Culver's Or Five Guys: Which Burger Reigns Supreme?

Burgers are a big business in the United States. According to IBISWorld data analysts, U.S.-based burger restaurants earned over $162 billion in 2023 alone. While McDonald's far outpaces its competitors in annual sales, several formerly regional chains are clawing their way to the top, including Culver's and Five Guys.

Culver's got its start in the small town of Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1984, while Five Guys came along two years later in Virginia. Since then, after expanding far beyond the Midwest, Culver's is hardly a regional chain anymore, boasting over 800 locations nationwide. Meanwhile, Five Guys has more than 1,800 locations around the world, and is so ingrained in the U.S. that a New York City speakeasy sits above the popular fast food restaurant. 

While the stories of these two chains are similar, the restaurants have unique takes on their most iconic menu items: burgers. I tried out two sandwiches from each chain to find out which burger reigns supreme. Read on to discover if your next burger should come from Culver's or Five Guys. 

Since the chain's earliest days, Culver's has featured a diverse menu, but ButterBurgers are the franchise's signature non-custard-based dish. Boasting fresh, never-frozen beef and a lightly buttered and toasted bun, the ButterBurger features crisped edges on every patty.

Customers can choose among five different burger styles, ranging from the Bacon Deluxe to the Mushroom & Swiss. Culver's also offers a Sourdough Melt and a Wisconsin Swiss Melt, which ditch the bun in favor of bread slices to create patty melts.

While Five Guys is known for its diverse topping menu, Culver's more than keeps pace. Topping choices for ButterBurgers include ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, bacon, mushrooms, and grilled or raw onions. Reflecting this chain's roots in dairy-loving Wisconsin, you can choose among three types of cheese: American, cheddar, or Swiss. 

All burgers can be ordered as a single, double, or triple — and instead of having your burger served on a bun, you can ask for the sourdough bread swap that's a must-try at Culver's. Whether you're in the mood for a classic Culver's Deluxe with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mayo, and sweet red onion, or would prefer to build your own ButterBurger, it's easy to order any kind of burger you're craving at Culver's. 

Five Guys has a pretty simple and straightforward burger menu. The options are the Hamburger, Cheeseburger, Bacon Burger, or Bacon Cheeseburger. The standard burger comes with two patties, while the "little" version of each burger has a single patty.

Toppings are the name of the game at Five Guys with 15 different options, and customers can choose as many as they want. In addition to burger standards like mayo, ketchup, and mustard, the chain offers hot sauce, barbecue sauce, and A.1. sauce. Relish, green peppers, grilled mushrooms, and jalapeños are more unique topping options, along with classics like lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and grilled or raw onions.

As something of a secret menu item, you can order a Five Guys grilled cheese burger, with the buns inverted and pressed on the grill to create a patty melt effect. Five Guys also offers bun-free burger options, such as lettuce wraps. If you're all about the buns, however, you'd better like them with sesame seeds, because that's the only style Five Guys offers. 

I started this burger-off with a classic double ButterBurger Cheese. (To anyone who doesn't like cheese or can't eat it, I apologize; just like Culver's, I'm from Wisconsin, so I'm required to consume cheese with every meal.) I chose ketchup, raw onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles for toppings.

The name ButterBurger comes from the buttered and lightly toasted bun, but the star of this sandwich is the beef. Thanks to Culver's utilizing something of a smash-burger patty technique, the edges of each patty are crispy, and bring a tremendous amount of flavor to each bite. Because these patties are also on the thinner side, a double from Culver's is not unreasonable in size.

While the beef and two pieces of cheese are the heart of this burger, the toppings hold their own. Culver's uses raw slices of red onion, which adds a nice pop of flavor, but can become overwhelming if you get to a particularly onion-heavy section. Shredded lettuce ensures some greens in every bite, but it can get a bit wilted under the burger's heat. The tomato is a take-it-or-leave-it topping, so feel free to skip it. However, the pickles are fantastic. Culver's opts for thick pickle slices that add a satisfying crunch and kick of acidity.

Bacon is a cheat code when it comes to food. Want to make something better? Add bacon. I ordered a single Culver's Bacon Deluxe, and swapped out the raw onions for grilled mushrooms and sautéed onions to join the burger's standard toppings of pickles, mayo, lettuce, and tomatoes.

