VacationSelector

Chicago or Sofia?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Sofia
56
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.

ChicagoSofia
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoSofia
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance10,000 km214 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoSofia
Score8164
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3728
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoSofia
Score4657
Museums within 10 km4551
Museums within 2 km of centre2040
Share of museums within 2 km %4478
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoSofia
Score6261
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6563
Nightclubs within 4 km51102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoSofia
Score3851
Protected land share 50 km %612
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Chicago and Sofia are level on 55.
ChicagoSofia
Score5555
Tourist attractions within 2 km1820
Park area within 2 km118 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoSofia
Score7057
Notable places within 2 km217104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 56 points.56
ChicagoSofia
Score4399
Price level global10021.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoSofia
Score5764
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months03
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
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
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). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
9 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
12 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 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

MeasureChicagoSofia
Official languageBulgarian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m560 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoSofia
City population2,746,3881,213,134
People per km²4,5292,466
Museums within 10 km4342
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8751
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 Sofia 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.