The Ultimate Ranking Of McDonald's Chicken Sandwiches

In December of 2019, McDonald's introduced a new kind of chicken sandwich — initially the chain called it the Crispy Chicken Sandwich, but has since has rebranded it to the McCrispy. It's available in four configurations: plain, Spicy, Deluxe, and Spicy Deluxe. Whereas each spicy version includes a topping called Spicy Pepper Sauce, the deluxe sandwiches replace a couple of pickle slices with lettuce and tomato. The model for each of these items is very apparently Chick-fil-A, which has offered four similar kinds of fried chicken sandwiches since well before the advent of the McCrispy. Of course, these four sandwiches join two longtime staples in the McChicken and its spicy variant, adding up to a total of six chicken sandwiches on the McDonald's menu.

To find out just how the McDonald's chicken sandwiches stack up against one another, I ordered all six of them from my nearest McDonald's and compared them in a single sitting. Based on this experience, the following is the ultimate ranking of every item on the McDonald's chicken sandwich menu, from worst to best.

Simply put, there wasn't really a single element I could say I enjoyed on my Deluxe McCrispy. First and foremost, the chicken patty itself was pretty decent, but more so than on any other McCrispy variant, its flavor was buried underneath an abundance of bland ingredients. Unsurprisingly, the McDonald's tomato slices were pretty unremarkable. But those, even, were nullified almost entirely by an excessive quantity of flavorless lettuce.

Amplifying its meh factor was a large quantity of mayo. On some bites, I could barely taste the mayo even though I could see plenty of it. Those cases meant I tasted lettuce more than anything else. Meanwhile, on certain bites there was so much mayo I could perceive it somewhat, but even then, McDonald's mayo just isn't tasty enough to serve as a sandwich's backbone. When I ranked the four best and four worst Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches, I thought the Chick-fil-A Deluxe Sandwich was subpar. The Deluxe McCrispy, then, is an inferior approximation of an already mediocre sandwich.

Differentiating the standard McCrispy from the Deluxe McCrispy is a lack of tomato slices, lettuce, and mayo. In their place are a couple of pickle slices, which actually benefit the standard McCrispy. McDonald's, surprisingly, doesn't use the sort of neon green pickle slices typical for fast food on its McCrispy sandwich. Rather, these pickles look a lot more cucumbery, and taste tangy without any sweetness.

The McCrispy chicken patty — much easier to taste without gobs of mayo and near-salads worth of shredded lettuce holding it back — is satisfyingly crispy and oily. A rich spice blend in its breading also benefits from the complementary pickle tang. Bolstering the sandwich's quality is the potato roll McDonald's uses as a bun. It's soft, buttery, and just sweet enough. While I enjoyed this sandwich, what holds it back from a higher spot in my ranking is the fact that it's ultimately just a slightly inferior replica of the signature sandwich that defined the success of the Chick-fil-A chain. In almost all cases, I'd rather order something McDonald's does uniquely well over something I can get made outright better at another fast food chain.

Compositionally, the McChicken falls in a sort of middle ground between the McCrispy and the Deluxe McCrispy. It consists of a standard McDonald's chicken patty, shredded lettuce, and mayo, all on a regular toasted bun. First of all, without having to deliver on the promise of a supposedly deluxe sandwich, the quantities of mayo and lettuce on my McChicken were much more reasonable than what was on my Deluxe McCrispy. They added moisture and crunch to the chicken rather than overpowering it.

With that said, I think the McChicken patty is just slightly inferior to the McCrispy patty in a vacuum. The latter is crunchier, oilier, and richer in flavor, whereas the former is softer and dominated by a simplistic black pepper flavor. For what it's worth, the McChicken is a fast food chicken sandwich that's not 100% chicken. Nevertheless, it tastes distinctly like McDonald's — a craving for a McChicken just couldn't be satisfied elsewhere. Based on this factor first and foremost, I would opt for a McChicken over either the McCrispy or Deluxe McCrispy 10 times out of 10. I felt that the McChicken, then, earned its spot as the best of the chain's non-spicy chicken sandwich offerings.

