VacationSelector

Chicago or Faro?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather 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.

ChicagoFaro
Beaches & swimming. Faro leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoFaro
Score5361
Swim season months13
Beaches 10 km1213
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 37 points.37
ChicagoFaro
Score8144
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3722
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoFaro
Score4622
Museums within 10 km459
Museums within 2 km of centre208
Share of museums within 2 km %4489
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 41 points.41
ChicagoFaro
Score6221
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6586
Nightclubs within 4 km518
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoFaro
Score3857
Protected land share 50 km %611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10042
Park area within 2 km118 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoFaro
Score5536
Tourist attractions within 2 km1810
Park area within 2 km118 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 48 points.48
ChicagoFaro
Score7022
Notable places within 2 km21714
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 31 points.31
ChicagoFaro
Score4374
Price level global10055.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoFaro
Score5783
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months06
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

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). Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
7 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
8 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 0 m
€137-201
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
EdinburghEDI
7 h 40 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureChicagoFaro
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m10 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoFaro
City population2,746,38864,560
People per km²4,529319
Museums within 10 km432
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8734
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month3 months

Where else could you go?

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