VacationSelector

Chicago or Rotterdam?

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, 2 points apart

Chicago
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

ChicagoRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoRotterdam
Score5337
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1222
Coast distance10,000 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoRotterdam
Score8172
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3746
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoRotterdam
Score4660
Museums within 10 km4541
Museums within 2 km of centre2020
Share of museums within 2 km %4449
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoRotterdam
Score6249
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6570
Nightclubs within 4 km5140
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoRotterdam
Score3842
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km118 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoRotterdam
Score5562
Tourist attractions within 2 km1827
Park area within 2 km118 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km28
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoRotterdam
Score7051
Notable places within 2 km21774
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoRotterdam
Score4358
Price level global10079.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoRotterdam
Score5756
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
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). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
7 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
8 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CuracaoCUR
5 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureChicagoRotterdam
Official languageDutch
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 or 911
Elevation179 m10 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoRotterdam
City population2,746,388664,311
People per km²4,5292,080
Museums within 10 km4340
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre8777
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 monthNone

Where else could you go?

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