As is apparent at this point in my ranking, I found all three of the spicy McDonald's chicken sandwiches superior to their non-spicy siblings. At the tail end of the three spicy sandwiches — but still in the top half of my overall rankings — is the Hot 'n Spicy McChicken.

The sole factor that differentiates the Hot 'n Spicy McChicken from the regular McChicken is a seasoning blend in the chicken's breading. That seasoning blend is spicier than plenty of supposedly spicy fast food items. It shouldn't pose a challenge to most customers, but it's not negligible. Because the spice comes solely from the chicken's breading and not a sauce, it's a noticeably drier heat. That's ultimately a neutral quality, but it does help differentiate this item from the two spicy McCrispy sandwiches. Altogether, everything that makes the regular McChicken a distinctly McDonald's-flavored sandwich is present, bolstered by a bigger and better flavor.

I arbitrarily tried my Spicy Deluxe McCrispy after my Deluxe McCrispy. Knowing just how much the latter's excessively boring vegetables brought the latter down, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that those same vegetables helped the former.

While the two kinds of McChickens utilize distinct chicken patties, all four McCrispy items use the same kind of chicken patty. Each spicy version, rather, draws its hotness from a Spicy Pepper Sauce. In the case of the Spicy Deluxe McCrispy, that also means a lack of uninteresting mayo. Simply put, the Spicy Pepper Sauce is delicious — if it were available as a dipping sauce, it would handily earn a high spot on the list of every McDonald's dipping sauce ranked. It's spicier, even, than the Hot 'n Spicy McChicken patty, and rich and tangy in a way the McDonald's mayo just isn't. With such a bold sauce at its forefront, this sandwich's lettuce adds a pleasantly crunchy texture and its tomatoes give it some extra heft. Plus, the chicken still tastes good, and its buttery bun houses everything nicely. Rather than just approximate a Chick-fil-A classic, the huge flavor of the Spicy Pepper Sauce helps the Spicy Deluxe McCrispy earn its spot on the McDonald's menu with a sufficiently unique identity.

The McDonald's Spicy Pepper Sauce was awesome on my Spicy Deluxe McCrispy and it was still awesome on my baseline Spicy McCrispy. But overall, the simpler Spicy McCrispy was a better showcase for the sauce, making it the superior item of the two and the top dog of the McDonald's chicken sandwich menu.

First of all, a lack of shredded lettuce meant that this sandwich's spice was less impeded, making for the single spiciest of all my McDonald's chicken sandwiches. Also of note was how well its cucumbery pickle slices blended with its tangy, spicy sauce. Since those pickle slices are absent from the deluxe version, this advantage is unique to the standard Spicy McCrispy. Together, the relatively straightforward combination of oily chicken, buttery bread, sharp pickle, and peppery sauce added up to a seriously formidable fast food sandwich. It may take obvious cues from chicken sandwiches at competing chains, but there's enough on this sandwich that those chains don't do to justify its existence. Spice lovers, chicken sandwich fanatics, and those who broadly appreciate bold flavors in their fast food should consider making room for the Spicy McCrispy in their regular McDonald's order.

I ordered my six chicken sandwiches from the McDonald's location closest to me in the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada near Henderson. I picked them up in-restaurant and brought them all home. McDonald's had no indication these sandwiches were for the sake of an article ranking them and not just my own enjoyment.

To compare my six sandwiches, I tried all of them in one sitting. That meant I didn't finish any of them in their entirety, but I did have about half of each of them. First, I took exactly two bites from each sandwich, in a completely arbitrary order, and noted down my initial impressions. Then I went back to each sandwich and had another bite or two so I could both reevaluate my initial impressions and reassess my overall thoughts based on how they compared to the rest of the items. My ranking is based entirely on this experiment and not any past experience with McDonald's.