Hawaii is the most expensive state for fast food. Oklahoma is the cheapest.
Order the same fast food in Hawaii and Oklahoma and the two bills are not close: Hawaii's prices run about 1.38 times Oklahoma's. Fast Food Index compared one identical basket of core items across 53,289 restaurants and 13,420,895 current prices to find out how far apart American fast food prices really are by state.
Hawaii pays 31.3% more
than the national typical price for the same fast food order. Oklahoma pays the least, 4.8% under. The full state-by-state ranking is on the fast food prices by state page.
The extremes
Rank
State
Typical prices vs. the national typical
1
Hawaii
31.3% above
2
Alaska
20.4% above
3
California
14.7% above
4
Washington
11.9% above
5
Oregon
10.4% above
…
51
Oklahoma
4.8% below
50
Texas
2.7% below
49
Alabama
2.6% below
48
West Virginia
2.2% below
47
Louisiana
1.8% below
Percentages computed from prices as of November 5, 2026. A state at 0% would sit exactly on the national typical for the same basket; the method is below.
It is not just the basket
The basket smooths thousands of prices into one number per state, but single items tell the same story. The typical Big Mac in Alaska costs $7.85 across the 19 Alaskan McDonald's that price it; in Texas, the state with the most data behind it, the typical Big Mac is $5.19 across 1,072 stores. The national typical is $6.09. Island and remote states pay for freight and thin competition; dense, lower-cost states like Oklahoma and Texas sit at the other end.
Explore the full ranking, the map, and the per-state numbers on the fast food prices by state page, or check a chain's prices near you on the price map.
How this was computed. The basket is every menu item priced at 100 or more restaurants nationally — 3,192 items across the ten chains. Read every percentage on this page the same way: how far a state's typical price for the basket sits above or below the national typical price for the same basket. For each item a state prices at three or more stores, the state's typical price is set against the national typical; the state's percentage is the average of those gaps, with extreme gaps pulled in so a handful of placeholder or airport listings cannot steer a state. Hawaii's percentage rests on 2298 of the 3,192 items across 192 restaurants; Oklahoma's on 2779 across 649. Prices are read from each chain's own ordering system and refreshed weekly; the basket behind this story holds 13,420,895 current prices. One caution for quoting the Big Mac figures: McDonald's lists the sandwich two ways in its ordering data, as the sandwich and as a lower-priced deal add-on. The figures above use the sandwich listing only — a median pooled over both listings understates the sandwich price.
Citing this data: Source: Fast Food Index, prices checked November 5, 2026. You are welcome to quote any figure on this page.