VacationSelector

London or Ottawa?

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

Your match

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

LondonOttawa
Beaches & swimming. London and Ottawa are level on 0.
LondonOttawa
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km479
Coast distance43 km423 km
Water distance
Places to eat. London leads by 24 points.24
LondonOttawa
Score8864
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4034
Museums & heritage. London leads by 40 points.40
LondonOttawa
Score7232
Museums within 10 km14815
Museums within 2 km of centre498
Share of museums within 2 km %3353
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 51 points.51
LondonOttawa
Score9544
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4670
Nightclubs within 4 km31235
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 1 points.1
LondonOttawa
Score4041
Protected land share 50 km %168
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %97100
Park area within 2 km84 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 29 points.29
LondonOttawa
Score7546
Tourist attractions within 2 km8511
Park area within 2 km84 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 39 points.39
LondonOttawa
Score8950
Notable places within 2 km64971
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London and Ottawa are level on 54.
LondonOttawa
Score5454
Price level global84.984
Daily budget
Year-round weather. London leads by 10 points.10
LondonOttawa
Score6353
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm53 mm to 94 mm
Dry months10
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Ottawa
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonOttawa
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 45 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CalgaryYYC
8 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
9 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureLondonOttawa
Official languageEnglishFrench, English
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation4 m70 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonOttawa
City population8,799,7281,017,449
People per km²5,598366
Museums within 10 km21520
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11662

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or Ottawa 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. 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.