VacationSelector

Boston or Budapest?

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

Your match

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Budapest
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

BostonBudapest
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BostonBudapest
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km686
Coast distance1 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 4 points.4
BostonBudapest
Score7377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,699
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 21 points.21
BostonBudapest
Score4364
Museums within 10 km79144
Museums within 2 km of centre2764
Share of museums within 2 km %3444
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 14 points.14
BostonBudapest
Score5872
Drinking venues within 4 km8861,765
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5131,168
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5866
Nightclubs within 4 km4397
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 13 points.13
BostonBudapest
Score5340
Protected land share 50 km %128
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %77100
Park area within 2 km116 hectares111 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 18 points.18
BostonBudapest
Score5371
Tourist attractions within 2 km2875
Park area within 2 km116 hectares111 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 11 points.11
BostonBudapest
Score5869
Notable places within 2 km111206
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 37 points.37
BostonBudapest
Score4380
Price level global10048
Daily budget€104
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 8 points.8
BostonBudapest
Score5664
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C3.6 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm27 mm to 75 mm
Dry months05
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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonBudapest
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€175-230
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
7 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
11 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 15 m
€122-156
BUD · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 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

MeasureBostonBudapest
Official languageHungarian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Forint (HUF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m117 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonBudapest
City population675,6471,685,209
People per km²2,9103,209
Museums within 10 km5181
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7486
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Boston or Budapest 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.