VacationSelector

Boston or Nice?

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, 1 point apart

Boston
55
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Nice
56
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.

BostonNice
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 13 points.13
BostonNice
Score6073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km6870
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonNice
Score7369
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,231
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3228
Museums & heritage. Nice leads by 3 points.3
BostonNice
Score4346
Museums within 10 km7927
Museums within 2 km of centre2714
Share of museums within 2 km %3452
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Boston leads by 14 points.14
BostonNice
Score5844
Drinking venues within 4 km886428
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513388
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5891
Nightclubs within 4 km4326
Nature & day trips. Nice leads by 4 points.4
BostonNice
Score5357
Protected land share 50 km %1224
Landscape blanket share 50 km %020
Land share of disc %7762
Park area within 2 km116 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 23 points.23
BostonNice
Score5330
Tourist attractions within 2 km284
Park area within 2 km116 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 11 points.11
BostonNice
Score5847
Notable places within 2 km11160
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Nice leads by 19 points.19
BostonNice
Score4362
Price level global10073.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Nice leads by 18 points.18
BostonNice
Score5674
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months03
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
Nice
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Nice
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Nice
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
Nice
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5

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). Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonNice
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
8 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 6 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 6 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€133-138
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 25 m
€175-234
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 20 m
€375-433
NCE · 6 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

MeasureBostonNice
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 destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonNice
City population675,647357,737
People per km²2,9104,975
Museums within 10 km5116
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre7465
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone4 months

Where else could you go?

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