The prices behind this site, as free JSON and as an MCP server your AI assistant can query directly. Every figure is read from the same collection the pages are built from — 55,046 restaurants across 10 chains, re-priced weekly from each chain’s own ordering system. The current national Big Mac median is $6.19 across 12,231 restaurants.
Static files, refreshed with every collection round. No key, no signup. Each file states when it was generated, the date its data runs through, and its source.
| Endpoint | What it holds |
|---|---|
| GET /api/v1/chains.json | Every chain: flagship item, its national median and range, restaurants priced. |
| GET /api/v1/chains/<chain>.json | One chain in full: the flagship with per-state medians, plus item medians for the chain's most widely priced items. |
| GET /api/v1/big-mac-index.json | The Big Mac index: national median, range and extremes, and the median by state with each state against the national figure. |
| GET /api/v1/states.json | The state price index behind Fast Food Prices by State: every state ranked, with the flagship medians per state. |
| GET /api/v1/price-changes.json | The latest gated repricing events — the same events the price changes pages publish, never a menu restructure. |
Example — the head of /api/v1/big-mac-index.json:
{
"item": "Big Mac",
"chain": "mcdonalds",
"national": {
"median": 6.19,
"restaurants_priced": 12231
},
"source": "Fast Food Index \u2014 https://fastfoodindex.com"
}Remote MCP over streamable HTTP, read-only, no key:
https://api.fastfoodindex.com/mcp
For an MCP client that takes a server config (Claude Desktop, Claude Code and the other major clients all do):
{
"mcpServers": {
"fast-food-index": {
"url": "https://api.fastfoodindex.com/mcp"
}
}
}| Tool | Returns |
|---|---|
| get_big_mac_index | National + per-state Big Mac medians. |
| get_chain_overview | Every chain's flagship median and restaurant count. |
| get_item_price | One item at one chain: median, range, store count, cheapest and priciest states. |
| get_state_prices | One state: its index position and flagship medians. |
| get_price_changes | The latest verified price moves. |
| search_items | Find priced items by name across all chains. |
Use the data freely — in stories, research, apps and models — with a citation to the source: Fast Food Index (fastfoodindex.com), and a link where the medium allows one. Every API file and every MCP response carries the source line so the citation is never far from the number. That citation is the whole business model: the data stays free, and the credit is how it keeps being collected.
Prices are collected weekly and the snapshots are republished with each round; every file’s data_through says exactly how current it is. The narrative version of this data is the Fast Food Price Statistics report; the product tiers live on the data page.