VacationSelector

Dresden or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Dresden
48
match

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

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

DresdenWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
DresdenWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance267 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
DresdenWashington DC
Score6177
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4221,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4236
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
DresdenWashington DC
Score5455
Museums within 10 km6683
Museums within 2 km of centre3455
Share of museums within 2 km %5266
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
DresdenWashington DC
Score4261
Drinking venues within 4 km3591,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7458
Nightclubs within 4 km4354
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 3 points.3
DresdenWashington DC
Score3942
Protected land share 50 km %1410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %91
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km80 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 21 points.21
DresdenWashington DC
Score5938
Tourist attractions within 2 km327
Park area within 2 km80 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 23 points.23
DresdenWashington DC
Score5376
Notable places within 2 km82305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 17 points.17
DresdenWashington DC
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Dresden and Washington DC are level on 62.
DresdenWashington DC
Score6262
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months40
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 147 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
5 h 55 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Punta CanaPUJ
10 h 0 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
3 h 30 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

MeasureDresdenWashington DC
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation126 m72 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenWashington DC
City population564,904689,545
People per km²1,7203,896
Museums within 10 km7099
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7782
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 Dresden 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.