VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Ottawa?

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

Your match

Los Angeles
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on good for families and value for money 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.

Los AngelesOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 29 points.29
Los AngelesOttawa
Score290
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km09
Swim season months00
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance423 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Los Angeles leads by 2 points.2
Los AngelesOttawa
Score6664
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,337684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2234
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 17 points.17
Los AngelesOttawa
Score4932
Museums within 10 km6915
Museums within 2 km of centre238
Share of museums within 2 km %3353
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Los Angeles leads by 10 points.10
Los AngelesOttawa
Score5444
Drinking venues within 4 km660432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6570
Nightclubs within 4 km6435
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 21 points.21
Los AngelesOttawa
Score6241
Protected land share 50 km %268
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %80100
Park area within 2 km20 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 13 points.13
Los AngelesOttawa
Score3346
Tourist attractions within 2 km1111
Park area within 2 km20 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 4 points.4
Los AngelesOttawa
Score5450
Notable places within 2 km8871
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
Los AngelesOttawa
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 34 points.34
Los AngelesOttawa
Score8753
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm53 mm to 94 mm
Dry months80
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesOttawa
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 45 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
4 h 40 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 45 m
€166-318
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
4 h 50 m
€205-248
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
Puerto VallartaPVR
3 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
5 h 10 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureLos AngelesOttawa
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation106 m70 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesOttawa
City population3,898,7471,017,449
People per km²2,994366
Museums within 10 km3820
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4662
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Los Angeles 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.