VacationSelector

Chicago or San Francisco?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Chicago
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

The verdict

Choose Chicago if you want the denser centre, with more notable places within walking distance and more park space close in, and if you want a lake warm enough to swim in, at 23°C in August.

Choose San Francisco if you want reliable conditions across most of the year, more protected land around the city for day trips, and a wider choice of beaches.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

ChicagoSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score5360
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1244
Coast distance10,000 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score8183
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1472,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3739
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score4644
Museums within 10 km4557
Museums within 2 km of centre2029
Share of museums within 2 km %4451
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 6 points.6
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score6268
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6565
Nightclubs within 4 km5197
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 22 points.22
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score3860
Protected land share 50 km %617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score5557
Tourist attractions within 2 km1848
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score7063
Notable places within 2 km217147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago and San Francisco are level on 43.
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoSan Francisco
Score5778
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
0255075100

Where they differ

Chicago has more notable places within walking distance of the centre, and about three times as much park space close in, so a day can be filled on foot. Its lake edges the centre and is warm enough to swim in at the height of summer.

San Francisco's advantage is steadiness and reach: highs of 14-23°C across the year against Chicago's 0-29°C, seven months with 40mm of rain or less, 17% protected land around the city against 6%, and 44 beaches against 12.

Where they are alike

Both cities put a similar number of restaurants near the centre, and the range of kitchens is comparable, so neither clearly wins on where to eat.

Museums are close too: San Francisco has somewhat more, while Chicago has 1 UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach. For families both hold up differently: San Francisco has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre, Chicago about three times the park space and 2 theme parks within reach against 1.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming matters, Chicago is the only one of the two with sea warm enough for it, at 23°C in August. San Francisco has far more beaches, 44 against 12, but the water stays at 12-14°C all year.

Anyone travelling on foot for a few days is better served by Chicago, where more notable places sit within walking distance of the centre and there is more park space close in.

For nights out and days spent outside the city, San Francisco: somewhat more places to drink, about twice as many nightclubs, most of them central, and more protected land within reach for day trips.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries no daily budget for either city, and the value rating is a national price level, so it is identical for the two by construction and tells you nothing about which trip costs more. Treat that axis as blank rather than as a tie.

No weather station near either city reports sunshine, so that side of the weather comparison is simply unmeasured; the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. And a large beach count is not a swimming season: San Francisco's water sits at 12-14°C year-round.

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
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
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). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Chicago's warm window is short. June to September brings highs of 25-29°C, and the lake reaches 23°C in August, the only swimmable sea either city offers. Expect 85-115mm of rain through it.

San Francisco is usable far longer, holding 20-23°C from April to October, and it is close to dry in high summer at 0-7mm a month where Chicago still gets around 100mm. Its rain comes in winter, 105mm in January, with highs near 14°C.

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
3 h 25 m
€182-307
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 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

MeasureChicagoSan Francisco
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation179 m16 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoSan Francisco
City population2,746,388873,965
People per km²4,5291,455
Museums within 10 km4350
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre87108
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 San Francisco 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.