VacationSelector

Chicago or Interlaken?

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 nightlife and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Interlaken
23
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

ChicagoInterlaken
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoInterlaken
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1212
Coast distance10,000 km713 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 52 points.52
ChicagoInterlaken
Score8129
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147118
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3717
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 23 points.23
ChicagoInterlaken
Score4623
Museums within 10 km455
Museums within 2 km of centre202
Share of museums within 2 km %4440
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 58 points.58
ChicagoInterlaken
Score624
Drinking venues within 4 km1,12342
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre72838
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6590
Nightclubs within 4 km513
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoInterlaken
Score3827
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares5 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 41 points.41
ChicagoInterlaken
Score5514
Tourist attractions within 2 km1811
Park area within 2 km118 hectares5 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 48 points.48
ChicagoInterlaken
Score7022
Notable places within 2 km21714
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoInterlaken
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Chicago and Interlaken are level on 57.
ChicagoInterlaken
Score5757
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C2.8 °C to 23.6 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm34 mm to 68 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
Interlaken
3
5
9
15
17
22
24
23
18
14
7
4
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Interlaken
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Interlaken
53
41
37
34
52
48
62
61
38
43
51
68
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Interlaken
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
9
9

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). Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoInterlaken
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 100 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 100 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 100 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 100 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
MXP · 135 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 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

MeasureChicagoInterlaken
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m571 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoInterlaken
City population2,746,3886,123
People per km²4,5291,424
Museums within 10 km433
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
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 Interlaken 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.