VacationSelector

Chicago or Valletta?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Chicago
56
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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.

ChicagoValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoValletta
Score5377
Swim season months16
Beaches 10 km1222
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 23 points.23
ChicagoValletta
Score8158
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3735
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoValletta
Score4661
Museums within 10 km4546
Museums within 2 km of centre2029
Share of museums within 2 km %4463
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoValletta
Score6247
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6548
Nightclubs within 4 km5127
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoValletta
Score3846
Protected land share 50 km %6
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %1006
Park area within 2 km118 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoValletta
Score5546
Tourist attractions within 2 km1832
Park area within 2 km118 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoValletta
Score7061
Notable places within 2 km217133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoValletta
Score4369
Price level global10062.8
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 22 points.22
ChicagoValletta
Score5779
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 50 m
€83-115
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ViennaVIE
9 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 15 m
€111-180
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 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

MeasureChicagoValletta
Official languageEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m56 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoValletta
City population2,746,3886,444
People per km²4,5298,055
Museums within 10 km4315
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre8755
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month6 months

Where else could you go?

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