VacationSelector

Chicago or Tallinn?

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, 2 points apart

Chicago
56
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Tallinn
54
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

ChicagoTallinn
Beaches & swimming. Tallinn leads by 1 points.1
ChicagoTallinn
Score5354
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1218
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 19 points.19
ChicagoTallinn
Score8162
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147481
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3739
Museums & heritage. Tallinn leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoTallinn
Score4662
Museums within 10 km4571
Museums within 2 km of centre2057
Share of museums within 2 km %4480
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoTallinn
Score6246
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123462
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728370
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6580
Nightclubs within 4 km5143
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoTallinn
Score3831
Protected land share 50 km %62
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10053
Park area within 2 km118 hectares89 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoTallinn
Score5551
Tourist attractions within 2 km1820
Park area within 2 km118 hectares89 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoTallinn
Score7062
Notable places within 2 km217135
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tallinn leads by 27 points.27
ChicagoTallinn
Score4370
Price level global10062.4
Daily budget€143
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoTallinn
Score5748
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C-1.2 °C to 22.3 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm34 mm to 83 mm
Dry months04
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
Tallinn
-1
-1
3
10
15
19
22
21
16
10
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Tallinn
2
1
1
2
6
12
16
17
15
11
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Tallinn
56
40
38
34
38
66
82
80
57
83
64
57
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tallinn
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Tallinn
1
2
5
7
10
10
10
8
5
3
1
1

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). Tallinn: 1991-2020 normals, Tallin / Harku (10.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoTallinn
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
HelsinkiHEL
9 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
45 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
9 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 10 m
€187-223
ORD · 25 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
TLL · 6 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

MeasureChicagoTallinn
Official languageEstonian
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 m28 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsLennart Meri Tallinn Airport (TLL)6 km from centre64 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoTallinn
City population2,746,388457,572
People per km²4,5292,871
Museums within 10 km4315
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8763
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 Tallinn 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.