VacationSelector

Manila or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Manila
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

ManilaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 58 points.58
ManilaWashington DC
Score7618
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance2 km34 km
Water distance2 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
ManilaWashington DC
Score5877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0151,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1736
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 5 points.5
ManilaWashington DC
Score5055
Museums within 10 km7783
Museums within 2 km of centre2355
Share of museums within 2 km %3066
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Manila and Washington DC are level on 61.
ManilaWashington DC
Score6161
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0821,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre374593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3558
Nightclubs within 4 km3654
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 13 points.13
ManilaWashington DC
Score2942
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7894
Park area within 2 km54 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 22 points.22
ManilaWashington DC
Score6038
Tourist attractions within 2 km377
Park area within 2 km54 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 24 points.24
ManilaWashington DC
Score5276
Notable places within 2 km79305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 47 points.47
ManilaWashington DC
Score9043
Price level global33.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
ManilaWashington DC
Score6162
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months40
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaWashington DC
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 55 m
€628-629
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
16 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 30 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
13 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
RiyadhRUH
9 h 50 m
€435-460
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
13 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 45 m
€428-448
MNL · 11 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
8 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 2026-09 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

MeasureManilaWashington DC
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation9 m72 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaWashington DC
City population1,902,590689,545
People per km²76,1043,896
Museums within 10 km2799
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre3982
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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