VacationSelector

Glasgow or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Glasgow
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and year-round weather 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.

GlasgowWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Glasgow leads by 18 points.18
GlasgowWashington DC
Score3618
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance3 km34 km
Water distance3 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 14 points.14
GlasgowWashington DC
Score6377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7401,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2936
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
GlasgowWashington DC
Score4555
Museums within 10 km3283
Museums within 2 km of centre1355
Share of museums within 2 km %4166
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 2 points.2
GlasgowWashington DC
Score6361
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0781,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre654593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6158
Nightclubs within 4 km7354
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 4 points.4
GlasgowWashington DC
Score3842
Protected land share 50 km %1610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %121
Land share of disc %9194
Park area within 2 km56 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Glasgow leads by 3 points.3
GlasgowWashington DC
Score4138
Tourist attractions within 2 km137
Park area within 2 km56 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 23 points.23
GlasgowWashington DC
Score5376
Notable places within 2 km80305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Glasgow leads by 11 points.11
GlasgowWashington DC
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
GlasgowWashington DC
Score4362
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall102 mm to 207 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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGlasgowWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 45 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
8 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
2 h 5 m
€189-295
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
7 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
7 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 15 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

MeasureGlasgowWashington DC
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation21 m72 m
Main airportGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGlasgowWashington DC
City population626,410689,545
People per km²1903,896
Museums within 10 km2999
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5482
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Glasgow 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.