VacationSelector

Boston or Los Angeles?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Los Angeles
53
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

BostonLos Angeles
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 31 points.31
BostonLos Angeles
Score6029
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km680
Coast distance1 km
Water distance1 km
Beaches 25 km11
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Places to eat. Boston leads by 7 points.7
BostonLos Angeles
Score7366
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,337
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3222
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 6 points.6
BostonLos Angeles
Score4349
Museums within 10 km7969
Museums within 2 km of centre2723
Share of museums within 2 km %3433
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonLos Angeles
Score5854
Drinking venues within 4 km886660
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513432
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5865
Nightclubs within 4 km4364
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 9 points.9
BostonLos Angeles
Score5362
Protected land share 50 km %1226
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7780
Park area within 2 km116 hectares20 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 20 points.20
BostonLos Angeles
Score5333
Tourist attractions within 2 km2811
Park area within 2 km116 hectares20 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonLos Angeles
Score5854
Notable places within 2 km11188
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Boston and Los Angeles are level on 43.
BostonLos Angeles
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 31 points.31
BostonLos Angeles
Score5687
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C18.6 °C to 24.7 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm0 mm to 76 mm
Dry months08
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Los Angeles
No sunshine record

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). Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonLos Angeles
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 45 m
€341-440
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
5 h 0 m
€364-450
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
2 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
4 h 50 m
€205-248
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
DenverDEN, APA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 35 m
€261-303
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
16 h 25 m
€964-1015
LAX · 19 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

MeasureBostonLos Angeles
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation43 m106 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonLos Angeles
City population675,6473,898,747
People per km²2,9102,994
Museums within 10 km5138
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7446
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 Los Angeles 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.