Atlanta or New Orleans?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families 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 green space you can reach on foot and an autumn that dries out, with October at 23°C and 80mm the pick of its year.
Choose New Orleans if you want sea swimming, 3 beaches within reach and far more to visit near the centre, and you are willing to plan around a very wet summer.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. New Orleans leads by 39 points.39
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 39 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 7 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 3 |
| Coast distance | 373 km | 21 km |
| Water distance | — | 17 km |
Places to eat. New Orleans leads by 2 points.2
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 61 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 739 | 803 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 23 | 25 |
Museums & heritage. New Orleans leads by 10 points.10
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 45 |
| Museums within 10 km | 41 | 42 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 16 | 30 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 39 | 71 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
Nightlife. New Orleans leads by 5 points.5
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 49 | 54 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 531 | 704 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 284 | 495 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 53 | 70 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 46 | 41 |
Nature & day trips. Atlanta leads by 6 points.6
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 31 | 25 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 1 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 89 |
| Park area within 2 km | 113 hectares | 43 hectares |
Good for families. New Orleans leads by 14 points.14
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 32 | 46 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 2 | 22 |
| Park area within 2 km | 113 hectares | 43 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 1 | 1 |
Sights concentration. Atlanta and New Orleans are level on 40.
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 40 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 39 | 40 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Atlanta and New Orleans are level on 43.
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 43 | 43 |
| Price level global | 100 | 100 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. New Orleans leads by 1 points.1
| Atlanta | New Orleans | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 68 |
| Monthly daytime high | 12 °C to 32 °C | 17.1 °C to 33 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 80 mm to 121 mm | 94 mm to 194 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 0 |
Where they differ
Atlanta's advantage is green space: about three times as much park land near the centre as New Orleans, which matters if a day out means walking. Only 1% of the land around it is protected, though, against 4% around New Orleans.
New Orleans has the swimming: 3 beaches nearby where Atlanta has none, and sea at 21°C or more for 7 months. It also has many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, and its museums sit more tightly around the centre, walkable as a group.
Where they are alike
They are closest on what lies within walking distance of the centre: each has about the same number of notable places a short walk away, so a first day on foot works equally well in either.
Eating out is similar, with comparable numbers of restaurants near the centre and a similar range of kitchens. Nightclub numbers are close as well. Both run hot in July, 32-33°C, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less.
Which traveller are you?
Anyone who wants to swim has one option here: New Orleans, with 3 beaches within reach and a sea near 30°C in August. Atlanta has no coast, so a hot week there is spent indoors or in parks.
Families wanting attractions rather than lawns should take New Orleans, which has many times as many near the centre. Atlanta answers with park space, roughly three times as much close in. Each has 1 theme park within reach.
For museums and evenings out, New Orleans is the more compact choice: more places to drink, most of them central, and museums grouped tightly. In Atlanta about half the nightclubs are near the centre, so nights involve travel.
What the numbers don't tell you
No daily budget figure exists for either city here, so no cost comparison is possible between them. The value figure both carry is a national price level, identical for two cities in the same country by construction, so it says nothing about which trip costs less.
No weather station near either city records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than poor: the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. And New Orleans's warmest sea months are also its wettest, with June at 194mm, so swimming weather and heavy rain arrive together.
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). New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre).
Atlanta's best windows are April to May and September to October. May reaches 27°C and October 23°C, and October is the driest month of its year at 80mm. Midsummer is hot, 30-32°C, and wet with it.
New Orleans peaks in October, at 27°C with 94mm, and works from March to April at 23-26°C. Its winters are milder, with January highs of 17°C against Atlanta's 12°C. Avoid June to August: 169-194mm of rain a month, far wetter than Atlanta at the same time.
Getting there
| Flying from | Atlanta | New Orleans |
|---|---|---|
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 2 h 5 m €152-200 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 55 m €254-325 1 stop MSY · 18 km |
| WashingtonIAD, DCA | 1 h 40 m €84-125 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 30 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1 | 1 h 50 m €161-221 ATL · 14 km | 2 h 15 m €208-268 1 stop MSY · 18 km |
| DallasDFW, DAL, AFW | 2 h 5 m €69-120 ATL · 14 km | 1 h 30 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| HoustonIAH, HOU | 2 h 0 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 1 h 15 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY | 4 h 20 m €165-240 1 stop ATL · 14 km | 3 h 50 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| DenverDEN, APA | 2 h 55 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 2 h 40 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| PhiladelphiaPHL, TTN | 1 h 55 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 2 h 45 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| CancunCUN | 2 h 20 m €265-370 1 stop ATL · 14 km | 1 h 55 m no fares MSY · 18 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 8 h 35 m no fares ATL · 14 km | 9 h 25 m no fares MSY · 18 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 | New Orleans |
|---|---|---|
| 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-6, UTC-5 in summer |
| Emergency number | 911 | 911 |
| Elevation | 225 m | -2 m |
| Main airport | Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)14 km from centre238 non-stop destinations | Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 12 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Atlanta | New Orleans |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 498,715 | 383,997 |
| People per km² | 1,433 | 423 |
| Museums within 10 km | 27 | 16 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 56 | 39 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 7 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Atlanta or New Orleans somewhere new.