VacationSelector

Chicago or New Orleans?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

New Orleans
47
match

Wins on 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.

ChicagoNew Orleans
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score5339
Swim season months17
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance10,000 km21 km
Water distance1 km17 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score8161
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147803
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3725
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score4645
Museums within 10 km4542
Museums within 2 km of centre2030
Share of museums within 2 km %4471
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score6254
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123704
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728495
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6570
Nightclubs within 4 km5141
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score3825
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10089
Park area within 2 km118 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score5546
Tourist attractions within 2 km1822
Park area within 2 km118 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 30 points.30
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score7040
Notable places within 2 km21740
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago and New Orleans are level on 43.
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. New Orleans leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoNew Orleans
Score5768
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C17.1 °C to 33 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm94 mm to 194 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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10

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). New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoNew Orleans
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 45 m
€109-226
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€106-150
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
€113-184
ORD · 25 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 25 m
€124-260
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
CancunCUN
3 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 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

MeasureChicagoNew Orleans
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation179 m-2 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoNew Orleans
City population2,746,388383,997
People per km²4,529423
Museums within 10 km4316
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8739
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month7 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or New Orleans 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.