VacationSelector

Boston or Sao Paulo?

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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
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.

BostonSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BostonSao Paulo
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km680
Coast distance1 km51 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Boston and Sao Paulo are level on 73.
BostonSao Paulo
Score7373
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3227
Museums & heritage. Boston and Sao Paulo are level on 43.
BostonSao Paulo
Score4343
Museums within 10 km7982
Museums within 2 km of centre2726
Share of museums within 2 km %3432
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 14 points.14
BostonSao Paulo
Score5872
Drinking venues within 4 km8861,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5851
Nightclubs within 4 km43118
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 2 points.2
BostonSao Paulo
Score5351
Protected land share 50 km %1226
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %7795
Park area within 2 km116 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Sao Paulo leads by 2 points.2
BostonSao Paulo
Score5355
Tourist attractions within 2 km2838
Park area within 2 km116 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 8 points.8
BostonSao Paulo
Score5850
Notable places within 2 km11168
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 38 points.38
BostonSao Paulo
Score4381
Price level global10046.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 27 points.27
BostonSao Paulo
Score5683
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months01
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
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). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonSao Paulo
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
2 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Punta CanaPUJ
3 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 25 m
€175-234
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 35 m
€289-344
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureBostonSao Paulo
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation43 m760 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonSao Paulo
City population675,64711,451,999
People per km²2,9107,519
Museums within 10 km5190
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7459
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 Sao Paulo 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.