VacationSelector

Calgary or Chicago?

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

Your match

Calgary
38
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

CalgaryChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
CalgaryChicago
Score053
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km412
Coast distance649 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 15 points.15
CalgaryChicago
Score6681
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7492,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3637
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 37 points.37
CalgaryChicago
Score946
Museums within 10 km845
Museums within 2 km of centre320
Share of museums within 2 km %3844
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 18 points.18
CalgaryChicago
Score4462
Drinking venues within 4 km4651,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre343728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7465
Nightclubs within 4 km1951
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
CalgaryChicago
Score3638
Protected land share 50 km %46
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km142 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 14 points.14
CalgaryChicago
Score4155
Tourist attractions within 2 km318
Park area within 2 km142 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 31 points.31
CalgaryChicago
Score3970
Notable places within 2 km37217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Calgary leads by 11 points.11
CalgaryChicago
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Calgary and Chicago are level on 57.
CalgaryChicago
Score5757
Monthly daytime high-0.7 °C to 24.8 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 106 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months80
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
Calgary
0
-1
4
11
16
20
25
23
19
12
4
0
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Calgary
No coastline within reach
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Calgary
9
13
19
28
58
106
44
47
33
21
17
17
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Calgary
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Calgary: 1991-2020 normals, Calgary Int'l CS (8.2 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCalgaryChicago
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 50 m
€182-359
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
4 h 10 m
€170-221
YYC · 9 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
1 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
3 h 55 m
€250-272
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 55 m
€237-270
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€113-184
ORD · 25 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
4 h 0 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€124-260
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
9 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCalgaryChicago
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-7, UTC-6 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation1,045 m179 m
Main airportCalgary International Airport (YYC)9 km from centre106 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCalgaryChicago
City population1,306,7842,746,388
People per km²1,5834,529
Museums within 10 km1343
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre6787
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 Calgary 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. 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.