29 Snack Crackers Ranked From Worst To First

When it comes to snacking, there are certain times you want something light, something that's not going to really impact your appetite one way or another, but will keep your jaws working and your taste buds electrified. Sometimes you want something heartier, like chunks of steak dipped in jalapeño cheese sauce, to fill the real and metaphorical emptiness inside you while you tempt your taste buds. But there's a third category of snacktime craving, when you want some hearty crunch, but that will also swell in your stomach and keep you satiated until your next proper meal. And that, friends, is where snack crackers come to the rescue. 

Whether you get all fancy and top them with whipped ricotta and delicate fennel fronds at a sophisticated cocktail hour (as the back of the Triscuit box optimistically suggests), or shovel them by the fistful into your lonely, gaping maw in between "Fortnite" respawns in the bedroom you share with your brother, a box of snack crackers satisfies afternoon or late night cravings like nothing else. Here's our rundown of 29 widely-available snack crackers, ranked from worst to first.

You likely associate water crackers with the classic charcuterie plate. Their light, inoffensive, barely-detectable neutral flour flavor is what makes them the preferred platform on which to sample your chosen assortment of upscale cheeses and cured meats. Carr's is now the de facto king of the world's water cracker supply, with its closest competitor Jacob's now far behind in market share after a long and arduous labor dispute at the latter's plant in western England. Carr's absolutely excels at making a product that tastes like nothing, but inoffensively. Not even the salt the crackers definitely contain registers on a human tongue of reasonable sensitivity, which makes them a perfect delivery method for a slice of sodium-laden salami.

These little discs have their job, and they do it well. Just don't expect to get any satisfaction out of snacking on them on their own. They're there to hold up whatever you put on top of them, which also means that maximum enjoyment is going to come from making sure that whatever you're eating them with has some punch, so the milder options of cheeses are likely going to leave you wanting. A sharp or tart spreadable chèvre or an herb-spiced Gournay will go great, but something milder like a Brie on the less-mature side will leave you wanting unless you're really trying to hone in on its delicate flavor without any frills.

The only thing that moves Keebler Club crackers up the list even a little bit, is the "sandwich" version that adds a bright yellow swipe of "real cheddar cheese" to the operation. While it doesn't do much to improve on the flavor of the crackers themselves (they're still crumbly and taste like food for babies), it's hard to think of a product that isn't improved by the application of cheese-flavored frosting, and the sharp tang of the cheese balances the peculiar butter-flavored sweetness of the cracker itself nicely. If you have to eat Keebler Club crackers, these are the ones to reach for.

Think about it for a minute, and you'll probably realize that the last time you voluntarily ate Saltines was during a bout with the stomach flu, after you spent the day half-asleep on the couch watching The Price is Right while your mom brought you Pedialyte popsicles and you prayed for a swift death. No one eats Saltines on purpose; in fact, they're at their best when they're used as either an ingredient for something else (like crumbled on top of a cup of corn chowder) or a vehicle for transporting other, better, messier foods (like raw oysters) from your plate to your mouth. The Saltines slogan should just be, "Yeah, here are Saltines, I guess" because that's the only time anyone ever eats them: When they're there.

How do you eat Ritz Bits Cheese, those shrinkified buttery Ritz crackers spread with gritty fake cheese and pressed into adorable little sandwiches? Do you nibble on them one at a time with pinky firmly extended, taking demure little bites? Or do you crack open a single-serve package, open your mouth as wide as it will go, and see if you can manage to shoehorn the entire bag into your mouth in one shot? This is important, and will dramatically affect your enjoyment of Ritz Bits Cheese crackers. However, we're not going to tell you which technique is the correct one.

If the shape and ridged edges didn't clue you in, these things are organic, non-GMO stand-ins Ritz. The "healthy-style" alternatives to mass-market snack items can be hit or miss, but surprisingly these things hold their own to the Nabisco version. That buttery flavor of Ritz despite being wholly vegan? Yeah, Back to Nature does it better. That said, a better Ritz is still a Ritz, and it's hard to imagine anyone actually wanting a Ritz cracker who isn't in elementary school, eating them in a small sandwich with a cheap peanut butter or a suspicious spreadable cheddar impostor mechanically injected between them.

There was a time that Ritz boxes– playing off the "Puttin' on the Ritz" pun– would offer ideas of toppings one could place on top of them to make an easy and unpretentious hors d'oeuvre, but who in the 21st Century is going to go out of their way to fancy up a Ritz? Nobody above the age of 16 has eaten a Ritz cracker on purpose without feeling a warranted twinge of existential shame. However, Back to Nature's substitute might make it worth your while to actually spread some peanut butter and drop a slice of apple on top of one of these things. Maybe even the good peanut butter that you actually have to stir.

When you moved out and got your own crummy studio basement apartment for the first time, you probably bought a box of Toasteds to mark the occasion. After all, you're an adult now; no more crappy kid's crackers for you, you budding sophisticate. Toasteds are thinner and lighter than other mass market crackers, and come in an array of totally-not-a-kid-anymore flavors like "Savory Onion" and "Whole Wheat." Squint hard enough at the surface of a Toasted, and you'll probably be able to make out little flecks of grain, which is how you can tell that these crackers are basically medicine.

The appeal of Carr's Rosemary and Olive Oil Crackers can be tricky to pin down. Is it their unusual octagonal shape? Their light, buttery texture? The sheen of olive oil on the surface? The faint hint of visible rosemary flecks that manages to complement almost anything you can throw at it? These are crackers made to be topped with other things, from goat cheese and fig to thick spreads of savory cream cheese-based dips, and are equally suitable for entertaining as they are sitting and eating by yourself. Carr's Rosemary Crackers feel fancy, and make you feel more like you're having a party, even when what you're really doing is "drinking alone."

