Is O'Hare or Midway closer to your town? 18 suburbs and downtown, compared

Is O'Hare or Midway closer? Every town, in minutes

Each time is the drive from the center of the town, or the middle of the downtown neighborhood, to the airport terminals, without traffic and rounded to five minutes. They come from the same routing run as our town pages, so the numbers match what you see there.

Rush hour stretches every row, and not evenly: the Kennedy and the Stevenson both slow badly into and out of downtown on weekday afternoons. Treat a difference of five minutes as a tie and choose on the flight instead.

A few rows surprise people. Oak Brook is about 25 minutes from O'Hare and 30 from Midway, so it is close to both. Wheaton is a long drive to either, about 40 and 45. And Lincoln Park, on the North Side, is still a few minutes nearer to Midway than to O'Hare.

Where O'Hare wins: north, northwest and the near west

O'Hare sits on the city's northwest edge, where the Tri-State, the Jane Addams Tollway and the Kennedy meet, so most of the Chicago suburbs in this table are closer to it. The gap is widest from the northwest: Arlington Heights is about 25 minutes from O'Hare and 55 from Midway, and Barrington 35 against 60. From Schaumburg, our home base, it is 25 minutes against 50.

The North Shore leans the same way, though less sharply. Lake Forest and Highland Park are about 35 minutes from O'Hare and 50 or more from Midway. Evanston and Wilmette are about 30 from O'Hare and 40 from Midway. Closer in, Elmhurst (20 minutes) and Oak Brook (25) are short runs up I-294, and Wheaton is about 40 minutes from O'Hare, five fewer than to Midway.

Where Midway wins: downtown and the southwest suburbs

Midway is about 12 miles from the Loop, against about 17 for O'Hare, and the Stevenson Expressway runs almost straight from the airport to the edge of downtown. That is why every downtown row in the table favors Midway, by the widest margin in the West Loop (15 minutes against 35) and at McCormick Place. Even Lincoln Park, north of downtown, is about 25 minutes from Midway and 30 from O'Hare.

In the suburbs, Midway wins only in the southwest: Hinsdale and Burr Ridge are each about 25 minutes from Midway, against 30 and 35 from O'Hare. Naperville is the true tie, about 45 minutes from both, so a Naperville traveler should pick on fares and flight times alone. Our Midway to downtown Chicago page lists the drive to each downtown hotel area.

Staying downtown? What each airport means for the trip

Visitors booked into a Loop or River North hotel often assume O'Hare is the default because it is the bigger airport. On the drive alone, Midway is the better pick, and the gap matters most for a convention: exhibitors bound for McCormick Place save the most time by flying into Midway.

Both airports also have a train to the Loop. According to the CTA, the Blue Line from O'Hare takes about 40 to 45 minutes and the Orange Line from Midway about 25 to 30. For a traveler with a carry-on and a hotel near a station, either train is a sensible alternative to a car.

The cost of picking the farther airport is easy to measure from the table. From Barrington, flying out of Midway adds about 25 minutes each way over O'Hare; from Hinsdale, choosing O'Hare adds about 5. A cheaper fare is often worth five minutes and rarely worth half an hour at 6 a.m.

The airline often decides before the map does

Midway is Southwest's airport. Southwest carried about 91 percent of Midway's passengers in the year to May 2026, with Frontier, Delta, Volaris and Allegiant sharing most of the rest. If you fly Southwest out of Chicago, you are almost certainly flying from Midway, wherever you live.

O'Hare is a hub for both United and American. United flies mainly from Terminal 1 and American from Terminal 3, and Delta uses Terminal 5. That means far more nonstop destinations, and on a busy route the O'Hare flight may simply leave at a better time, which can be worth an extra 25 minutes in the car.

Frequent flyers have one more reason to stay with one airport: status, lounges and a home terminal they know. A traveler in Wheaton with United status will usually fly from O'Hare, and that is a perfectly good reason to ignore a five-minute difference in the drive.

• Flying Southwest: Midway, even from the North Shore.
• Flying United or American, or connecting overseas on them: O'Hare.
• A long-haul international flight: O'Hare, usually through Terminal 5.
• A tie on distance, as in Naperville: compare the fare and the departure time.

International trips: Terminal 5 at O'Hare, and Midway's Mexico flights

O'Hare's Terminal 5 holds the customs and border facilities and handles international arrivals that were not precleared abroad, as well as the foreign airlines that do not fly from Terminals 1 to 3. If someone is landing from Europe or Asia, they almost certainly come out at Terminal 5, so book the pickup for that terminal and allow time for customs.

Midway has international flights too, but they are mostly to Mexico, flown by Volaris and Southwest, with a few routes to the Caribbean such as Punta Cana and Montego Bay. Arrivals clear inspection in a facility on Concourse A. For a family trip to Cancún, Midway may well be the closer and simpler airport.

If you are meeting someone off an international flight, give the chauffeur the flight number rather than a time. Customs lines vary, and a tracked flight with meet & greet means someone is still waiting when the traveler finally comes through.

How to choose, in four steps

Distance is the tiebreaker, not the starting point. Start with the airline and the flight times, then use the table, then think about the hour. A 6 a.m. departure from Midway is an easy drive from almost anywhere; a 5 p.m. departure from O'Hare out of the southwest suburbs means the Tri-State at its worst.

Whichever airport you pick, the pickup works the same way with us: the flight is tracked, the first hour of waiting is free, and you choose curbside or meet & greet. The O'Hare limo service and Midway airport car service pages explain each airport's pickup points.

Think about the flight home as well. If you land late at night, a shorter drive to your door counts for more than it did on the way out, so a close call on the outbound leg can tip toward the airport nearer home.

1. Check which airport your airline actually flies from on your route.
2. If both do, compare the fares and departure times.
3. Use the table to see what the drive costs you in minutes.
4. Add rush-hour time if you travel on a weekday afternoon.