VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Chicago?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Chicago
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

AmsterdamChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamChicago
Score4053
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km3312
Coast distance24 km10,000 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamChicago
Score8381
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9572,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4437
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 34 points.34
AmsterdamChicago
Score8046
Museums within 10 km9845
Museums within 2 km of centre6920
Share of museums within 2 km %7044
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamChicago
Score7062
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5431,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7065
Nightclubs within 4 km11451
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 22 points.22
AmsterdamChicago
Score6038
Protected land share 50 km %216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamChicago
Score6855
Tourist attractions within 2 km7418
Park area within 2 km49 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamChicago
Score6870
Notable places within 2 km196217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamChicago
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Amsterdam and Chicago are level on 57.
AmsterdamChicago
Score5757
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months00
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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Chicago
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamChicago
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
8 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
DetroitDTW, DET, YIP
8 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
12 h 35 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

MeasureAmsterdamChicago
Official languageDutch
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 number112 or 911911
Elevation-2 m179 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamChicago
City population921,4682,746,388
People per km²4,2084,529
Museums within 10 km10143
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre9887
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam 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.