VacationSelector

Calgary or New York?

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

Your match

Calgary
38
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

Scoreboard

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

CalgaryNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 64 points.64
CalgaryNew York
Score064
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km417
Coast distance649 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 29 points.29
CalgaryNew York
Score6695
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7496,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3638
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 51 points.51
CalgaryNew York
Score960
Museums within 10 km8119
Museums within 2 km of centre331
Share of museums within 2 km %3826
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. New York leads by 45 points.45
CalgaryNew York
Score4489
Drinking venues within 4 km4654,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3432,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7448
Nightclubs within 4 km19192
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 3 points.3
CalgaryNew York
Score3639
Protected land share 50 km %44
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10069
Park area within 2 km142 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 31 points.31
CalgaryNew York
Score4172
Tourist attractions within 2 km337
Park area within 2 km142 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km57
Sights concentration. New York leads by 35 points.35
CalgaryNew York
Score3974
Notable places within 2 km37268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Calgary leads by 11 points.11
CalgaryNew York
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. New York leads by 1 points.1
CalgaryNew York
Score5758
Monthly daytime high-0.7 °C to 24.8 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 106 mm74 mm to 112 mm
Dry months80
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
Calgary
0
-1
4
11
16
20
25
23
19
12
4
0
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Calgary
No coastline within reach
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Calgary
9
13
19
28
58
106
44
47
33
21
17
17
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Calgary
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Calgary: 1991-2020 normals, Calgary Int'l CS (8.2 km from centre). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCalgaryNew York
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 50 m
€182-359
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 15 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
4 h 10 m
€170-221
YYC · 9 km
1 h 15 m
€229-272
LGA · 13 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
4 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 55 m
€237-270
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 55 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
LGA · 13 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
4 h 15 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€165-236
EWR · 14 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCalgaryNew York
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-7, UTC-6 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation1,045 m25 m
Main airportCalgary International Airport (YYC)9 km from centre106 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCalgaryNew York
City population1,306,7848,804,190
People per km²1,5837,256
Museums within 10 km13157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre67132
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 Calgary or New York 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). 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.