VacationSelector

London or Philadelphia?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Philadelphia
51
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.

LondonPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. London and Philadelphia are level on 0.
LondonPhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km471
Coast distance43 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonPhiladelphia
Score8877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3171,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4035
Museums & heritage. London leads by 12 points.12
LondonPhiladelphia
Score7260
Museums within 10 km14889
Museums within 2 km of centre4948
Share of museums within 2 km %3354
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 36 points.36
LondonPhiladelphia
Score9559
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4662
Nightclubs within 4 km31241
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 9 points.9
LondonPhiladelphia
Score4049
Protected land share 50 km %1614
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9789
Park area within 2 km84 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 22 points.22
LondonPhiladelphia
Score7553
Tourist attractions within 2 km8516
Park area within 2 km84 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. London leads by 35 points.35
LondonPhiladelphia
Score8954
Notable places within 2 km64988
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonPhiladelphia
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. London leads by 3 points.3
LondonPhiladelphia
Score6360
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

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). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonPhiladelphia
HoustonIAH, HOU
9 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
8 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 55 m
€60-108
PHL · 11 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DetroitDTW, DET, YIP
7 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DenverDEN, APA
9 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
€128-183
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 117 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

MeasureLondonPhiladelphia
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
Elevation4 m12 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonPhiladelphia
City population8,799,7281,603,797
People per km²5,5984,339
Museums within 10 km21554
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11675

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or Philadelphia 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.