VacationSelector

Cardiff or Chicago?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money with your weighting.

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families 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.

CardiffChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
CardiffChicago
Score4653
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km812
Coast distance2 km10,000 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 21 points.21
CardiffChicago
Score6081
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5412,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3237
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
CardiffChicago
Score3946
Museums within 10 km6145
Museums within 2 km of centre620
Share of museums within 2 km %1044
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 14 points.14
CardiffChicago
Score4862
Drinking venues within 4 km5361,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7465
Nightclubs within 4 km3551
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 12 points.12
CardiffChicago
Score5038
Protected land share 50 km %186
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %68100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 23 points.23
CardiffChicago
Score3255
Tourist attractions within 2 km418
Park area within 2 km88 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 25 points.25
CardiffChicago
Score4570
Notable places within 2 km51217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffChicago
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 3 points.3
CardiffChicago
Score5457
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
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
Cardiff
2
3
4
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffChicago
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
CancunCUN
9 h 55 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
New DelhiDEL
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
14 h 50 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureCardiffChicago
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation41 m179 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffChicago
City population383,5362,746,388
People per km²2,7344,529
Museums within 10 km943
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5587
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 Cardiff 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). 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. 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.