VacationSelector

Chicago or Ottawa?

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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

ChicagoOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoOttawa
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km129
Coast distance10,000 km423 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoOttawa
Score8164
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3734
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoOttawa
Score4632
Museums within 10 km4515
Museums within 2 km of centre208
Share of museums within 2 km %4453
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoOttawa
Score6244
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6570
Nightclubs within 4 km5135
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoOttawa
Score3841
Protected land share 50 km %68
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoOttawa
Score5546
Tourist attractions within 2 km1811
Park area within 2 km118 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoOttawa
Score7050
Notable places within 2 km21771
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoOttawa
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoOttawa
Score5753
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9

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). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoOttawa
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
3 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CalgaryYYC
3 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
2 h 35 m
€161-221
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
Fort LauderdaleFLL, FXE
2 h 55 m
€158-258
ORD · 25 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureChicagoOttawa
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation179 m70 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoOttawa
City population2,746,3881,017,449
People per km²4,529366
Museums within 10 km4320
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8762
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 Ottawa 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.