VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Santiago?

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 nature & day trips with your weighting.

Santiago
55
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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 AngelesSantiago
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 29 points.29
Los AngelesSantiago
Score290
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km00
Swim season months00
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance89 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Santiago leads by 6 points.6
Los AngelesSantiago
Score6672
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,3371,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2232
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 4 points.4
Los AngelesSantiago
Score4945
Museums within 10 km6987
Museums within 2 km of centre2330
Share of museums within 2 km %3334
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Santiago leads by 7 points.7
Los AngelesSantiago
Score5461
Drinking venues within 4 km660912
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432542
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6559
Nightclubs within 4 km64112
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 10 points.10
Los AngelesSantiago
Score6252
Protected land share 50 km %2617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %80100
Park area within 2 km20 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Santiago leads by 16 points.16
Los AngelesSantiago
Score3349
Tourist attractions within 2 km1112
Park area within 2 km20 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 6 points.6
Los AngelesSantiago
Score5448
Notable places within 2 km8862
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago leads by 38 points.38
Los AngelesSantiago
Score4381
Price level global10046.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 2 points.2
Los AngelesSantiago
Score8785
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C14.3 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm0 mm to 87 mm
Dry months88
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
Santiago
28
27
26
21
18
15
14
16
19
22
25
27
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Santiago
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Santiago
0
2
5
16
46
87
52
44
27
11
6
3
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Santiago
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Los Angeles
No sunshine record
Santiago
11
9
8
6
5
3
4
5
6
8
9
11

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). Santiago: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago Q. Normal (3.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesSantiago
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 35 m
€261-303
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
3 h 45 m
€267-313
SCL · 14 km
LimaLIM
8 h 35 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
SydneySYD, WSI
14 h 50 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
14 h 0 m
€1,325-1342
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 25 m
€600-640
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 0 m
€188-208
LAX · 19 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
3 h 15 m
€173-245
LAX · 19 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
4 h 50 m
€205-248
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
SCL · 14 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 AngelesSantiago
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Chilean Peso (CLP)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCL220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-4, UTC-3 in summer
Emergency number911Police 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132
Elevation106 m575 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)14 km from centre68 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesSantiago
City population3,898,7476,257,516
People per km²2,9947,468
Museums within 10 km3854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4664
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 Santiago 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.