VacationSelector

Chicago or San Sebastian?

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 places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
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.

ChicagoSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score5355
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km1210
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score8155
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3726
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score4639
Museums within 10 km4517
Museums within 2 km of centre207
Share of museums within 2 km %4441
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 22 points.22
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score6240
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6587
Nightclubs within 4 km5112
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score3856
Protected land share 50 km %611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km118 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 25 points.25
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score5530
Tourist attractions within 2 km185
Park area within 2 km118 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score7054
Notable places within 2 km21789
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 28 points.28
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoSan Sebastian
Score5758
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

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 Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
LisbonLIS
8 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 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 Sebastian
Official languageSpanish
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
Elevation179 m6 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoSan Sebastian
City population2,746,388189,866
People per km²4,5293,118
Museums within 10 km4314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre8745
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month2 months

Where else could you go?

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