VacationSelector

London or Washington DC?

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 good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

LondonWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
LondonWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km471
Coast distance43 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonWashington DC
Score8877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3171,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4036
Museums & heritage. London leads by 17 points.17
LondonWashington DC
Score7255
Museums within 10 km14883
Museums within 2 km of centre4955
Share of museums within 2 km %3366
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. London leads by 34 points.34
LondonWashington DC
Score9561
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3271,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4658
Nightclubs within 4 km31254
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 2 points.2
LondonWashington DC
Score4042
Protected land share 50 km %1610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %141
Land share of disc %9794
Park area within 2 km84 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 37 points.37
LondonWashington DC
Score7538
Tourist attractions within 2 km857
Park area within 2 km84 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 13 points.13
LondonWashington DC
Score8976
Notable places within 2 km649305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonWashington DC
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. London leads by 1 points.1
LondonWashington DC
Score6362
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Washington DC
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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
8 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 0 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
CharlotteCLT
8 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 15 m
€187-219
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
9 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 35 m
€184-208
LHR · 23 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 5 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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

MeasureLondonWashington DC
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 m72 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonWashington DC
City population8,799,728689,545
People per km²5,5983,896
Museums within 10 km21599
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre11682
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 London 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.