VacationSelector

Chicago or Lisbon?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Chicago
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
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.

ChicagoLisbon
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoLisbon
Score5357
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1224
Coast distance10,000 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoLisbon
Score8180
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1472,496
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3731
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoLisbon
Score4670
Museums within 10 km45124
Museums within 2 km of centre2054
Share of museums within 2 km %4444
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoLisbon
Score6265
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,225
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728956
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6578
Nightclubs within 4 km5165
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoLisbon
Score3856
Protected land share 50 km %611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10054
Park area within 2 km118 hectares77 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoLisbon
Score5569
Tourist attractions within 2 km1882
Park area within 2 km118 hectares77 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoLisbon
Score7066
Notable places within 2 km217169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 31 points.31
ChicagoLisbon
Score4374
Price level global10055.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoLisbon
Score5778
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C14.9 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm3 mm to 121 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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5

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). Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoLisbon
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
7 h 25 m
€480-569
2 stops
LIS · 7 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 0 m
€744-1049
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
6 h 40 m
€649-673
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
Abu DhabiAUH
14 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 7 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

MeasureChicagoLisbon
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m100 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoLisbon
City population2,746,388545,796
People per km²4,5295,453
Museums within 10 km4378
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre87106
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 Lisbon 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.