VacationSelector

Boston or Marseille?

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 nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.

Marseille
57
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather 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.

BostonMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 7 points.7
BostonMarseille
Score6067
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km6864
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 2 points.2
BostonMarseille
Score7375
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3239
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 7 points.7
BostonMarseille
Score4350
Museums within 10 km7933
Museums within 2 km of centre2723
Share of museums within 2 km %3470
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Boston leads by 10 points.10
BostonMarseille
Score5848
Drinking venues within 4 km886544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5883
Nightclubs within 4 km4330
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 16 points.16
BostonMarseille
Score5337
Protected land share 50 km %1215
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %7756
Park area within 2 km116 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 9 points.9
BostonMarseille
Score5344
Tourist attractions within 2 km2817
Park area within 2 km116 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Boston and Marseille are level on 58.
BostonMarseille
Score5858
Notable places within 2 km111111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Marseille leads by 19 points.19
BostonMarseille
Score4362
Price level global10073.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 19 points.19
BostonMarseille
Score5675
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months06
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

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). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MunichMUC
7 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
1 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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

MeasureBostonMarseille
Official languageFrench
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m0 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonMarseille
City population675,647886,040
People per km²2,9103,683
Museums within 10 km5127
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7493
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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