VacationSelector

Las Vegas or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Las Vegas
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

Las VegasWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
Las VegasWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance372 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
Las VegasWashington DC
Score6277
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9151,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2436
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 36 points.36
Las VegasWashington DC
Score1955
Museums within 10 km2483
Museums within 2 km of centre455
Share of museums within 2 km %1766
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 3 points.3
Las VegasWashington DC
Score5861
Drinking venues within 4 km7931,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre485593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6158
Nightclubs within 4 km9054
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 21 points.21
Las VegasWashington DC
Score6342
Protected land share 50 km %5010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km7 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 4 points.4
Las VegasWashington DC
Score3438
Tourist attractions within 2 km197
Park area within 2 km7 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 25 points.25
Las VegasWashington DC
Score5176
Notable places within 2 km75305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Las Vegas and Washington DC are level on 43.
Las VegasWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Las Vegas leads by 10 points.10
Las VegasWashington DC
Score7262
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 40.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 21 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months120
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
Las Vegas
15
17
22
26
32
38
40
39
35
27
20
14
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
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. Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLas VegasWashington DC
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 55 m
€242-269
LAS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 30 m
€171-225
LAS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
2 h 20 m
€132-243
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 20 m
€261-438
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 35 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
13 h 50 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

MeasureLas VegasWashington DC
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation610 m72 m
Main airportHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLas VegasWashington DC
City population641,903689,545
People per km²1,8433,896
Museums within 10 km2199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre4982
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 Las Vegas 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.