I ordered the same breakfast at 5 fast-food chains, and the best was also the cheapest

I've eaten many dinners and lunches at Wendy's, but this was my first experience with its breakfast. The chain has tried to serve breakfast many times over the years without luck and most recently brought it back in 2020.

I chose a sausage-burrito combo with a side of seasoned potatoes. I opted for a cold-brew coffee with Frosty creamer for a $1.45 upcharge, bringing the total cost of my meal to $8.97.

Wendy's breakfast burrito with sausage seemed more substantial than it looked in the pictures I saw of it online.

It contained a square sausage patty split in two, two eggs, American cheese, cheese sauce, and some of the same seasoned potatoes that came on the side.

When I tried the cheese sauce in isolation, it had a nice, cheddar-like taste, but its flavor was lost when I bit into the whole burrito.

This was a fine fast-food breakfast burrito, but the sausage was a little dry, and I didn't love the texture of the eggs — these were the only ones I tried that didn't appear scrambled, and they felt unnaturally fluffy for fried eggs.

I liked that my burrito came with two packets of Cholula hot sauce, which made it much tastier.

Rating: 5/10

Every other fast-food chain I visited served hash browns in some form, but Wendy's has seasoned potatoes instead.

In my opinion, overseasoned potatoes would be a better name for them. They were too salty for my liking and not as crunchy as I wanted them to be.

The smaller, crunchier potatoes tasted like seasoned curly fries, which was good. The larger, mushier ones were less exciting.

Rating: 3/10

Unfortunately, Wendy's cold brew felt entirely punchless, like a weak coffee-flavored beverage instead of actual coffee, which is the light of my life.

To me, the Frosty creamer tasted pretty indistinguishable from the little vanilla-flavored creamer containers you find in big bowls next to the coffee station at chain hotels.

Rating: 2/10

I more closely associate McDonald's with breakfast than I do any of the other chains I visited. My McDonald's breakfast preferences were forged long before its burritos became available, though, so I'd never tried one before.

In the combo meal I ordered, I got two sausage burritos and a hash brown on the side. I paid a 40-cent upcharge to have my coffee iced instead of hot, which brought my total bill to $9.13

McDonald's sausage burrito was my least favorite — and not because it was the smallest.

It contained scrambled egg, sausage, cheese, and bits of tomato and pepper. I thought it lacked flavor and that there wasn't enough sausage.

Plus, the tortilla itself was squishy and soft, almost like it had been steamed. The salsa packet this came with did add some sweetness and mild spice, but this seemed no better than a breakfast burrito I might microwave for myself at a convenience store.

Rating: 2/10

I'm sure I've eaten a thousand McDonald's hash browns before this one, and each has brought me some regret.

They're tasty for a few bites, but they tend to be quite greasy. This one was no exception, coating my fingers in oil as I ate it. Some of the edges still had a nice crunch from the fryer, but the middle was soft from the grease.

Rating: 3/10

Just when I was feeling pretty disappointed about the quality of my breakfast at McDonald's, I took a sip of my iced coffee.

I loved its smooth and surprisingly rich coffee flavor.

It was undoubtedly the best fast-food coffee drink I tried, even though it had maybe a touch more cream than I'd prefer.

Rating: 9/10

Chick-fil-A's chicken biscuit is one of my favorite fast-food breakfasts anywhere, but I'd never tried one of its burritos before.

It felt strange not ordering chicken at the chain that's famous for it, but for the sake of consistency, I ordered my hash-brown-scramble burrito with sausage.

The meal came with a side of hash browns. After a $1.16 upcharge for iced coffee, the bill came to $13.23.

This was the most expensive of the meals I tried, but it may be partially due to prices at this specific location. The Chick-fil-A I visited was in midtown Manhattan — which is famously expensive — and the other four restaurants I went to were in Queens (McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King) or Brooklyn (Taco Bell).

Chick-fil-A's burrito felt large, but the tortilla seemed almost too big for the eggs, sausage, cheese, and hash browns it contained.

I liked the mild peppery flavor of the sausage and the fluffy, moist texture of the scrambled eggs. However, the hash browns that give the burrito its name seemed completely unnecessary — they had lost all their crunch, so the flaky bits of potato felt almost like rice, adding bulk and grease but not much flavor.

I didn't love the tortilla itself, which didn't seem to have been heated in any way and had the taste and texture of a deli wrap.

