VacationSelector

Boston or Melbourne?

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 nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Melbourne
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife 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.

BostonMelbourne
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BostonMelbourne
Score6055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6819
Coast distance1 km4 km
Water distance1 km4 km
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 2 points.2
BostonMelbourne
Score7375
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,888
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3229
Museums & heritage. Melbourne leads by 6 points.6
BostonMelbourne
Score4349
Museums within 10 km7942
Museums within 2 km of centre2724
Share of museums within 2 km %3457
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 16 points.16
BostonMelbourne
Score5874
Drinking venues within 4 km8861,921
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5131,200
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5862
Nightclubs within 4 km43124
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 10 points.10
BostonMelbourne
Score5343
Protected land share 50 km %126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7781
Park area within 2 km116 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Melbourne leads by 7 points.7
BostonMelbourne
Score5360
Tourist attractions within 2 km2826
Park area within 2 km116 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 1 points.1
BostonMelbourne
Score5857
Notable places within 2 km111103
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Melbourne leads by 7 points.7
BostonMelbourne
Score4350
Price level global10090.2
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 20 points.20
BostonMelbourne
Score5676
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C13.6 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm45 mm to 69 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
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9

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). Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonMelbourne
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 35 m
€289-344
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
15 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
Hong KongHKG
15 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 45 m
€341-440
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
15 h 35 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 35 m
€341-355
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
17 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DohaDOH
13 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 15 m
€809-850
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
14 h 20 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
14 h 20 m
€856-961
2 stops
MEL · 19 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 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

MeasureBostonMelbourne
Official language–English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number911000
Elevation43 m31 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonMelbourne
City population675,6475,350,705
People per km²2,910535
Museums within 10 km5142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7486
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 Melbourne 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.