VacationSelector

Boston or Cork?

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

Your match

Boston
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on sights concentration and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Cork
38
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BostonCork
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 32 points.32
BostonCork
Score6028
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km681
Coast distance1 km3 km
Water distance1 km3 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 23 points.23
BostonCork
Score7350
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,452224
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Boston leads by 20 points.20
BostonCork
Score4323
Museums within 10 km7910
Museums within 2 km of centre278
Share of museums within 2 km %3480
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Boston leads by 20 points.20
BostonCork
Score5838
Drinking venues within 4 km886361
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5881
Nightclubs within 4 km439
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 1 points.1
BostonCork
Score5352
Protected land share 50 km %12
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7774
Park area within 2 km116 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 26 points.26
BostonCork
Score5327
Tourist attractions within 2 km287
Park area within 2 km116 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 36 points.36
BostonCork
Score5822
Notable places within 2 km11114
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cork leads by 14 points.14
BostonCork
Score4357
Price level global10080.2
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. Boston leads by 7 points.7
BostonCork
Score5649
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C8.3 °C to 18.6 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm78 mm to 140 mm
Dry months00
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
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cork
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
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). Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonCork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 78 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
EdinburghEDI
6 h 30 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
RomeFCO, CIA
8 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
ORK · 7 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

MeasureBostonCork
Official languageEnglish, Irish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m0 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonCork
City population675,647222,333
People per km²2,9105,961
Museums within 10 km515
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7449
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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