Chicago (ORD) TSA wait times
Chicago O'Hare International Airport schedules 990 departures on an average day, and pushes up to 77 of them in a single hour. The checkpoint feels that: expect roughly 25 to 50 minutes in the standard lanes at the Sunday 7 am peak, and closer to 6 minutes at Tuesday 9 pm.
Security now Measured
41min
Checked 19:24 UTC, live from the airport's checkpoint sensors.
Down 5 min since 8 am.
Standard line. It usually runs 15 to 35 minutes at this hour on a Monday.
The worst it gets at ORD is about 34 min, Sunday at 7 am. The quietest useful hour is Tuesday at 9 pm, about 6 min.
Tell us your flight below and we will work out when to leave.
A typical Monday.
That 41 is the standard line
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Standard 41minthe default
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PreCheck 14minsaves 27
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CLEAR 11minsaves 30
When should you leave?
Worked from the wait actually running at this checkpoint at the hour you will be here, not a fixed buffer.
Example. For a 6:00 PM domestic flight today, leave home about 4:15 PM. That is 30 min driving, 18 min to park, about 27 min at security when you reach it around 5:03 PM, 15 min to walk to the gate and 15 min spare before boarding: 105 minutes door to gate. Change any of it below for your own flight.
Enter your flight details above to work out your exact departure time.
Leave home by
Trip timeline
Kept on this device, so it is waiting for you next time.
Which security line?
The three ways through the checkpoint at this airport, what each is running right now, and what the faster ones save you.
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Standard 41min
Open to everyone. Usually 30 to 55.
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PreCheck 14min
Saves 27 min. TSA pre-approved travellers. Usually 10 to 20.
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CLEAR 11min
Saves 30 min. Biometric check, then to the front. Usually 10 to 15.
PreCheck and CLEAR are separate programmes. PreCheck is a lighter screening you qualify for; CLEAR verifies who you are and walks you to the front of whichever line you are already entitled to use.
Another airport nearby?
Airports within driving distance of ORD, and the worst each one gets in its own busiest hour.
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Chicago (MDW) 19min peak
8 miles away. 210 flights a day.
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Rockford (RFD) 9min peak
31 miles away. 3 flights a day.
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Milwaukee (MKE) 19min peak
33 miles away. 82 flights a day.
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South Bend (SBN) 9min peak
42 miles away. 22 flights a day.
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Madison (MSN) 13min peak
54 miles away. 36 flights a day.
Airlines at ORD
Which airline you are flying decides your terminal and checkpoint. This is the share of ORD's departures each one runs, from the published schedule.
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United 28%
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SkyWest regional 23%
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American 18%
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Envoy Air regional 16%
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Republic Airways regional 9%
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Delta 3%
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Southwest 1%
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Frontier 1%
Regional carriers (SkyWest, Envoy, PSA, Republic) fly these routes under the mainline brands, so a SkyWest flight shows on your ticket as Delta, United, American or Alaska.
For the terminal your gate is in, check your airline's boarding pass or the airport's official map. We do not model terminal-by-terminal waits yet, and we will not guess at them.
Is another time better?
The checkpoint is busiest around 7 am today, at about 34 min. Fill in your flight above to see where your own trip lands.
The dark bar is now.
Busiest hours at ORD
Every block is one hour of one weekday at ORD, shaded by how much of the airport's own peak load the checkpoint is carrying. This is the measured half of the page: it comes from the published flight schedule, not from an estimate.
| Day | 12a | 1a | 2a | 3a | 4a | 5a | 6a | 7a | 8a | 9a | 10a | 11a | 12p | 1p | 2p | 3p | 4p | 5p | 6p | 7p | 8p | 9p | 10p | 11p |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Tue | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Sat |
Darker means a heavier checkpoint load. Built from 92,026 scheduled departures from ORD across three months of federal on-time records.
Hour by hour, Monday
| Hour | Departures | Standard | PreCheck |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 am | 1 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 3 am | 8 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 4 am | 25 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| 5 am | 51 | 15–30 min | 7 min |
| 6 am | 73 | 20–45 min | 11 min |
| 7 am | 76 | 25–50 min | 12 min |
| 8 am | 69 | 20–40 min | 10 min |
| 9 am | 62 | 20–35 min | 9 min |
| 10 am | 57 | 15–35 min | 8 min |
| 11 am | 59 | 15–35 min | 8 min |
| noon | 63 | 20–35 min | 9 min |
| 1 pm | 63 | 20–35 min | 9 min |
| 2 pm | 59 | 15–35 min | 8 min |
| 3 pm | 60 | 15–35 min | 8 min |
| 4 pm | 60 | 15–35 min | 9 min |
| 5 pm | 66 | 20–40 min | 10 min |
| 6 pm | 65 | 20–40 min | 9 min |
| 7 pm | 55 | 15–30 min | 8 min |
| 8 pm | 37 | 10–20 min | 5 min |
| 9 pm | 18 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 10 pm | 4 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 11 pm | 1 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
Questions people ask about ORD
How early should I get to ORD?
For a domestic flight out of Chicago, plan to be inside the terminal about an hour and a quarter before departure, and about an hour and a half for an international one. That covers a 25 to 50 minute checkpoint queue at the Sunday peak plus the walk to the gate. Outside the peak you can safely trim it; the calculator above works it out from your actual departure time.
What is the busiest time at ORD security?
Sunday around 7 am, when 77 departures' worth of passengers are converging on the checkpoint at once. The calmest hour with real traffic is Tuesday at 9 pm, at roughly 6 minutes.
Is TSA PreCheck worth it at ORD?
At the Sunday peak it turns a 25 to 50 minute queue into something closer to 12 minutes. Over a five year membership that is worth it if you fly more than about three round trips a year through an airport this busy. The trusted traveller calculator prices it against your own flying.
When does security open at ORD?
Chicago O'Hare International Airport does not publish checkpoint opening hours in any national feed, so we will not invent them. What the schedule does show is that the first departures leave around 2 am, and checkpoints generally open about two hours before the first flight of the day.
The security-now figure at the top is read live from ORD's own checkpoint feed (the airport's checkpoint sensors), refreshed in your browser and shown as measured only while that reading is fresh; if the feed is unreachable this page falls back to the modelled number. The hour-by-hour projections, the week heatmap and the leave-by calculator below are modelled from the flight schedule: U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance, May 2026, July 2025 and December 2025. Here is exactly how. Page rebuilt 24 August 2026.