VacationSelector

Boston or Galway?

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 places to eat and sights concentration with your weighting.

Galway
39
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BostonGalway
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 9 points.9
BostonGalway
Score6051
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6813
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 36 points.36
BostonGalway
Score7337
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,452173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3220
Museums & heritage. Boston leads by 23 points.23
BostonGalway
Score4320
Museums within 10 km795
Museums within 2 km of centre275
Share of museums within 2 km %34100
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Boston leads by 32 points.32
BostonGalway
Score5826
Drinking venues within 4 km886185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5883
Nightclubs within 4 km438
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 2 points.2
BostonGalway
Score5355
Protected land share 50 km %12
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7785
Park area within 2 km116 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 28 points.28
BostonGalway
Score5325
Tourist attractions within 2 km285
Park area within 2 km116 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 36 points.36
BostonGalway
Score5822
Notable places within 2 km11114
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 14 points.14
BostonGalway
Score4357
Price level global10080.2
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. Boston leads by 2 points.2
BostonGalway
Score5654
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Galway
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonGalway
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
EdinburghEDI
6 h 30 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
PortoOPO
6 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
7 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
NOC · 73 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

MeasureBostonGalway
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 m25 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonGalway
City population675,64783,456
People per km²2,9101,563
Museums within 10 km514
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7425
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 Galway 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.