VacationSelector

Chicago or Dublin?

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, 1 point apart

Chicago
56
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Dublin
55
match

Wins on value for money 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.

ChicagoDublin
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoDublin
Score5349
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1211
Coast distance10,000 km3 km
Water distance1 km3 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoDublin
Score8170
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147920
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3737
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoDublin
Score4655
Museums within 10 km4547
Museums within 2 km of centre2037
Share of museums within 2 km %4479
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoDublin
Score6264
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,239
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728934
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6575
Nightclubs within 4 km5140
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 12 points.12
ChicagoDublin
Score3826
Protected land share 50 km %63
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10062
Park area within 2 km118 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoDublin
Score5554
Tourist attractions within 2 km1841
Park area within 2 km118 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoDublin
Score7062
Notable places within 2 km217141
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoDublin
Score4357
Price level global10080.2
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoDublin
Score5754
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C8.2 °C to 19.5 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm52 mm to 83 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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2

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). Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoDublin
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
6 h 20 m
€519-589
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
6 h 50 m
€449-527
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
CancunCUN
3 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 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

MeasureChicagoDublin
Official languageEnglish, Irish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m20 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoDublin
City population2,746,388592,713
People per km²4,5295,154
Museums within 10 km4340
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8774
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 monthNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or Dublin 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.