VacationSelector

Athens or Boston?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

AthensBoston
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 12 points.12
AthensBoston
Score4860
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1468
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 4 points.4
AthensBoston
Score6973
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4311,452
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2532
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 30 points.30
AthensBoston
Score7343
Museums within 10 km12279
Museums within 2 km of centre7827
Share of museums within 2 km %6434
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensBoston
Score8158
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718886
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354513
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5058
Nightclubs within 4 km13643
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 8 points.8
AthensBoston
Score4553
Protected land share 50 km %512
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5077
Park area within 2 km128 hectares116 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensBoston
Score7153
Tourist attractions within 2 km6828
Park area within 2 km128 hectares116 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensBoston
Score7558
Notable places within 2 km291111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensBoston
Score7443
Price level global55.8100
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensBoston
Score7456
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C2.9 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm79 mm to 107 mm
Dry months70
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensBoston
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 35 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 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

MeasureAthensBoston
Official languageGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation74 m43 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensBoston
City population643,452675,647
People per km²16,4992,910
Museums within 10 km8851
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8274
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Boston 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.