VacationSelector

Chicago or Como?

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

Your match

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on places to eat and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Como
34
match

Wins on value for money 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.

ChicagoComo
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoComo
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km128
Coast distance10,000 km156 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 56 points.56
ChicagoComo
Score8125
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147259
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km377
Museums & heritage. Chicago and Como are level on 46.
ChicagoComo
Score4646
Museums within 10 km459
Museums within 2 km of centre206
Share of museums within 2 km %4467
Unesco sites within 50 km18
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 38 points.38
ChicagoComo
Score6224
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123213
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728143
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6567
Nightclubs within 4 km511
Nature & day trips. Como leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoComo
Score3840
Protected land share 50 km %623
Landscape blanket share 50 km %05
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 40 points.40
ChicagoComo
Score5515
Tourist attractions within 2 km186
Park area within 2 km118 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 40 points.40
ChicagoComo
Score7030
Notable places within 2 km21722
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Como leads by 25 points.25
ChicagoComo
Score4368
Price level global10064.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Como leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoComo
Score5758
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C7.1 °C to 27.3 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm61 mm to 178 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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Como
7
9
14
17
21
25
27
27
22
17
12
8
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Como
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Como
69
61
76
138
178
172
158
158
168
150
167
80
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Como
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Como
4
5
6
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Como: 1991-2020 normals, Lugano (23 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoComo
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 34 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 34 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 34 km
BarcelonaBCN
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 34 km
RomeFCO, CIA
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 43 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 34 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
MXP · 34 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 34 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
MXP · 34 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 50 m
€1,114-1167
2 stops
MXP · 34 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

MeasureChicagoComo
Official languageItalian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m201 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)34 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoComo
City population2,746,38883,184
People per km²4,5292,242
Museums within 10 km439
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km18
Distinct cuisines in the centre8722
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 Chicago or Como 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.