Las Vegas or Los Angeles?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on museums & heritage and beaches & swimming with your weighting.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Las Vegas if the trip is about nights out and the desert around it: more bars and clubs near the centre, more theme parks and attractions, and dry, warm months in spring and autumn.
Choose Los Angeles if you want museums, a walkable centre with more to see in it, and weather that stays within 19-25°C all year rather than swinging to 40°C.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 29 points.29
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 29 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 372 km | — |
| Water distance | — | — |
| Beaches 25 km | — | 11 |
| Warmest sea temp | — | 20.2 °C |
| Scoring variant | — | beachScoreWideRing |
| Declared | — | 2026-08-25 |
| Register | — | seed/editorial-overrides.json |
Places to eat. Los Angeles leads by 4 points.4
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 66 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 915 | 1,337 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 24 | 22 |
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 30 points.30
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 19 | 49 |
| Museums within 10 km | 24 | 69 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 4 | 23 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 17 | 33 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 1 |
Nightlife. Las Vegas leads by 4 points.4
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 54 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 793 | 660 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 485 | 432 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 61 | 65 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 90 | 64 |
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 1 points.1
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 63 | 62 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 50 | 26 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 80 |
| Park area within 2 km | 7 hectares | 20 hectares |
Good for families. Las Vegas leads by 1 points.1
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 34 | 33 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 19 | 11 |
| Park area within 2 km | 7 hectares | 20 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 4 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 3 points.3
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 51 | 54 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 75 | 88 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Las Vegas and Los Angeles are level on 43.
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 43 | 43 |
| Price level global | 100 | 100 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 15 points.15
| Las Vegas | Los Angeles | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 87 |
| Monthly daytime high | 13.9 °C to 40.3 °C | 18.6 °C to 24.7 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 1 mm to 21 mm | 0 mm to 76 mm |
| Dry months | 12 | 8 |
Where they differ
Las Vegas is the stronger pick for going out, with more bars and nightclubs, most of them near the centre. It has about twice as many tourist attractions close in, 4 theme parks within reach against 2, and 50% of the land around it protected against 26% around Los Angeles.
Los Angeles has more museums and a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach that Las Vegas cannot match. Its weather is steadier, 19-25°C against a Las Vegas range of 14-40°C, and it has coast, if cool water.
Where they are alike
The two are level on days out of town. Las Vegas has protected land around it, Los Angeles more park space near the centre, but either way a day away from the streets is easy to plan.
They are close on eating out as well, with a similar range of kitchens in both. Nightlife sits close too: both keep their bars and clubs near the centre. Both centres are walkable, and neither is built around families.
Which traveller are you?
If your trip is built around evenings out, Las Vegas is the one: more bars and more nightclubs than Los Angeles, and most of them within walking reach of the centre, so you are not planning transport around them.
Anyone travelling for museums and heritage should choose Los Angeles, which has roughly three times as many, plus a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach. Las Vegas has little to offer on that front.
Families are better served in Las Vegas, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and 4 theme parks within reach against 2, though Los Angeles has more park space and a coast, if a cool one at 20°C.
What the numbers don't tell you
No cost comparison is possible between these two. The value figure is a national price level shared by both cities by construction, and the dataset carries no daily budget for either, so nothing on this page tells you which trip costs more.
The weather picture is incomplete as well: no nearby station records sunshine hours for either city, so the monthly ratings rest on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. And the Los Angeles lead on the coast axis is about proximity rather than swimming: neither city has a beach close by, and the sea tops out at 20°C in August. The Las Vegas dry record sits alongside 40°C in July.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre). Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre).
Las Vegas is at its best in April and October, with highs of 26-27°C and under 10mm of rain. July is the month to avoid, at 40°C with little relief.
Los Angeles is steadier and comes into its own from July to September, when highs reach 24-25°C, rain is near zero and the sea is at its warmest. Winter is where they part: Los Angeles takes 73-76mm in January, while Las Vegas stays dry through the cool months.
Getting there
| Flying from | Las Vegas | Los Angeles |
|---|---|---|
| San FranciscoSFO | 1 h 25 m €91-219 LAS · 4 km | 1 h 20 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| PhoenixPHX, AZA | 1 h 10 m no fares LAS · 4 km | 1 h 20 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| Salt Lake CitySLC | 1 h 20 m no fares LAS · 4 km | 1 h 45 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 4 h 55 m €242-269 LAS · 4 km | 5 h 20 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| SeattleSEA, BFI | 2 h 20 m €132-243 1 stop LAS · 4 km | 2 h 30 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1 | 3 h 30 m €171-225 LAS · 4 km | 4 h 0 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| DenverDEN, APA | 1 h 50 m no fares LAS · 4 km | 2 h 20 m no fares LAX · 19 km |
| Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC | 3 h 30 m no fares LAS · 4 km | 3 h 35 m €261-303 1 stop LAX · 19 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 10 h 55 m no fares LAS · 4 km | 11 h 25 m €600-640 1 stop LAX · 19 km |
| SeoulICN, GMP | 12 h 0 m no fares LAS · 4 km | 12 h 0 m €570-646 LAX · 19 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
| Measure | Las Vegas | Los Angeles |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | US Dollar (USD) | US Dollar (USD) |
| Sockets | AB120 V, 60 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer | UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer |
| Emergency number | 911 | 911 |
| Elevation | 610 m | 106 m |
| Main airport | Harry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinations | Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Las Vegas | Los Angeles |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 641,903 | 3,898,747 |
| People per km² | 1,843 | 2,994 |
| Museums within 10 km | 21 | 38 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 1 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 49 | 46 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | None |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Las Vegas or Los Angeles somewhere new.