VacationSelector

Chicago or Munich?

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 beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Munich
57
match

Wins on good for families 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.

ChicagoMunich
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoMunich
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km126
Coast distance10,000 km579 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoMunich
Score8173
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,280
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3735
Museums & heritage. Munich leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoMunich
Score4661
Museums within 10 km4574
Museums within 2 km of centre2048
Share of museums within 2 km %4465
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Munich leads by 5 points.5
ChicagoMunich
Score6267
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,335
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728763
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6557
Nightclubs within 4 km51103
Nature & day trips. Munich leads by 10 points.10
ChicagoMunich
Score3848
Protected land share 50 km %617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares199 hectares
Good for families. Munich leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoMunich
Score5579
Tourist attractions within 2 km1880
Park area within 2 km118 hectares199 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoMunich
Score7068
Notable places within 2 km217196
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Munich leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoMunich
Score4360
Price level global10075.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoMunich
Score5756
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C4 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm46 mm to 121 mm
Dry months00
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
Munich
4
6
10
15
19
23
25
25
20
15
8
5
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Munich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Munich
52
46
61
56
107
121
119
117
78
67
58
59
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Munich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Munich
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
2
2

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). Munich: 1991-2020 normals, München (1.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoMunich
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€116-210
MUC · 29 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 29 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 0 m
€177-210
MUC · 29 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€127-141
MUC · 29 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 29 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 0 m
€292-332
MUC · 29 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
MUC · 29 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

MeasureChicagoMunich
Official languageGerman
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m519 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMunich Airport (MUC)29 km from centre208 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoMunich
City population2,746,3881,510,378
People per km²4,5294,861
Museums within 10 km4374
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8789
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 Munich 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.