VacationSelector

Brussels 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

Brussels
56
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

Chicago
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

BrusselsChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
BrusselsChicago
Score053
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km012
Coast distance56 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Brussels and Chicago are level on 81.
BrusselsChicago
Score8181
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7792,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4437
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 34 points.34
BrusselsChicago
Score8046
Museums within 10 km12045
Museums within 2 km of centre5920
Share of museums within 2 km %4944
Unesco sites within 50 km101
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 6 points.6
BrusselsChicago
Score6862
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4141,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6165
Nightclubs within 4 km8451
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
BrusselsChicago
Score3138
Protected land share 50 km %66
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Brussels leads by 1 points.1
BrusselsChicago
Score5655
Tourist attractions within 2 km2818
Park area within 2 km65 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 3 points.3
BrusselsChicago
Score7370
Notable places within 2 km254217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Brussels leads by 17 points.17
BrusselsChicago
Score6043
Price level global76.2100
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Brussels and Chicago are level on 57.
BrusselsChicago
Score5757
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Chicago
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsChicago
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
€421
BRU · 11 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€109-226
ORD · 25 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 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

MeasureBrusselsChicago
Official languageFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation70 m179 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsChicago
City population195,5462,746,388
People per km²5,9084,529
Museums within 10 km10543
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km101
Distinct cuisines in the centre10987
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 Brussels 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.