With the cost-of-living crisis hitting hard, with bills and shop prices rocketing and incomes remaining relatively static, it has become necessary to look at household budgets to see where savings could be made. The prices in this article are from July 2025.

My partner and I are very fond of a takeaway, especially as sometimes I get a migraine and find it difficult to cook when I get one. So, I started to investigate the cost of a takeaway versus that of cooking at home. And specifically, how much money we could save by having one less takeaway a week.

I started by looking into the cost of Chinese takeaways.  Our typical Chinese takeaway comes to about  £37.90. One change that could be made is just reducing the portion size. Our typical Chinese order is enough for four people, but we tend to eat it all at one sitting. So, reducing the portion size would not just be good for the bank balance it would be better for our health too.  A smaller Chinese order would come to £14.80 which is roughly a 60% reduction in the cost already.

However, even more money can be saved by cooking sweet and sour chicken at home, coming in at £5.47. This is roughly 80% less than the full takeaway cost.

Making one small change can sometimes be more effective than trying to be overambitious and then failing to achieve a change. So, my mission for this month will be to add some frozen peas or mixed veg to the sweet and sour chicken and make it last 2 days and count towards our 5 a dy. The price per portion comes in at £1.68 rather than £2.74. See breakdown of all costs below.

So if it’s so expensive, why do we have so much takeaway and how can we motivate ourselves to have less?

Let’s look at how takeaways really compare to fakeaways:

1. Speed – when you’re tired and hungry a takeaway seems the quickest option but delivery times can often be an hour in which time you could easily cook a similar meal.

2. Effort – picking up the phone and placing an order is a lot easier than the effort of not only cooking but doing the shopping beforehand for the necessary ingredients. Yes this is true to a certain extent but a little bit of planning solves the problem. Stock up on the essentials like rice, and to get started use jars of ready made sauce and frozen pre-prepared veg. You can buy fresh meat and freeze it if you might not be able to get to the shop the day you want to cook. And then there’s the washing up when you cook at home, but think of the planet and all the takeaway packaging you’re saving.

3. Nutrition – you never get an ingredient list on a takeaway but you can guarantee there’s lots of salt, sugar and saturated fats.

4. Satisfaction – there is definitely feel-good aspect to creating your own meals.

Top tips

1. Buy ready made sauces, pre-prepared frozen vegetables, tins of chickpeas etc to get started. As you get more confident you can add your own spices and other ingredients.

2. Batch cooking is brilliant as you can make double portions for the same effort and then you have an extra meal in the freezer. You just need tupperware containers or freezer bags and labels to write what it is and when it was made.

3. When you cook rice for your curry or Chinese, cook double amount and then make fried rice the next day. Or freeze portions of rice for your next fakeaway.

4. Wash up as you go along so there’s only the plates to do at the end of the meal when you’re tired. But if you don’t get it all done before you go to bed, do it first thing in the morning and put everything away.

5. Every time you cook a fakeaway, make a note of the money you’ve saved to go towards the bills, a holiday, a new laptop, gym membership, more date nights or anything else on your bucket list.

Cost breakdown

Our typical Chinese takeaway for two

Sweet and sour pork balls £7.60
Pineapple prawns               £8.40
Lemon chicken                    £7.80
Egg fried rice                       £4.70
Mixed vegetables                £6.90
Delivery charge                   £2.50
Total                                   £37.90

Reduced portion Chinese takeaway for two

Sweet and sour chicken    £7.60
Fried rice                             £4.70
Delivery charge                  £2.50
Total                                  £14.80

Fakeaway sweet and sour chicken for two

Diced chicken                                  £3.95
Sweet and sour sauce 500g          £1.20
Long grain rice 250 g                     £0.32
Total                                                 £5.47

Fakeaway sweet and sour chicken with peas for two for two meals

Diced chicken                                  £3.95
Sweet and sour sauce 500g          £1.20
Long grain rice 500g                       £0.63
Frozen peas  200g                          £0.94
Total                                                 £6.72 (£3.36 per meal)