VacationSelector

Alicante or Chicago?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Alicante
56
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Chicago
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AlicanteChicago
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 24 points.24
AlicanteChicago
Score7753
Swim season months51
Beaches 10 km3312
Coast distance1 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 15 points.15
AlicanteChicago
Score6681
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8672,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3137
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteChicago
Score4246
Museums within 10 km1445
Museums within 2 km of centre1120
Share of museums within 2 km %7944
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
AlicanteChicago
Score5162
Drinking venues within 4 km5911,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8365
Nightclubs within 4 km5451
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 2 points.2
AlicanteChicago
Score4038
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %59100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteChicago
Score4255
Tourist attractions within 2 km1318
Park area within 2 km60 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 44 points.44
AlicanteChicago
Score2670
Notable places within 2 km18217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 28 points.28
AlicanteChicago
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 30 points.30
AlicanteChicago
Score8757
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months110
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Chicago
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteChicago
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
3 h 20 m
€88-91
ALC · 10 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
DublinDUB
2 h 45 m
€98-122
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAlicanteChicago
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation3 m179 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteChicago
City population366,2212,746,388
People per km²1,8194,529
Museums within 10 km843
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5287
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Chicago somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.