VacationSelector

Chicago or Marseille?

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 nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Marseille
57
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.

ChicagoMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoMarseille
Score5367
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km1264
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 6 points.6
ChicagoMarseille
Score8175
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3739
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoMarseille
Score4650
Museums within 10 km4533
Museums within 2 km of centre2023
Share of museums within 2 km %4470
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoMarseille
Score6248
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6583
Nightclubs within 4 km5130
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoMarseille
Score3837
Protected land share 50 km %615
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km118 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoMarseille
Score5544
Tourist attractions within 2 km1817
Park area within 2 km118 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 12 points.12
ChicagoMarseille
Score7058
Notable places within 2 km217111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Marseille leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoMarseille
Score4362
Price level global10073.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoMarseille
Score5775
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months06
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
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). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
LisbonLIS
8 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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

MeasureChicagoMarseille
Official languageFrench
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m0 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoMarseille
City population2,746,388886,040
People per km²4,5293,683
Museums within 10 km4327
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8793
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 Marseille 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.