VacationSelector

Chicago or Montpellier?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
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.

ChicagoMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoMontpellier
Score5332
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km128
Coast distance10,000 km9 km
Water distance1 km9 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoMontpellier
Score8165
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3734
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoMontpellier
Score4626
Museums within 10 km4514
Museums within 2 km of centre203
Share of museums within 2 km %4421
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoMontpellier
Score6238
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6583
Nightclubs within 4 km5125
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 5 points.5
ChicagoMontpellier
Score3843
Protected land share 50 km %615
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km118 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoMontpellier
Score5544
Tourist attractions within 2 km188
Park area within 2 km118 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 32 points.32
ChicagoMontpellier
Score7038
Notable places within 2 km21735
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoMontpellier
Score4362
Price level global10073.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoMontpellier
Score5774
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months05
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
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). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
8 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
FNI · 46 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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 2026-09 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

MeasureChicagoMontpellier
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 m7 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoMontpellier
City population2,746,388310,240
People per km²4,5295,452
Museums within 10 km4314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre8765
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 Montpellier 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.