VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Philadelphia?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Los Angeles
53
match

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

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat 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 AngelesPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 29 points.29
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score290
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km01
Swim season months00
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 11 points.11
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score6677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,3371,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2235
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 11 points.11
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score4960
Museums within 10 km6989
Museums within 2 km of centre2348
Share of museums within 2 km %3354
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 5 points.5
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score5459
Drinking venues within 4 km660930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6562
Nightclubs within 4 km6441
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 13 points.13
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score6249
Protected land share 50 km %2614
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8089
Park area within 2 km20 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 20 points.20
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score3353
Tourist attractions within 2 km1116
Park area within 2 km20 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Los Angeles and Philadelphia are level on 54.
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score5454
Notable places within 2 km8888
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Los Angeles and Philadelphia are level on 43.
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 27 points.27
Los AngelesPhiladelphia
Score8760
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Los Angeles
No sunshine record
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. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesPhiladelphia
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
3 h 15 m
€173-245
LAX · 19 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
Las VegasLAS
1 h 5 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
2 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
5 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 35 m
€261-303
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DublinDUB
10 h 25 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DohaDOH
16 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureLos AngelesPhiladelphia
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation106 m12 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesPhiladelphia
City population3,898,7471,603,797
People per km²2,9944,339
Museums within 10 km3854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4675
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 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. 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.