Atlanta or Fort Lauderdale?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.
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.
The verdict
Choose Atlanta if you want a city you can walk: the notable places cluster near the centre, with more restaurants, museums, bars and clubs than Fort Lauderdale.
Choose Fort Lauderdale if the sea is the point: 7 beaches nearby, water above 21°C in every month of the year, and a fifth of the land around the city protected.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Fort Lauderdale leads by 84 points.84
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 84 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 12 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 7 |
| Coast distance | 373 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Atlanta leads by 14 points.14
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 45 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 739 | 371 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 23 | 18 |
Museums & heritage. Atlanta leads by 15 points.15
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 20 |
| Museums within 10 km | 41 | 14 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 16 | 6 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 39 | 43 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
Nightlife. Atlanta leads by 15 points.15
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 49 | 34 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 531 | 259 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 284 | 144 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 53 | 56 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 46 | 18 |
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 50 points.50
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 31 | 81 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 1 | 20 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 51 |
| Park area within 2 km | 113 hectares | 45 hectares |
Good for families. Atlanta leads by 13 points.13
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 32 | 19 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 2 | 2 |
| Park area within 2 km | 113 hectares | 45 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 1 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Atlanta leads by 40 points.40
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 0 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 39 | 2 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale are level on 43.
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 43 | 43 |
| Price level global | 100 | 100 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Fort Lauderdale leads by 9 points.9
| Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 76 |
| Monthly daytime high | 12 °C to 32 °C | 24.2 °C to 32.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 80 mm to 121 mm | 55 mm to 219 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 0 |
Where they differ
Atlanta puts many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, about three times as many museums, and more bars and nightclubs.
Fort Lauderdale has 7 beaches to Atlanta's none, with sea at 25-30°C every month. A fifth of the land around it is protected, where Atlanta's surroundings are almost entirely unprotected, and highs hold at 24-32°C instead of falling to 12°C in January.
Where they are alike
Both run hot in high summer, topping out at 32°C, and neither gets a dry month: rainfall stays above 40mm in every month of the year in both cities.
They are also close on the smaller urban measures. Neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach, museum holdings are modest on both sides, and each has a similar number of tourist attractions near the centre. In both, about half the drinking venues sit close to the middle.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller who wants to walk from breakfast to a museum to a bar should take Atlanta: the notable places sit tightly around the centre, and there are about twice as many restaurants and more nightlife than in Fort Lauderdale.
Anyone whose trip is built around swimming and open country should take Fort Lauderdale: 7 beaches nearby, sea at 25-30°C all year, and a fifth of the surrounding land protected.
Families are thinly served by either, but Atlanta has the edge: one theme park within reach, more park space near the centre, and a similar number of tourist attractions to Fort Lauderdale's.
What the numbers don't tell you
Two things here are not measured. The value figure is a national price level shared by both cities, so it says nothing about which trip costs more, and no daily budget exists for either, so no cost comparison is possible. No nearby station records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather is absent; the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone.
A warm month is not a dry one. Fort Lauderdale's sea stays above 25°C through the summer, but those are also its wettest months, up to 219mm. Atlanta's rain is spread across the whole year, so neither city has a reliably dry season.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Atlanta: 1991-2020 normals, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (29.2 km from centre). Fort Lauderdale: 1991-2020 normals, Fort Lauderdale (7.1 km from centre).
Atlanta works best in spring and autumn. April and May give highs of 23-27°C, and September into October brings 23-29°C with the year's lightest rain, near 80-97mm. Midsummer sits at 32°C and stays wet, and January reaches only 12°C.
Fort Lauderdale is a winter pick: November to March holds highs of 24-27°C with sea at 25-27°C and 55-91mm of rain. Summer is hotter and far wetter, up to 219mm in June, when Atlanta is also at its rainiest.
Getting there
| Flying from | Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale |
|---|---|---|
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 2 h 5 m €152-200 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 40 m €140-271 1 stop FLL · 7 km |
| ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1 | 1 h 50 m €161-221 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 55 m €119-159 FLL · 7 km |
| WashingtonIAD, DCA | 1 h 40 m €84-125 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 25 m €164-177 FLL · 7 km |
| TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ | 2 h 5 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 3 h 0 m €167-168 FLL · 7 km |
| HoustonIAH, HOU | 2 h 0 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 2 h 30 m no fares FLL · 7 km |
| DallasDFW, DAL, AFW | 2 h 5 m €69-120 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 45 m €133-174 FLL · 7 km |
| PhiladelphiaPHL, TTN | 1 h 55 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 2 h 35 m €125-184 FLL · 7 km |
| Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY | 4 h 20 m €165-240 1 stop ATL · 14 km | 5 h 5 m €218-274 1 stop FLL · 7 km |
| NassauNAS | 2 h 5 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 1 h 0 m no fares FLL · 7 km |
| MadridMAD | 8 h 50 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 9 h 0 m €522-631 1 stop MIA · 41 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 2026-09 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
| Measure | Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | US Dollar (USD) | US Dollar (USD) |
| Sockets | AB120 V, 60 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer |
| Emergency number | 911 | 911 |
| Elevation | 225 m | 11 m |
| Main airport | Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)14 km from centre238 non-stop destinations | Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 12 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Atlanta | Fort Lauderdale |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 498,715 | 182,760 |
| People per km² | 1,433 | 1,829 |
| Museums within 10 km | 27 | 6 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 56 | 25 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 12 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Atlanta or Fort Lauderdale somewhere new.