VacationSelector

Chicago or Galway?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Galway
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money 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.

ChicagoGalway
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoGalway
Score5351
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1213
Coast distance10,000 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 44 points.44
ChicagoGalway
Score8137
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3720
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoGalway
Score4620
Museums within 10 km455
Museums within 2 km of centre205
Share of museums within 2 km %44100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 36 points.36
ChicagoGalway
Score6226
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6583
Nightclubs within 4 km518
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoGalway
Score3855
Protected land share 50 km %6
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km118 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 30 points.30
ChicagoGalway
Score5525
Tourist attractions within 2 km185
Park area within 2 km118 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 48 points.48
ChicagoGalway
Score7022
Notable places within 2 km21714
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoGalway
Score4357
Price level global10080.2
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoGalway
Score5754
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoGalway
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
7 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
KrakowKRK
9 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
EdinburghEDI
7 h 40 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
NaplesNAP
10 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
NOC · 73 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

MeasureChicagoGalway
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 m25 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoGalway
City population2,746,38883,456
People per km²4,5291,563
Museums within 10 km434
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8725
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 Galway 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.