VacationSelector

Berlin or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Berlin
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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.

BerlinWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
BerlinWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km171
Coast distance142 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
BerlinWashington DC
Score7077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1171,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3336
Museums & heritage. Berlin leads by 24 points.24
BerlinWashington DC
Score7955
Museums within 10 km20083
Museums within 2 km of centre8155
Share of museums within 2 km %4166
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Berlin leads by 15 points.15
BerlinWashington DC
Score7661
Drinking venues within 4 km2,1141,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre719593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3458
Nightclubs within 4 km13554
Nature & day trips. Berlin leads by 7 points.7
BerlinWashington DC
Score4942
Protected land share 50 km %2010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %161
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km141 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Berlin leads by 38 points.38
BerlinWashington DC
Score7638
Tourist attractions within 2 km547
Park area within 2 km141 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. Berlin leads by 8 points.8
BerlinWashington DC
Score8476
Notable places within 2 km486305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Berlin leads by 17 points.17
BerlinWashington DC
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 2 points.2
BerlinWashington DC
Score6062
Monthly daytime high3.7 °C to 25 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall29 mm to 76 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months30
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
Berlin
4
6
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
8
4
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Berlin
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Berlin
49
44
39
29
52
53
76
53
47
39
42
45
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Berlin
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Berlin
2
2
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
2
1
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Berlin: 1991-2020 normals, Berlin / Alexanderplatz (0.9 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBerlinWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-126
BER · 19 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 19 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€137-154
BER · 19 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€133-143
BER · 19 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€102-136
BER · 19 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
€178-321
BER · 19 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 25 m
€149-251
BER · 19 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
€159-242
BER · 19 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 10 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 19 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureBerlinWashington DC
Official languageGerman
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
Elevation34 m72 m
Main airportBerlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)19 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBerlinWashington DC
City population3,782,202689,545
People per km²4,2443,896
Museums within 10 km15899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre8682
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Berlin or Washington DC 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.