VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Washington DC?

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, 1 point apart

Los Angeles
53
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration 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 AngelesWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 11 points.11
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score2918
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km01
Swim season months03
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 11 points.11
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score6677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,3371,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2236
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score4955
Museums within 10 km6983
Museums within 2 km of centre2355
Share of museums within 2 km %3366
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score5461
Drinking venues within 4 km6601,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6558
Nightclubs within 4 km6454
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 20 points.20
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score6242
Protected land share 50 km %2610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8094
Park area within 2 km20 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 5 points.5
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score3338
Tourist attractions within 2 km117
Park area within 2 km20 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 22 points.22
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score5476
Notable places within 2 km88305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Los Angeles and Washington DC are level on 43.
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 25 points.25
Los AngelesWashington DC
Score8762
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
Las VegasLAS
1 h 5 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
2 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Salt Lake CitySLC
1 h 45 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
4 h 20 m
€288
LAX · 19 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
San SalvadorSAL, ILS
5 h 5 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 15 m
€548-564
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 0 m
€570-646
LAX · 19 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 25 m
€964-1015
LAX · 19 km
14 h 0 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 2026-09, 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 AngelesWashington DC
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 m72 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesWashington DC
City population3,898,747689,545
People per km²2,9943,896
Museums within 10 km3899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4682
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Los Angeles 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. 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.