VacationSelector

Fort Lauderdale or Ottawa?

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

Fort Lauderdale
45
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families 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.

Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Fort Lauderdale leads by 84 points.84
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score840
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km79
Coast distance0 km423 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 19 points.19
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score4564
Restaurants within 2 km of centre371684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1834
Museums & heritage. Ottawa leads by 12 points.12
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score2032
Museums within 10 km1415
Museums within 2 km of centre68
Share of museums within 2 km %4353
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 10 points.10
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score3444
Drinking venues within 4 km259432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre144303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5670
Nightclubs within 4 km1835
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 40 points.40
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score8141
Protected land share 50 km %208
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 27 points.27
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score1946
Tourist attractions within 2 km211
Park area within 2 km45 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 50 points.50
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score050
Notable places within 2 km271
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Fort Lauderdale leads by 23 points.23
Fort LauderdaleOttawa
Score7653
Monthly daytime high24.2 °C to 32.3 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 219 mm53 mm to 94 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
Fort Lauderdale
24
26
27
29
30
31
32
32
31
30
27
26
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Fort Lauderdale
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Fort Lauderdale
55
59
57
72
159
219
166
198
202
144
91
73
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Fort Lauderdale
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Fort Lauderdale: 1991-2020 normals, Fort Lauderdale (7.1 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFort LauderdaleOttawa
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€167-168
FLL · 7 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 40 m
€140-271
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
3 h 15 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€119-159
FLL · 7 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
NassauNAS
1 h 0 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 25 m
€164-177
FLL · 7 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
Punta CanaPUJ
2 h 25 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CalgaryYYC
5 h 20 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 0 m
€292-332
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureFort LauderdaleOttawa
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-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation11 m70 m
Main airportFort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureFort LauderdaleOttawa
City population182,7601,017,449
People per km²1,829366
Museums within 10 km620
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2562
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Fort Lauderdale or Ottawa 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.