VacationSelector

Boston or Vancouver?

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, 2 points apart

Boston
55
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Vancouver
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

BostonVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Boston and Vancouver are level on 60.
BostonVancouver
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km68109
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Vancouver leads by 1 points.1
BostonVancouver
Score7374
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Boston leads by 9 points.9
BostonVancouver
Score4334
Museums within 10 km7927
Museums within 2 km of centre2715
Share of museums within 2 km %3456
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Boston leads by 1 points.1
BostonVancouver
Score5857
Drinking venues within 4 km886848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5871
Nightclubs within 4 km4344
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 24 points.24
BostonVancouver
Score5377
Protected land share 50 km %1219
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7760
Park area within 2 km116 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Boston and Vancouver are level on 53.
BostonVancouver
Score5353
Tourist attractions within 2 km2815
Park area within 2 km116 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 10 points.10
BostonVancouver
Score5848
Notable places within 2 km11163
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vancouver leads by 11 points.11
BostonVancouver
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Boston leads by 3 points.3
BostonVancouver
Score5653
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm42 mm to 245 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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
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). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonVancouver
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 35 m
€289-344
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 45 m
€147-217
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
4 h 35 m
€210-223
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 45 m
€341-440
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
CancunCUN
3 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
5 h 0 m
€364-450
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
5 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
55 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 40 m
€681-795
YVR · 9 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

MeasureBostonVancouver
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation43 m2 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonVancouver
City population675,647662,248
People per km²2,9105,759
Museums within 10 km5126
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7485
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 Vancouver 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.