VacationSelector

Berlin or Chicago?

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

Your match

Berlin
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Chicago
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BerlinChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
BerlinChicago
Score053
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km1712
Coast distance142 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
BerlinChicago
Score7081
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1172,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3337
Museums & heritage. Berlin leads by 33 points.33
BerlinChicago
Score7946
Museums within 10 km20045
Museums within 2 km of centre8120
Share of museums within 2 km %4144
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Berlin leads by 14 points.14
BerlinChicago
Score7662
Drinking venues within 4 km2,1141,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre719728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3465
Nightclubs within 4 km13551
Nature & day trips. Berlin leads by 11 points.11
BerlinChicago
Score4938
Protected land share 50 km %206
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km141 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Berlin leads by 21 points.21
BerlinChicago
Score7655
Tourist attractions within 2 km5418
Park area within 2 km141 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Berlin leads by 14 points.14
BerlinChicago
Score8470
Notable places within 2 km486217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Berlin leads by 17 points.17
BerlinChicago
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Berlin leads by 3 points.3
BerlinChicago
Score6057
Monthly daytime high3.7 °C to 25 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall29 mm to 76 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months30
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
Berlin
4
6
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
8
4
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Berlin
No coastline within reach
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Berlin
49
44
39
29
52
53
76
53
47
39
42
45
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Berlin
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
Berlin
2
2
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
2
1
Chicago
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Berlin: 1991-2020 normals, Berlin / Alexanderplatz (0.9 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBerlinChicago
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-126
BER · 19 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€102-136
BER · 19 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 19 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€137-154
BER · 19 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€133-143
BER · 19 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
€178-321
BER · 19 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 25 m
€149-251
BER · 19 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
€159-242
BER · 19 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 15 m
€187-215
1 stop
BER · 19 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 10 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
14 h 25 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

MeasureBerlinChicago
Official languageGerman
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
Elevation34 m179 m
Main airportBerlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)19 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBerlinChicago
City population3,782,2022,746,388
People per km²4,2444,529
Museums within 10 km15843
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8687
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Berlin 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.