I Tried 6 Fast Food Breakfast Sandwiches and These Are the Ones Worth Waking up For

I am not a morning person but I love breakfast food, such is my lot in life. And while brunch is great for a leisurely weekend and you’ll never find me turning up my nose at breakfast for dinner, sometimes you need to eat eggs and you need to eat them as the sun comes up.

Enter fast food. The savior of morning commuters, road-trippers, and early morning airport travelers. The quick, salty, and filling foods on offer may not be the healthiest options but they are affordable, easy to access, and delicious.

But what is the tastiest of them all? As fast food recovers from a pandemic dip, many chains are betting big on their breakfast menus. Since it is the most important meal of the day, I tried out six different breakfast sandos from various fast food chains. What is similar across all sandwiches: egg, sausage, cheese. What is different: the carb cushion surrounding the aforementioned elements.

How I Tested

I started with the Egg McMuffin as my true neutral and worked from there. If something caught my eye on the menu, I gave it a try. I ordered what I would most likely order at 7 a.m. in a toll plaza somewhere between New York and Illinois and ranked them from “gets the job done” to “would go out of my way to order this in my everyday life.” And yes, all sandwiches were tested with a swig of coffee, one milk, one sugar.

The Best Fast Food Breakfast Sandwiches, Ranked

6. Dunkin’ Wake-Up Wrap: Sausage, Egg, and Cheese

I had high hopes for this little guy from the Dunkin' drive-thru. Sometimes, you want something not so heavy, not so carby in the morning, and this wrap seemed to fit the bill. The tortilla was a little stiff and had a dusting of flour on it that caught me off guard, and was largely tasteless. The sausage was pretty good, the egg was unremarkable, and the cheese was the same as the cheese in all other sandwiches (melted American cheese is pretty foolproof and consistent by design).

I do think this would be the easiest breakfast option to eat while actually driving, and again if you don’t want to carb load first thing, this is a totally fine choice—it just doesn’t have a ton of flavor. You can also customize your options and they offer turkey sausage which is a nice touch.

5. Wendy’s Sausage, Egg & Swiss Croissant

This is a good sandwich. It is greasy, as you would both want and expect a buttery bread to be, but not as heavy as some of the biscuit options. The sausage has a strong aftertaste that isn’t necessarily unpleasant, just noticeable and not really found in the other sandwiches.

Wendy’s says the egg is freshly cracked and it definitely looks and tastes the most fresh. The Swiss cheese was unremarkable aside from a pleasant gooiness. I would probably order this again, though maybe with bacon instead of sausage (with extra napkins because wow, what a greasy delight).

4. McDonald’s Egg McMuffin

This is what I think of when I think of fast food breakfast. It was a treat from my parents when I was a kid, it was a treat from myself to myself whenever I had an early flight, I love an Egg McMuffin and will probably order it always, even if three other sandwiches outrank it.

Nostalgia and familiarity aside, what the Egg McMuffin has going for it is the weird, somewhat fluffy, always overdone egg circle. It keeps things light, easy to chew, and balances out the saltiness of the sausage. Now the sausage, I would argue, is the best out of any on this list—it is delicious on its own and could easily slide onto my plate at a sit-down breakfast and I would be none the wiser.

The McMuffin part of the whole sandwich is where things get a little rough. I have had great muffins, warm and slightly crispy, clinging to the cheese ever so gently...And I’ve had stale, hard-to-tear-apart with regular chewing strength versions that have gracelessly stolen the show. But I always have a general idea of what I’m going to get, and for that, it sits in the middle of the list.

3. Burger King's Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit

Again we are faced with lackluster bread but an overall delish sandwich. The butter flavor of the biscuit is more present than any sort of actual butter—it’s a little dry and doesn’t have much crumb. The sausage is excellent and the egg is unnoticeable in a good way, nothing weird going on here.

Burger King is always a bit of a dark horse, but always delicious. This sandwich was not too filling for a biscuit sandwich and I didn’t immediately need to take a nap afterward. It has a strong flavor thanks to the sausage and is worth trying out. Overall a delicious breakfast sandwich, where the one sort of negative is outweighed by the positives.

2. White Castle's Belgian Waffle Sausage Slider

Surprise! This sandwich is excellent! So so good. I’m not a White Castle regular, but I do always associate it with onions so this sweet and salty delight was an unexpected treat. The sandwich is small, slider sized but full of flavor. Not too greasy, not too bland—it packed a flavorful punch.

The waffle is sweet, but not too sweet, and has a good chewy texture. Mine was a little damp when I finally got to it and it was still tasty. The sausage is salty and spiced and the egg is fluffy (although small). The balance of flavors is great, and you can feel full off of one but could probably eat a second one (I wanted to). This was so close to number one—and would be—but it is hard to argue with…

1. Chick-fil-A's Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit

Not only is this the most robust of the sandwiches on the list, but all parts of the sandwich are also delicious. The biscuit is delicious and hefty enough to eat on its own, the egg is light, and while the sausage isn’t spicy, it is tasty.

I can’t stress enough how good this biscuit is. It is crumbly, buttery, salty, but doesn’t dry your mouth out. The sandwich comes with a choice of sauces, which is a plus, but it doesn’t need it. Everything is just flavorful enough to give you an eating experience that changes with every bite.