VacationSelector

Chicago or Lima?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Lima
55
match

Wins on value for money 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.

ChicagoLima
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoLima
Score5337
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km1212
Coast distance10,000 km6 km
Water distance1 km6 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 29 points.29
ChicagoLima
Score8152
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147796
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3714
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoLima
Score4664
Museums within 10 km4589
Museums within 2 km of centre2047
Share of museums within 2 km %4453
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoLima
Score6245
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123409
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728177
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6543
Nightclubs within 4 km5163
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoLima
Score3827
Protected land share 50 km %62
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10051
Park area within 2 km118 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Lima leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoLima
Score5556
Tourist attractions within 2 km1825
Park area within 2 km118 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoLima
Score7046
Notable places within 2 km21754
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 37 points.37
ChicagoLima
Score4380
Price level global10047.7
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 35 points.35
ChicagoLima
Score5792
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C18.6 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm0 mm to 1 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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4

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). Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoLima
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
5 h 40 m
€348-370
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
2 h 55 m
€134-218
ORD · 25 km
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
4 h 50 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
4 h 45 m
€282-372
LIM · 9 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

MeasureChicagoLima
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, Quechua
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Sol (PEN)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-5
Emergency number911111 or 911
Elevation179 m154 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoLima
City population2,746,3889,943,800
People per km²4,5293,721
Museums within 10 km4346
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre8733
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or Lima 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.