VacationSelector

Boston or London?

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.

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

BostonLondon
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BostonLondon
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6847
Coast distance1 km43 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. London leads by 15 points.15
BostonLondon
Score7388
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4523,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3240
Museums & heritage. London leads by 29 points.29
BostonLondon
Score4372
Museums within 10 km79148
Museums within 2 km of centre2749
Share of museums within 2 km %3433
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. London leads by 37 points.37
BostonLondon
Score5895
Drinking venues within 4 km8865,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5132,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5846
Nightclubs within 4 km43312
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 13 points.13
BostonLondon
Score5340
Protected land share 50 km %1216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %7797
Park area within 2 km116 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 22 points.22
BostonLondon
Score5375
Tourist attractions within 2 km2885
Park area within 2 km116 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. London leads by 31 points.31
BostonLondon
Score5889
Notable places within 2 km111649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 11 points.11
BostonLondon
Score4354
Price level global10084.9
Daily budget
Year-round weather. London leads by 7 points.7
BostonLondon
Score5663
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm38 mm to 67 mm
Dry months01
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
London
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
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonLondon
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
2 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
CancunCUN
3 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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

MeasureBostonLondon
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 999
Elevation43 m4 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonLondon
City population675,6478,799,728
People per km²2,9105,598
Museums within 10 km51215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre74116
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 London 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. 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.