VacationSelector

Chicago or Sao Paulo?

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, level with your weighting

Chicago
56
match

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

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on value for money 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.

ChicagoSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance10,000 km51 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score8173
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3727
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score4643
Museums within 10 km4582
Museums within 2 km of centre2026
Share of museums within 2 km %4432
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 10 points.10
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score6272
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6551
Nightclubs within 4 km51118
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score3851
Protected land share 50 km %626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km118 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Chicago and Sao Paulo are level on 55.
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score5555
Tourist attractions within 2 km1838
Park area within 2 km118 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score7050
Notable places within 2 km21768
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 38 points.38
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score4381
Price level global10046.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoSao Paulo
Score5783
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months01
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

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). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoSao Paulo
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 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

MeasureChicagoSao Paulo
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation179 m760 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoSao Paulo
City population2,746,38811,451,999
People per km²4,5297,519
Museums within 10 km4390
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8759
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 Sao Paulo 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.