The Overpriced McDonald's Breakfast Sandwich You Should Avoid Ordering

McDonald's is more than just a massively popular chain for burgers and fries — it also has one of the most well-known fast food breakfast services, with sandwiches at the center of the action. Over the years, the chain's breakfast service has taken many forms, including a sorely missed buffet, but even though competitor Jack in the Box introduced the fast food breakfast sandwich to the masses, McDonald's arguably made the concept iconic.

These days, if you manage to get to a McDonald's location before it stops serving breakfast (usually 10:30 or 11:00 a.m.), you can expect to find fare like hotcakes, hashbrowns and oatmeal alongside an extensive list of breakfast sandwiches, from the eggs Benedict-inspired Egg McMuffin to the sweet and savory Sausage McGriddles. To determine which ones are worth waking up for, Chowhound ranked every McDonald's breakfast sandwich from heavenly to heck no. Based on its disappointingly skewed price-to-value ratio, you should probably sleep on the Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel.

The Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel is one of McDonald's newer breakfast sandwiches, and it comes with a shockingly high price point for the normally value-centric chain. Perhaps that's to be expected given the meat's classification as "steak" rather than ground beef or sausage, but without a taste that absolutely wowed us, this one just didn't feel worth it.

While we were mostly unimpressed with McDonald's Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel sandwich, some fans are enamoured with it. Our low ranking was based on the high cost of the sandwich ($13 at our local franchise) and our opinion that it doesn't live up to the glory of some of the chain's classic — and much less expensive — sandwiches, like the iconic Egg McMuffin, (which is also its only breakfast sandwich to include a fresh-cracked egg). However, not everyone agrees.

McDonald's first introduced bagels to its breakfast menu in 1999 but phased them out entirely in 2020. In 2024, fans rejoiced when bagel sandwiches were once again on the menu at select McDonald's locations, and in 2025, the sandwiches became available countrywide. Also, when we say fans rejoiced, we're not kidding — there's even a Facebook group with over 25,000 members called "Where's my McDonald's Bagel?" that has been documenting this collective obsession with the fast food item for years.

Of McDonald's three bagel sandwich options, the Steak, Egg & Cheese is by far the most discussed and revered in the group, as well as on other platforms like Reddit and even celebrity chefs like Andrew Zimmern. The steak McDonald's uses for its breakfast patties is exclusive to the breakfast service and beloved by some for its big, juicy, garlicky flavor. Although we at Chowhound believe the Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel fails the "bang for your buck" test, clearly, it's a topic of much debate.