VacationSelector

Lisbon or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on 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.

LisbonWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 39 points.39
LisbonWashington DC
Score5718
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km241
Coast distance2 km34 km
Water distance2 km34 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
LisbonWashington DC
Score8077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,4961,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3136
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 15 points.15
LisbonWashington DC
Score7055
Museums within 10 km12483
Museums within 2 km of centre5455
Share of museums within 2 km %4466
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 4 points.4
LisbonWashington DC
Score6561
Drinking venues within 4 km1,2251,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre956593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7858
Nightclubs within 4 km6554
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 14 points.14
LisbonWashington DC
Score5642
Protected land share 50 km %1110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5494
Park area within 2 km77 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 31 points.31
LisbonWashington DC
Score6938
Tourist attractions within 2 km827
Park area within 2 km77 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
LisbonWashington DC
Score6676
Notable places within 2 km169305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 31 points.31
LisbonWashington DC
Score7443
Price level global55.9100
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 16 points.16
LisbonWashington DC
Score7862
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months40
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 25 m
€480-569
2 stops
LIS · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 0 m
€744-1049
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 40 m
€649-673
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
7 h 50 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
14 h 5 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

MeasureLisbonWashington DC
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m72 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonWashington DC
City population545,796689,545
People per km²5,4533,896
Museums within 10 km7899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre10682
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 Lisbon 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.