VacationSelector

Chicago or Tirana?

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 beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Tirana
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.

ChicagoTirana
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 36 points.36
ChicagoTirana
Score5317
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance10,000 km26 km
Water distance1 km26 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoTirana
Score8155
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3722
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoTirana
Score4625
Museums within 10 km4512
Museums within 2 km of centre208
Share of museums within 2 km %4467
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoTirana
Score6258
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6572
Nightclubs within 4 km5129
Nature & day trips. Tirana leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoTirana
Score3849
Protected land share 50 km %611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %10083
Park area within 2 km118 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoTirana
Score5552
Tourist attractions within 2 km1821
Park area within 2 km118 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoTirana
Score7053
Notable places within 2 km21783
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 41 points.41
ChicagoTirana
Score4384
Price level global10042.6
Daily budget€76
Year-round weather. Tirana leads by 10 points.10
ChicagoTirana
Score5767
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoTirana
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
9 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
12 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 40 m
€222-261
TIA · 13 km
AthensATH
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€73-127
TIA · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
8 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 35 m
€109-148
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€97-142
TIA · 13 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

MeasureChicagoTirana
Official languageAlbanian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Lek (ALL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m110 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoTirana
City population2,746,388389,323
People per km²4,5299,314
Museums within 10 km4311
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8746
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

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