VacationSelector

Chicago or Warsaw?

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 beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Warsaw
✓ Best match
60
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.

ChicagoWarsaw
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoWarsaw
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1226
Coast distance10,000 km238 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoWarsaw
Score8172
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,222
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3734
Museums & heritage. Warsaw leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoWarsaw
Score4663
Museums within 10 km45107
Museums within 2 km of centre2060
Share of museums within 2 km %4456
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago and Warsaw are level on 62.
ChicagoWarsaw
Score6262
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,005
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728648
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6564
Nightclubs within 4 km51104
Nature & day trips. Warsaw leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoWarsaw
Score3855
Protected land share 50 km %627
Landscape blanket share 50 km %019
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares107 hectares
Good for families. Warsaw leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoWarsaw
Score5570
Tourist attractions within 2 km1842
Park area within 2 km118 hectares107 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km25
Sights concentration. Warsaw leads by 6 points.6
ChicagoWarsaw
Score7076
Notable places within 2 km217299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Warsaw leads by 36 points.36
ChicagoWarsaw
Score4379
Price level global10049
Daily budget€133
Year-round weather. Warsaw leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoWarsaw
Score5759
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C0.9 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm29 mm to 83 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
Warsaw
1
3
7
15
20
23
25
25
19
13
7
2
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Warsaw
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Warsaw
31
29
29
36
56
63
83
63
50
40
36
37
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Warsaw
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Warsaw
1
2
5
8
9
11
11
10
8
5
2
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). Warsaw: 1991-2020 normals, Warszawa-Okecie (7.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoWarsaw
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 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

MeasureChicagoWarsaw
Official languagePolish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m118 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsWarsaw Chopin Airport (WAW)8 km from centre170 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoWarsaw
City population2,746,3881,862,402
People per km²4,5293,601
Museums within 10 km43117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8776
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 Warsaw 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.