VacationSelector

Chicago or Helsinki?

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 places to eat and year-round weather with your weighting.

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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.

ChicagoHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoHelsinki
Score5360
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km12157
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 10 points.10
ChicagoHelsinki
Score8171
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3738
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoHelsinki
Score4649
Museums within 10 km4557
Museums within 2 km of centre2023
Share of museums within 2 km %4440
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 6 points.6
ChicagoHelsinki
Score6256
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6575
Nightclubs within 4 km5140
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoHelsinki
Score3842
Protected land share 50 km %63
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10053
Park area within 2 km118 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoHelsinki
Score5558
Tourist attractions within 2 km1820
Park area within 2 km118 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoHelsinki
Score7073
Notable places within 2 km217257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoHelsinki
Score4356
Price level global10081.6
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoHelsinki
Score5748
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm32 mm to 84 mm
Dry months03
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
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1

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). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoHelsinki
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
8 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
14 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 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

MeasureChicagoHelsinki
Official languageFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m17 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoHelsinki
City population2,746,388694,392
People per km²4,5293,239
Museums within 10 km4374
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8778
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 Helsinki 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.