The change from raw to grilled onions was a good one. The sharp taste of the onion mellowed out, and the flavor dispersed better across the burger. The mushrooms also added a subtle earthiness and good texture. 

Of course, the bacon was the star. Culver's bacon is relatively thick for a fast-food joint. My one complaint is that there could be more. In an ideal bacon-burger scenario, you're never forced to take a baconless bite ... but with only a few strips on this burger, such bites happened more than once. It's still a good burger, but given the amount of flavor provided by the beef patties, I'm not sure that bacon is a must-have on a Culver's burger. 

This is a big burger. With two patties, the Five Guys standard-sized burger is a beefy one. I again opted for ketchup, onion, lettuce, pickles, and tomatoes as my toppings. While Culver's has created a brand around their buttered bun, Five Guys veers towards a classic sesame-seed bun that's plenty tasty, but doesn't hold up quite as well as its Midwestern counterpart. 

What does work extremely well on this burger are the toppings. Whole lettuce leaves provide a crisp crunch, while chopped white onions offer a milder flavor than the red onions used by Culver's. I chose American cheese for both the Culver's and Five Guys burgers, so from a taste standpoint, that element was the same — but the beef is definitely different.

Both Culver's and Five Guys are fast food chains that never use frozen burger patties. Five Guys highlights this as one of the the chain's main attractions on its website, insisting that its restaurants are purposefully not even equipped with freezers. The fresh-ground beef patties offered at Five Guys are plenty juicy — but they don't quite stack up to the flavor-packed patties of Culver's.

So, if Culver's beef doesn't need bacon to elevate the flavor, what about Five Guys? This is a case where the bacon really does upgrade the burger. Five Guys doesn't skimp when it comes to adding bacon. While the strips are on the thinner side, they're plentiful, creating a consistent layer of flavor situated on the bottom bun.

As with the Culver's Bacon Deluxe, I filled this burger with grilled onions and mushrooms. Once again, the Five Guys onion strategy won out, with the chopped white onions adding a nice caramelized flavor.

However, like all Five Guys burgers, this is a messy one. Wrapped in foil and presented in a paper bag speckled with grease stains (a result of the Five Guys policy to provide extra-large portions of french fries), Five Guys burgers are best eaten immediately. Part of my top bun was saturated with meat juice by the time I unwrapped this burger. It still tasted good, but if you're not going to eat your burger immediately, Five Guys might not be the best call.

This was a difficult call to make, but in the end, Culver's triumphed over Five Guys for a few reasons. But first, let's tally up the points for Five Guys. The toppings are what this franchise is known for, and it's a well-earned reputation. The diced onions are a major step up from sliced red onions, and whole-leaf lettuce and plentiful bacon are enough to elevate a good burger to great. If you're a plain hamburger person, Five Guys is not for you — but if you like to test the limits of what can fit between two toasted sesame-seed buns, Five Guys is the right place for that.

Culver's major edge comes from their smashed, crispy patties. Beyond the added texture, this is beef with flavor permeating every ButterBurger bite. Additionally, while packaging may not seem like a major factor in fast food quality, the Culver's burger box allows the bun to avoid the inevitable grease and sauce permeation that the Five Guys foil pushes back into the burger's buns.

If we were including each chain's french fries or frozen treats as factors for this comparison, there might be a different outcome ... but that's an article for another day. When it comes to burgers and burgers alone, Culver's edges out Five Guys — but if you find yourself sitting down with either option on your plate, you're in for a great meal.

I ordered burgers from both Culver's and Five Guys online, and picked them up for my taste test. The restaurants were only a few blocks apart, so both were at the same level of freshness when I got them home, where I first photographed the food before getting down to sampling.

I initially took bites of each burger to get a sense of their overall cohesiveness, before partially deconstructing everything so that I could hone in on specific elements like buns, patties, and toppings. Once I sufficiently parsed out the individual pieces, I enjoyed all four burgers — along with some help from my wife, because that's a lot of food — the way I usually do: slathered in ketchup and some barbecue sauce.

My final evaluation was based on a combination of taste, texture, and appearance. Neither Culver's nor Five Guys was aware of my intention to write this review when preparing the food.