VacationSelector

Chicago or Krakow?

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, 2 points apart

Chicago
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Krakow
58
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.

ChicagoKrakow
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoKrakow
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km129
Coast distance10,000 km456 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoKrakow
Score8168
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3730
Museums & heritage. Krakow leads by 29 points.29
ChicagoKrakow
Score4675
Museums within 10 km4584
Museums within 2 km of centre2069
Share of museums within 2 km %4482
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 5 points.5
ChicagoKrakow
Score6257
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123836
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728697
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6583
Nightclubs within 4 km5154
Nature & day trips. Krakow leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoKrakow
Score3846
Protected land share 50 km %614
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares79 hectares
Good for families. Krakow leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoKrakow
Score5574
Tourist attractions within 2 km1877
Park area within 2 km118 hectares79 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoKrakow
Score7068
Notable places within 2 km217198
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Krakow leads by 36 points.36
ChicagoKrakow
Score4379
Price level global10049
Daily budget€133
Year-round weather. Krakow leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoKrakow
Score5758
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C1.5 °C to 25.3 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm31 mm to 100 mm
Dry months04
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
Krakow
2
4
8
15
20
23
25
25
19
14
8
3
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Krakow
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Krakow
38
31
38
47
79
77
100
75
67
51
41
35
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Krakow
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8

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). Krakow: 1991-2020 normals, Krakow (10.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoKrakow
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
9 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
55 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
RomeFCO, CIA
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
KRK · 11 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

MeasureChicagoKrakow
Official languagePolish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m219 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsKraków John Paul II International Airport (KRK)11 km from centre133 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoKrakow
City population2,746,388804,237
People per km²4,5292,459
Museums within 10 km43114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre8768
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 Krakow 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.