VacationSelector

Boston or Washington DC?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Boston
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

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

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Boston if you want the sea within reach: the coast is 1km from the centre and there are 68 beaches nearby, with more park space and far more attractions for a family trip.

Choose Washington DC if you want a compact centre you can walk, with about three times as many notable places within walking distance and museums clustered tightly around the middle.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BostonWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 42 points.42
BostonWashington DC
Score6018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km681
Coast distance1 km34 km
Water distance1 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 4 points.4
BostonWashington DC
Score7377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3236
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
BostonWashington DC
Score4355
Museums within 10 km7983
Museums within 2 km of centre2755
Share of museums within 2 km %3466
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 3 points.3
BostonWashington DC
Score5861
Drinking venues within 4 km8861,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5858
Nightclubs within 4 km4354
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 11 points.11
BostonWashington DC
Score5342
Protected land share 50 km %1210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7794
Park area within 2 km116 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 15 points.15
BostonWashington DC
Score5338
Tourist attractions within 2 km287
Park area within 2 km116 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
BostonWashington DC
Score5876
Notable places within 2 km111305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Boston and Washington DC are level on 43.
BostonWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
BostonWashington DC
Score5662
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Boston puts the water at the doorstep: the sea is 1km from the centre against 34km in Washington DC, and there are 68 beaches nearby against 1. For families it also has many times more attractions near the centre, plus more park space; 12% of the land around it is protected against 10%.

Washington DC is the tighter city to walk, with three times as many notable places within walking distance and museums clustered closer to the centre. It has 1 theme park within reach, where Boston has none.

Where they are alike

Nightlife is close to a wash. Washington DC has somewhat more bars and clubs, but in both cities about half of them sit near the centre, so an evening out is walkable from a central base either way.

Eating out is similar too: comparable numbers of restaurants near the centre and a similar range of kitchens. The weather follows the same seasonal shape, warm summers and cold Januarys, and neither city has a month drier than 40mm.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Boston, which has many times more attractions near the centre and more park space to spread out in. Washington DC's counter is a single theme park within reach, where Boston has none.

A weekend of museums and monuments on foot: Washington DC. Three times as many notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and its museums are packed closer together than Boston's.

Anyone planning to swim: Boston, with the sea 1km from the centre and 68 beaches near by. Washington DC's water is warmer in late summer, but it sits 34km out, with 1 beach.

What the numbers don't tell you

The two cities share a value rating because it is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it says nothing about how one compares with the other. No daily budget figure exists for either city, so no cost comparison is possible here at all.

The sunshine record is missing for Washington DC, so its monthly ratings rest on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone and that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured. Boston's beach advantage is one of access rather than warmth: 68 beaches within reach, but a sea that peaks at 19°C, well below Washington DC's summer water.

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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Washington DC
No sunshine record

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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Boston is at its best in high summer, with highs of 25-28°C across June, July and August and the sea at its warmest, 19°C. Rain is spread evenly through its year, so there is no drier window to aim for.

Washington DC works better either side of that: May and September, with highs near 24-27°C. July is hotter, 32°C, and the wettest month at 108mm. Its sea passes 21°C in midsummer, which Boston's never does.

Getting there

Flying fromBostonWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
2 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€189-295
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
2 h 25 m
€218-258
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 35 m
€289-344
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
San SalvadorSAL, ILS
5 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
4 h 15 m
€548-564
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureBostonWashington DC
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation43 m72 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonWashington DC
City population675,647689,545
People per km²2,9103,896
Museums within 10 km5199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7482
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

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