About This Site
Best Things to Do in Chicago is an independent editorial guide covering attractions, neighborhoods, itineraries and day trips, with 216 articles and 54 verified bookable picks for planning any visit.
Who Runs This Guide
This site is an editorial desk, not a personality. There is no named author, no byline and no claimed residency. The work behind every page is research and reporting: reading the operators' own listings, official venue sources and live public data, then writing plain comparisons from what those sources actually say. Nobody here claims to have taken the tours, walked the routes or eaten the meals. What you get is a desk that checks figures against the record and says so when a number cannot be confirmed.
How the Numbers Are Checked
Every rating, review count and duration shown here is the booking platform's own published figure, re-pulled single-locale at build so the numbers match one market. When two verification passes disagree on a figure, the page shows "on the listing" rather than guessing. The full record sits in research/tours-verify.json, and every number must already appear in research/chicago-facts-verified.md before it ships. The banned list in research/banned-facts.md is binding: nothing on it may be stated, approximated or implied anywhere on the site.
How This Site Earns
Bookings made through links on this site may earn the site a payment from the operator, at no extra cost to the reader. That is the entire business model. No tour pays for placement, no operator can buy a higher position, and the order of listings reflects the comparison itself. The full detail, including what earns what, is on the disclosure page.
How This Site Earns
No invented figures, ever. If a price, rating or review count cannot be read and confirmed, the page says so instead of filling the gap. Every rating and review total on this site comes straight from the live listing. No fake scarcity, no countdown pressure, no paid placement dressed up as a recommendation. The desk does not claim firsthand experience it does not have and does not invent distances, dates or crowd sizes. When something is unknown, it stays unknown.