat person? Then you know perfectly well that the cats of the world deserve some love too. Instead of kitty drugs like katnip, this monthly subscription box is full of fun and engaging toys, healthy snacks, and other puuurfect products that will keep your cat’s attention so you don’t have to.

Buy yours here

Saddlebox

How Much You Pay: $36.95/month

What You Get: 7 items for you and your riding buddy.

Why We Love It: The fact that there’s a box specifically for horses is amazing in itself. What’s even better is that there’s a surprise in every box for humans too! Your horse gets monthly gourmet treats and grooming products such as the tack, brushes, shampoo, while you get riding accessories and memorabilia. It’s a win-win! Without any doubt, a Saddlebox subscription is a perfect gift for a horse-lover.

Buy yours here

Bullymake Box

How Much You Pay: $31-39/month (depending on 1, 3, 6, or 12 month commitment)

What You Get: A box full of durable dog toys and treats.

Why We Love It: If you’ve ever had a large dog, then you know the struggle of constantly having to buy new toys for them to chew through. Bullymake specializes in durable toys and chews for those big dogs who can destroy anything they set their mind to. The best part is that if your doggo wrecks his new toy within 14 days of receiving it, they’ll ship out a new (and more durable one) for free. 

Buy yours here

Best Monthly Subscription Boxes For The Hobby Enthusiast

Crafts and other hobbies are the perfect way to reduce stress and get cosy while doing something you love. Let’s take a look at some hobby-related subscriptions that are worth considering. By the way, they make the best monthly subscription boxes for kids.

Model Box

How Much You Pay: £21-24.99/month (12 month vs monthly commitment)

What You Get: Models and accessories.

Why We Love It: While this hobby is definitely a niche, it’s super fun and rewarding! Every month, Model Box sends you a different themed box filled with exciting miniatures as well as the necessary tools and accessories needed to bring them to life. It’s the perfect way to bring out both your inner artist and your inner nerd.

Buy yours here

BooBox

How Much You Pay: €14.99 /month or €165.00 annually

What You Get: 3-9 e-books based on your preferences.

Why We Love It: Not only does it nurture your inner reader, BooBox also takes care of the environment as well by sending a range of dematerialized digital e-books on a monthly basis. Every box is completely tailored based on your preferences. However, if for some reason you don’t like the digital novel that you got, you can also exchange it with other subscribers!

Buy yours here

New Hobby Box

How Much You Pay: $29.99/month (currently suspended – last checked October 2020)

What You Get: A new project every month

Why We Love It: If you’re a crafty and creative person that feels a need to constantly try something new, this subscription is just for you! Instead of just sticking to one hobby, this subscription box gives you a new one to try out every month! Potential activities can range anywhere from lock-picking (yes really) to macrame. Each month is just as unexpected as the last, and you’ll become a jack of all trades.

Buy yours here

Our Favorites From Each Category

While each of these subscription boxes is amazing in its own way, there were some that just made us say “hell yeah, sign me up!”.

Food

Turntable Kitchen

Why: No, they don’t technically send you food, but you do get some really top of the line recipes. What we really love though, is that you get a sweet vinyl record and mixtape with each box. It’s unique, fun, and insanely hip.

Sports

Sportsman’s Box

Why: The depth and variety of products that these guys include in their box is truly unmatchable. Bringing the best hunting gear (which is professionally tested, too) to your table every month will help you scale up your hunting game to a whole new level.

Fashion

Trunk Club

Why: You know what’s better than shopping? Having someone do it for you. You’re basically getting a personal stylist for next to nothing and you get to try on clothes from the comfort of your own home. Not to mention that they’re affiliated with Nordstrom, so you know those clothes are going to be on trend and high quality.

Beauty

BirchBox

Why: First of all the price is really hard to beat. Second, all the makeup and skin care products are salon quality. Sure they’re only sample size, but that comes as an advantage. Instead of wasting money on full size products that end up being a flop, you get to figure out what works best for you and then buy the full sized product when you’re ready to commit.

Pets

BusterBox

Why: Nothing says I love you like a box full of goodies for your best furrrrend. The price you pay is a steal for the amount of products you get, and everything is of supreme quality. The treats are made by smaller brands who put a little extra love into their products and the toys are unique, adorable, and durable.

Hobbies

New Hobby Box

Why: This box just looks like plain fun. There is clearly no rhyme or reason to each month’s activity, and frankly we need that kind of spontaneity in our lives. Lock picking? Bookbinding? How many people can say they actually know how to do that stuff? The subscribers of New Hobby Box, that’s who.