The craze of self-diagnosed gluten sensitivity has waned somewhat in recent years, but celiac disease is still a reality for about 1% of Americans, so it doesn't hurt to explore gluten-free options. Almond flour emerged as one of the most popular gluten-free wheat flour substitutes, and Simple Mills' almond flour crackers are best compared to Wheat Thins in flavor, texture, and size. Even if you're not concerned about gluten, Simple Mills' crackers may still be a worthwhile substitute if you're a Wheat Thins nut, because as Healthline points out: Wheat Thins have added sugar – a bit of a bizarre addition for a cracker that's supposed to have a lightly salty, lightly savory flavor. Simple Mills' offering has a 0 grams of sugar. Cost, however, is also a factor to consider. The standard box of Wheat Thins retails for about the same as Simple Mills, but contains almost double the number of crackers.

If you're somebody who just absolutely needs to chase that Wheat Thins dragon, but you have health concerns you're not afraid to pay double to assuage, then Simple Mills has you covered. For the rest of us, they're a perfectly fine and unassuming cracker, but not much to write home about.

Whether you mainline them straight from the paper bag, or pack them in tiny plastic Ziplocks for on-the-go playground snacking, Goldfish crackers always satisfy. And while they're available in a variety of "Flavor Blasted" flavors from Parmesan to Pizza to something called "Princess," it's the Cheddar variety that keeps us coming back, handful after handful. They're perfectly light, airy, and crunchy, with flavor that never overpowers and that won't cause palate fatigue, even after eating a whole bag. Goldfish has even managed to convince us that eating a pile of their smiling crackers is somehow more virtuous and healthy than, say, a can of Pringles, which means that Goldfish are essentially good for you. 

Better Cheddars get kind of a bad rap, often portrayed as just another pretender to the Cheez-It cheese cracker throne that somehow falls short. But we think Better Cheddars are more than just another Cheez-It competitor; it's a cracker that stands all on its own. Packing tons of cheddar cheese flavor into a slim, crunchy profile, Better Cheddars taste like what would happen if you ran over a dump truck full of Cheez-Its with a steamroller, saturated the crumbs with salty seawater, stamped the resulting mash into thin rounds, and baked them until toasty and crispy which, now that we think about it, we're pretty sure we saw on the Better Cheddars episode of How It's Made.

There are two products that share a texture unlike anything else on Earth: Shredded Wheat cereal and Triscuit brand snack crackers. And chances are, you probably feel pretty strongly about the texture of these crackers, one way or the other. In a food manufacturing process that makes the United States the envy of the world, wheat is softened by water and steam and pushed through a shredder, until it piles up in little haystacks of grain perfect for topping with a slice of cheese or a piece of pepperoni. The finished product, those little salty area rugs of whole grain deliciousness, stand alone in their category, and for that, we salute them.

It may not taste like chicken OR biscuits, but there's something about this cracker that's got us smitten. In the same way that we occasionally get a craving for three-for-a-dollar packages of dollar store ramen noodles that provide 1400 percent of the recommended daily allowance of sodium, Chicken in a Biskit seems to feed a craving that happens on the chemical level. You won't mistake "eating these crackers" for "eating a roast chicken dinner" anytime soon, but if you've ever sampled the forbidden fruit of "licking a bouillon cube," you'll find a lot to love in this cracker classic. While the ingredients panel lists "dehydrated cooked chicken" among the flavor components, we're willing to bet the addictive quality of these crackers has more to do with the heaping helpings of taste-enhancing MSG. Mmm... glutamatey.

Trader Joe's really struck gold with the introduction of the fruit-and-herb cracker varieties now adorning the grocer's shelves. The Pumpkin Cranberry Crisps are the autumn seasonal corollary to the raisin-and-rosemary, and fig-and-olive varieties that rotate in and out of stock. The dried cranberries baked into each crunchy square gives a delicious tartness balancing out the subtle sweetness of the pumpkin dough, and the golden flax and sunflower seeds complement the textures and flavors well. If you're putting together a charcuterie plate these crackers, with their complex combination of flavors and colors will make you want to violate the old rule to not overshadow your meat and cheese selections, even though they save you having to add dried fruit and nuts yourself.

Soft cheeses and cream cheese-based dips are good additions, but honestly the Pumpkin Cranberry crisps stand incredibly well on their own owing to just how much is going on inside them. They're still a pretty dense cracker meaning that while they're flavorful to eat alone out of the box, and they're classy and adult enough that doing so won't make you look like you're having a depression meal, you'll definitely feel the weight in your stomach if you go through the better part of a box in one sitting.

Get ready. When fall rolls back around Trader Joe's Cornbread Crisps will fly off the shelves as soon as they land. Customers love these things, and even the reduction of their availability to the late-summer-to-early-autumn months prompted one Trader Joe's shopper on Twitter to cheekily demand that the entire brand be sent to jail, with a friend echoing that the limitation in supply was "a hate crime." As the bag says, they're sweet and salty and do in fact taste like cornbread, with Trader Joe's website attesting that they're made by baking actual cornbread, then cutting, flattening, and re-baking it into the golden squares, finishing each bag with the kettle corn-evoking stripes on top.

Do they pair well with dips and spreads? Yes they do. Do they crumble well into soups? Yep. Are they good enough to eat an entire bag just on their own? Friend, you're going to have a hard time stopping yourself from doing just that. The Cornbread Crisps do have a slight oiliness that will make them sit heavier in the stomach, though, so bear that in mind before you tuck into a whole bag. Maybe bring a friend to cut the dose while sharing the love.