VacationSelector

Beijing or Philadelphia?

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.

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

BeijingPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Beijing and Philadelphia are level on 0.
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance145 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 3 points.3
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score6360
Museums within 10 km9589
Museums within 2 km of centre1548
Share of museums within 2 km %1654
Unesco sites within 50 km61
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 14 points.14
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score3549
Protected land share 50 km %314
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10089
Park area within 2 km143 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 24 points.24
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score7753
Tourist attractions within 2 km4116
Park area within 2 km143 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km124
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 4 points.4
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score5054
Notable places within 2 km6988
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 36 points.36
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score7943
Price level global49100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 6 points.6
BeijingPhiladelphia
Score6660
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingPhiladelphia
TokyoHND, NRT
3 h 10 m
€312-367
PEK · 25 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 55 m
€151-190
PKX · 45 km
15 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
BostonBOS, PSM
13 h 25 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
10 h 55 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
5 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
TashkentTAS
5 h 20 m
€342-571
PKX · 45 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
DublinDUB
10 h 25 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 140 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

MeasureBeijingPhiladelphia
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 m12 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingPhiladelphia
City population21,893,0951,603,797
People per km²1,3344,339
Museums within 10 km8354
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre2975

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or Philadelphia 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. 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.