VacationSelector

Fort Lauderdale or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Fort Lauderdale
45
match

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

Washington DC
✓ Best match
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.

Scoreboard

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

Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Fort Lauderdale leads by 66 points.66
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score8418
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km71
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 32 points.32
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score4577
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3711,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1836
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 35 points.35
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score2055
Museums within 10 km1483
Museums within 2 km of centre655
Share of museums within 2 km %4366
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 27 points.27
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score3461
Drinking venues within 4 km2591,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre144593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5658
Nightclubs within 4 km1854
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 39 points.39
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score8142
Protected land share 50 km %2010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5194
Park area within 2 km45 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score1938
Tourist attractions within 2 km27
Park area within 2 km45 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 76 points.76
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score076
Notable places within 2 km2305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Fort Lauderdale and Washington DC are level on 43.
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Fort Lauderdale leads by 14 points.14
Fort LauderdaleWashington DC
Score7662
Monthly daytime high24.2 °C to 32.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 219 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Fort Lauderdale
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Fort Lauderdale
55
59
57
72
159
219
166
198
202
144
91
73
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Fort Lauderdale
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

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

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFort LauderdaleWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 40 m
€140-271
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€167-168
FLL · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€119-159
FLL · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 45 m
€93-112
FLL · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
CharlotteCLT
1 h 50 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€187-219
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€133-174
FLL · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DetroitDTW, DET, YIP
2 h 50 m
€174-269
FLL · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€226-227
IAD · 37 km
NassauNAS
1 h 0 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
MadridMAD
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 41 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 41 km
14 h 0 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

MeasureFort LauderdaleWashington 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
Elevation11 m72 m
Main airportFort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureFort LauderdaleWashington DC
City population182,760689,545
People per km²1,8293,896
Museums within 10 km699
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre2582
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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