VacationSelector

Chicago or San Jose?

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 beaches & swimming with your weighting.

San Jose
39
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.

Scoreboard

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

ChicagoSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 45 points.45
ChicagoSan Jose
Score538
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km121
Coast distance10,000 km14 km
Water distance1 km14 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 40 points.40
ChicagoSan Jose
Score8141
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3716
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoSan Jose
Score4626
Museums within 10 km4520
Museums within 2 km of centre209
Share of museums within 2 km %4445
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 31 points.31
ChicagoSan Jose
Score6231
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre72888
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6538
Nightclubs within 4 km5116
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 32 points.32
ChicagoSan Jose
Score3870
Protected land share 50 km %626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km118 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 22 points.22
ChicagoSan Jose
Score5533
Tourist attractions within 2 km182
Park area within 2 km118 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 56 points.56
ChicagoSan Jose
Score7014
Notable places within 2 km2179
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago and San Jose are level on 43.
ChicagoSan Jose
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 28 points.28
ChicagoSan Jose
Score5785
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoSan Jose
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 45 m
€109-226
ORD · 25 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoSan Jose
City population2,746,3881,013,240
People per km²4,5292,167
Museums within 10 km4319
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8730
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 Jose 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.