How long is the car ride from Chicago to Arizona?

The driving time from Chicago, Illinois to Arizona (AZ) is:

25 hours, 47 minutes

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Average driving speed: 66.4 mph
Kilometers per hour: 106.9 km/h
This is based on typical traffic conditions for this route.

Map of driving directions from Chicago, IL to Arizona

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest.

More trip calculations

How long is the drive from Chicago, IL to Arizona? The total driving time is 25 hours, 47 minutes.

Your trip begins in Chicago, Illinois. It ends in the state of Arizona.

If you're planning a road trip, you might be interested in seeing the total driving distance from Chicago, IL to Arizona.

You can also calculate the cost to drive from Chicago, IL to Arizona based on current local gas prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

Since this is a long drive, you might want to stop halfway and stay overnight in a hotel. You can find the city that is halfway between Chicago, IL and Arizona.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the flight time from Chicago, IL to Arizona.

Driving time calculator

Travelmath helps you find the driving time based on actual directions for your road trip. You can find out how long it will take to drive between any two cities, airports, states, countries, or zip codes. This can also help you plan the best route to travel to your destination. Compare the results with the flight time calculator to see how much longer it might take to drive the distance instead of flying. You can also print out pages with a travel map.

The driving time from Chicago, Illinois to Phoenix, Arizona is:

25 hours, 48 minutes

Average driving speed: 67.9 mph
Kilometers per hour: 109.3 km/h
This is based on typical traffic conditions for this route.

Plan your road trip at

Map of driving directions from Chicago, IL to Phoenix, AZ

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest. You can use DriveDistance.com to find out how far is it to drive from Chicago to Phoenix with full directions.

More trip calculations

How long is the drive from Chicago, IL to Phoenix, AZ? The total driving time is 25 hours, 48 minutes.

Your trip begins in Chicago, Illinois. It ends in Phoenix, Arizona.

If you're planning a road trip, you might be interested in seeing the total driving distance from Chicago, IL to Phoenix, AZ.

You can also calculate the cost to drive from Chicago, IL to Phoenix, AZ based on current local gas prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

Since this is a long drive, you might want to stop halfway and stay overnight in a hotel. You can find the city that is halfway between Chicago, IL and Phoenix, AZ.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the flight time from Chicago, IL to Phoenix, AZ.

Driving time calculator

Driving non-stop from Chicago to Arizona

How far is Arizona from Chicago? Here's the quick answer if you have friends taking shifts as driver so that you can make the entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 1,713 miles or 2757 km

Driving time: 25 hours, 47 minutes

This is a really long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would actually take, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would be if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from Chicago to Arizona

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Chicago, Illinois and Arizona (AZ). Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula. For a long distance, this appears as a curve on the map, and this is often the route that commercial airlines will take so it's a good estimate of the frequent flyer miles you'll accumulate as well.

Flight distance: 1,409 miles or 2267 km

Flight time: 3 hours, 13 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 304 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.2x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/7th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a medium length flight, so unless you have a nice private jet, you might be booking a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.

Chicago to Arizona road trip

Realistically, you're not going to want to drive without stopping all the way from Chicago to Arizona, especially if you're the main driver. So let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Arizona, and you need to stop along the way to rest. Plus if it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and find a hotel to stay overnight. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Based on the length of this trip, we think you could spread out this fun road trip over a number of days.

Road trip: 4 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 30 hours on the road with 3 overnights

Itinerary

Start in Chicago.

Drive for about 3.5 hours, then stop in Springfield (Illinois) and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 5.5 hours then stop in Branson. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 5 hours, then stop in Oklahoma City and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 2 hours then stop in Elk City. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 2.5 hours, then stop in Amarillo and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 4 hours then stop in Albuquerque. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 3.5 hours, then stop in Petrified Forest National Park and stay for about 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 4 hours and arrive at Arizona.

To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:

Chicago to Arizona airports and flights

In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)

Arrival airport: Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 47 minutes

Getting to your destination: 128 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from ORD to PHX on American Airlines and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 3 hours, 30 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Chicago to Arizona including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 8 hours

To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:

How far is it the other way?

The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Arizona to Chicago, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know Chicago, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Chicago!

How many days does it take to drive from Chicago to Arizona?

How long is the drive from Chicago, IL to Arizona? The total driving time is 25 hours, 47 minutes. Your trip begins in Chicago, Illinois.

How many days does it take to drive from Chicago to Phoenix?

The total driving time is 25 hours, 48 minutes.

How many days does it take to drive from Illinois to Arizona?

How long is the drive from Illinois to Arizona? The total driving time is 23 hours, 36 minutes.

How long is a road trip from Chicago to the Grand Canyon?

The 1700-mile trip from Chicago to The Grand Canyon takes 26 hours to complete, with two route options to choose from. Highlights along the way can include St Louis, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Coconino National Forest; or Omaha, Denver and Mesa Verde National Park.