VacationSelector

Boston or Oslo?

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 year-round weather and places to eat with your weighting.

Oslo
56
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

BostonOslo
Beaches & swimming. Boston and Oslo are level on 60.
BostonOslo
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km68163
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 6 points.6
BostonOslo
Score7367
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,452853
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3234
Museums & heritage. Oslo leads by 5 points.5
BostonOslo
Score4348
Museums within 10 km7970
Museums within 2 km of centre2737
Share of museums within 2 km %3453
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BostonOslo
Score5853
Drinking venues within 4 km886695
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513562
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5881
Nightclubs within 4 km4341
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 8 points.8
BostonOslo
Score5361
Protected land share 50 km %1222
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7794
Park area within 2 km116 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BostonOslo
Score5348
Tourist attractions within 2 km2813
Park area within 2 km116 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Oslo leads by 11 points.11
BostonOslo
Score5869
Notable places within 2 km111207
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Oslo leads by 11 points.11
BostonOslo
Score4354
Price level global10085.1
Daily budget€203
Year-round weather. Boston leads by 8 points.8
BostonOslo
Score5648
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C0.1 °C to 22.7 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm40 mm to 104 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
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1

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). Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonOslo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€162-207
OSL · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 15 m
€145-204
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
3 h 15 m
€109-152
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€163-249
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
3 h 30 m
€110-169
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
DohaDOH
13 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
8 h 55 m
no fares
OSL · 37 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

MeasureBostonOslo
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation43 m23 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonOslo
City population675,647717,710
People per km²2,910
Museums within 10 km5160
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7475
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 Oslo 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.