Rating: 6/10

I'll say this for Chick-fil-A's hash browns: There were a lot of them. Otherwise, I was underwhelmed.

Like every fast-food hash brown, these were very greasy, but given the smaller individual pieces, I felt like these should've been crispier.

Plus, in my opinion, they fell short on flavor.

Rating: 4/10

Chick-fil-A's coffee was definitely among the better and stronger drinks I tried for this taste test. It had a bolder, darker flavor than the others, but some sips bordered on tasting burnt.

Rating: 7/10

I visited Taco Bell a little after 10 a.m. — shortly before it began serving lunch — and there was no coffee available.

They might've brewed up a pot if I asked, but I didn't want to make a fuss, so I had my late breakfast with a Mountain Dew Baja Blast Zero and got a coffee at a later date.

With a hash brown for a side, the combo came to $8.05.

I've had breakfast burritos from Taco Bell before, and most of them had fresher-tasting tortillas.

Still, I like that Taco Bell uses the same grill press for its breakfast burritos as it does for the stuffed ones on its lunch and dinner menu. It makes the tortilla nicely toasty.

The diced tomatoes were a highlight of the burrito, a nice touch that added a juicy brightness none of the others I tried had.

Everything else inside was also good — the eggs were moist, the sausage was flavorful, and the cheese was melty and gooey. The burrito tasted surprisingly mild by Taco Bell standards, but a packet of Fire Sauce helped.

Rating: 7/10

I'm pretty sure this was my first experience with a Taco Bell hash brown, and I was pleasantly surprised.

It was greasy, of course, but not quite as unreasonably greasy as some of the others I ate. It had a strong crunch and a sneaky black-pepper spice that made it the most flavorful, best hash brown of all I tried.

Rating: 10/10

In the interest of fairness to Taco Bell, I went back to try its coffee.

A few days later, I went to the same location at an earlier time, but once again, it didn't have coffee. Eventually, I was able to find some at a different location in Queens.

This Taco Bell didn't have regular milk available for its iced coffee, just sweetened vanilla creamer.

Unfortunately, the coffee disappointed me. It tasted fairly strong, but it was also very acidic, and I didn't like the overwhelming sweetness of the creamer.

Rating: 3/10

Twenty years ago, I was in a band, and the only place to eat near our rehearsal space was a Burger King. It happened to be a terrible one where somehow everything took forever to cook but somehow never tasted particularly fresh.

This may have been the first time I've visited a Burger King since I quit that band in 2006.

I ordered the Egg-normous burrito combo, which came with an iced coffee (no upcharge) and a side of hash browns for $7.61, the least expensive of the five combos I tried.

The name is no joke: Burger King's breakfast burrito was, in fact, Egg-normous. Inside, it was stuffed with generous portions of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, cheese, hash browns, and spicy sauce.

The spicy sauce had a sweet, spicy flavor that resembled hot honey or pancake syrup mixed with hot sauce.

Historically, I've found fast-food bacon is rarely crispy, yet Burger King's bacon was extremely crisp. The sausage had a nice kick of pepper, and the packets of salsa that came with the burrito added some spice and tomato flavor.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Burger King sold my favorite fast-food breakfast burrito.

Rating: 10/10

Burger King's coin-sized hash browns looked similar to Chick-fil-A's, but they were crunchier and not any greasier.

I wouldn't go out of the way to order them again, but they weren't bad.

Rating: 6/10

I appreciated that there was no upcharge for Burger King's iced coffee, but there wasn't a ton else about it that stood out.

It seemed to be adequately punchy, and it didn't taste bitter or stale. Still, the coffee wasn't especially good.

Rating: 5/10

Final breakdown:

• Wendy's: 10/30
• McDonald's: 14/30
• Chick-fil-A: 17/30
• Taco Bell: 20/30
• Burger King: 21/30

In last place is Wendy's, with an OK breakfast burrito and a meal I found to be disappointing overall. Coming in fourth is McDonald's, where a good cup of iced coffee was the saving grace of my otherwise disappointing meal

Chick-fil-A is in third for its good coffee, decent breakfast burrito, and disappointing hash browns. Fourth is Taco Bell: I was impressed by its breakfast burrito and loved its hash brown. If it had decent coffee, it could've won.

First place goes to Burger King, which I hadn't expected. Its superior burrito made its combo the most satisfying, even though its coffee and hash browns were middle-of-the-road.

Maybe it had an unfair advantage for having both sausage and bacon in its burrito, but no one's stopping the other chains from also doing that.