VacationSelector

Chicago or Mexico City?

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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money 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.

ChicagoMexico City
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoMexico City
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km124
Coast distance10,000 km247 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoMexico City
Score8166
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1472,179
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3715
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
ChicagoMexico City
Score4679
Museums within 10 km45138
Museums within 2 km of centre2065
Share of museums within 2 km %4447
Unesco sites within 50 km16
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoMexico City
Score6278
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1232,156
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728926
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6543
Nightclubs within 4 km51198
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 25 points.25
ChicagoMexico City
Score3863
Protected land share 50 km %630
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 5 points.5
ChicagoMexico City
Score5550
Tourist attractions within 2 km1823
Park area within 2 km118 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoMexico City
Score7054
Notable places within 2 km21788
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
ChicagoMexico City
Score4376
Price level global10054.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
ChicagoMexico City
Score5790
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C22.2 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm3 mm to 186 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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7

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). Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoMexico City
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
CancunCUN
3 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
GuadalajaraGDL
3 h 55 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 25 m
€124-260
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 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

MeasureChicagoMexico City
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-6
Emergency number911911
Elevation179 m2,240 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoMexico City
City population2,746,3889,209,944
People per km²4,5296,202
Museums within 10 km43108
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km16
Distinct cuisines in the centre8750
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 Mexico City 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.