VacationSelector

Chicago or Zadar?

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 places to eat and sights concentration with your weighting.

Zadar
47
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.

ChicagoZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoZadar
Score5373
Swim season months14
Beaches 10 km1249
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 56 points.56
ChicagoZadar
Score8125
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3711
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoZadar
Score4633
Museums within 10 km458
Museums within 2 km of centre208
Share of museums within 2 km %44100
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 37 points.37
ChicagoZadar
Score6225
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6572
Nightclubs within 4 km514
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoZadar
Score3855
Protected land share 50 km %612
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10047
Park area within 2 km118 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoZadar
Score5531
Tourist attractions within 2 km189
Park area within 2 km118 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 39 points.39
ChicagoZadar
Score7031
Notable places within 2 km21723
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 37 points.37
ChicagoZadar
Score4380
Price level global10048.5
Daily budget€138
Year-round weather. Zadar leads by 12 points.12
ChicagoZadar
Score5769
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months02
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9

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). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoZadar
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
MunichMUC
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
ViennaVIE
9 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
DublinDUB
7 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
HelsinkiHEL
9 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 0 m
€232-306
2 stops
SPU · 107 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

MeasureChicagoZadar
Official languageCroatian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m5 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoZadar
City population2,746,38870,779
People per km²4,529
Museums within 10 km431
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre8717
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month4 months

Where else could you go?

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