VacationSelector

Boston or Milan?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money 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.

BostonMilan
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BostonMilan
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km684
Coast distance1 km120 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 3 points.3
BostonMilan
Score7370
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3220
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 31 points.31
BostonMilan
Score4374
Museums within 10 km7987
Museums within 2 km of centre2755
Share of museums within 2 km %3463
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. Milan leads by 17 points.17
BostonMilan
Score5875
Drinking venues within 4 km8862,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5843
Nightclubs within 4 km4370
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 12 points.12
BostonMilan
Score5365
Protected land share 50 km %1230
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %77100
Park area within 2 km116 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 24 points.24
BostonMilan
Score5377
Tourist attractions within 2 km2876
Park area within 2 km116 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km05
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 16 points.16
BostonMilan
Score5874
Notable places within 2 km111266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Milan leads by 25 points.25
BostonMilan
Score4368
Price level global10064.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Milan leads by 8 points.8
BostonMilan
Score5664
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm44 mm to 127 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
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Milan
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
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). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonMilan
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 40 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
€129-158
LIN · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 km
Punta CanaPUJ
3 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 40 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

MeasureBostonMilan
Official languageItalian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m138 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonMilan
City population675,6471,354,196
People per km²2,9107,453
Museums within 10 km5187
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre7479
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 Milan 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.