VacationSelector

Chicago or Las Vegas?

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 beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Las Vegas
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

ChicagoLas Vegas
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance10,000 km372 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score8162
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147915
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3724
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 27 points.27
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score4619
Museums within 10 km4524
Museums within 2 km of centre204
Share of museums within 2 km %4417
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score6258
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123793
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728485
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6561
Nightclubs within 4 km5190
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 25 points.25
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score3863
Protected land share 50 km %650
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score5534
Tourist attractions within 2 km1819
Park area within 2 km118 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score7051
Notable places within 2 km21775
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago and Las Vegas are level on 43.
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Las Vegas leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoLas Vegas
Score5772
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C13.9 °C to 40.3 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm1 mm to 21 mm
Dry months012
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
Las Vegas
15
17
22
26
32
38
40
39
35
27
20
14
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10

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). Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoLas Vegas
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
4 h 55 m
€242-269
LAS · 4 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
San DiegoSAN, CLD
3 h 55 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€90-110
LAS · 4 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
Salt Lake CitySLC
3 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 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

MeasureChicagoLas Vegas
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation179 m610 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoLas Vegas
City population2,746,388641,903
People per km²4,5291,843
Museums within 10 km4321
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8749
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 Las Vegas 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. 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.