What a Vegan Chicken Sandwich Costs in 5 US Cities

Vegaholic reads restaurant menus from the restaurants' own websites and records the dishes, prices and vegan markings in one format. This piece uses menus read by our editors through Oct. 21, 2026. Of the 138 locations in our chicken sandwich catalog, 136 serve a chicken sandwich that is vegan as served, and 114 of those print a price.

For each location we took the price of its cheapest vegan chicken sandwich. We left out lines whose name has the word junior, jr, mini, lil, kid, slider or half, lines in a menu's kids' or sides section, and anything under $5. A city's figure is the median of those prices, and we only compare cities with at least five priced locations, which leaves 5. A chain with two locations in a city counts twice. Chicken burgers are counted here as chicken sandwiches, and some menus price a sandwich as a combo with a side; we did not separate either. Prices are menu prices before tax, tip and add-ons, and they change; each restaurant's page shows the date its menu was read.

Across the 114 priced locations the median cheapest chicken sandwich is $15.25, and those prices run from $9 to $27. The national median for the vegan burger in our companion piece is $15, from a larger sample of 274 locations.

In each line, the range runs from the cheapest location's cheapest sandwich to the dearest location's cheapest sandwich. The last figure is the median cheapest vegan burger in the same city, from our burger piece.

1. Seattle: $10.95 median across 7 locations, $10.95 to $17. Burger: about $16.

2. Washington, D.C.: $11 across 5, $11 to $23. Burger: $11.

3. Los Angeles: $16 across 7, $10.95 to $17.50. Burger: $13.50.

4. Philadelphia: $16 across 5, $11 to $18. Burger: $15.

5. Chicago: about $18.48 across 6, $12.49 to $23. Burger: $16.95.

Seattle has the cheapest vegan chicken sandwich and the biggest gap to its burger: about $5 less. Charlotte is about $1 less than its burger. In Philadelphia and Chicago the chicken sandwich costs about $1 to $1.50 more than the burger, in Los Angeles $2.50 more, and in Washington, D.C. the two have the same median on five locations each.

Washington, D.C. and Chicago have the widest spread, with their dearest location charging $23 against $11 and $12.49 at the cheapest. Seattle is the tightest, with $6.05 between its cheapest and dearest location.

These are menu prices, not what anyone paid. A location counts once however many sandwiches it sells, so a city with a cheap chain can look cheaper than its independents. With five to seven locations per city, one new menu can move a median, so read the cities as a ranking of the menus we have read rather than of the whole city. Cities with fewer than five priced locations are not shown, and we will add them as more menus are read.