VacationSelector

Beijing or Boston?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Beijing
53
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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.

BeijingBoston
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BeijingBoston
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km068
Coast distance145 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 20 points.20
BeijingBoston
Score6343
Museums within 10 km9579
Museums within 2 km of centre1527
Share of museums within 2 km %1634
Unesco sites within 50 km60
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 18 points.18
BeijingBoston
Score3553
Protected land share 50 km %312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10077
Park area within 2 km143 hectares116 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 24 points.24
BeijingBoston
Score7753
Tourist attractions within 2 km4128
Park area within 2 km143 hectares116 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km120
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 8 points.8
BeijingBoston
Score5058
Notable places within 2 km69111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 36 points.36
BeijingBoston
Score7943
Price level global49100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 10 points.10
BeijingBoston
Score6656
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C2.9 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm79 mm to 107 mm
Dry months80
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
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. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingBoston
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 55 m
€151-190
PKX · 45 km
15 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
13 h 45 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€175-234
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
12 h 30 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
5 h 35 m
€289-344
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
TokyoHND, NRT
3 h 10 m
€312-367
PEK · 25 km
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
13 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
9 h 45 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureBeijingBoston
Official languagePutonghua
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119911
Elevation43 m43 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingBoston
City population21,893,095675,647
People per km²1,3342,910
Museums within 10 km8351
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre2974
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.