VacationSelector

Barcelona or Boston?

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

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

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

Boston
55
match

Wins on 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.

BarcelonaBoston
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 5 points.5
BarcelonaBoston
Score6560
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2068
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 17 points.17
BarcelonaBoston
Score9073
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,7861,452
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4132
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 25 points.25
BarcelonaBoston
Score6843
Museums within 10 km10579
Museums within 2 km of centre4927
Share of museums within 2 km %4734
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 24 points.24
BarcelonaBoston
Score8258
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711886
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641513
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6158
Nightclubs within 4 km24543
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaBoston
Score5053
Protected land share 50 km %1012
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5177
Park area within 2 km49 hectares116 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 12 points.12
BarcelonaBoston
Score6553
Tourist attractions within 2 km6028
Park area within 2 km49 hectares116 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 15 points.15
BarcelonaBoston
Score7358
Notable places within 2 km258111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 28 points.28
BarcelonaBoston
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 22 points.22
BarcelonaBoston
Score7856
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C2.9 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm79 mm to 107 mm
Dry months50
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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
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. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaBoston
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 0 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 55 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
€282-445
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
13 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 0 m
no fares
BCN · 13 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

MeasureBarcelonaBoston
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation9 m43 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaBoston
City population1,731,649675,647
People per km²17,0942,910
Museums within 10 km9551
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre12874
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Barcelona 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.