VacationSelector

Bucharest or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Bucharest
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

BucharestWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
BucharestWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance198 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
BucharestWashington DC
Score6777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6671,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4136
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
BucharestWashington DC
Score4955
Museums within 10 km7383
Museums within 2 km of centre4055
Share of museums within 2 km %5566
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Bucharest leads by 1 points.1
BucharestWashington DC
Score6261
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0171,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre541593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5358
Nightclubs within 4 km8054
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
BucharestWashington DC
Score3642
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km133 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Bucharest leads by 30 points.30
BucharestWashington DC
Score6838
Tourist attractions within 2 km457
Park area within 2 km133 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
BucharestWashington DC
Score6176
Notable places within 2 km130305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bucharest leads by 42 points.42
BucharestWashington DC
Score8543
Price level global40.9100
Daily budget€99
Year-round weather. Bucharest leads by 1 points.1
BucharestWashington DC
Score6362
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 30.5 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 82 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months10
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
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bucharest
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBucharestWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€669-837
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€118-127
OTP · 18 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€79-110
OTP · 18 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 40 m
€92-150
OTP · 18 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 45 m
€198-212
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€82-113
OTP · 18 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 30 m
€144-199
OTP · 18 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€123-173
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
8 h 20 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

MeasureBucharestWashington DC
Official languageRomanian
CurrencyRomanian Leu (RON)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation70 m72 m
Main airportBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBucharestWashington DC
City population1,716,961689,545
People per km²7,5973,896
Museums within 10 km4199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre6882
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bucharest 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.