VacationSelector
Flinders Street Station, Melbourne
MelbourneFlinders Street Station
The steamboat Natchez on the Mississippi, New Orleans
New OrleansThe steamboat Natchez on the Mississippi

Photos: Melbourne by Medelam, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped; New Orleans by Bernard Spragg, CC0.

Melbourne or New Orleans?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Melbourne for

  • beaches
  • wellness
  • nature and the outdoors

What lies behind each score is written up on Melbourne’s own page.

Choose New Orleans for

  • culture and sights
  • nightlife
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on New Orleans’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Melbourne 50, New Orleans 14: Melbourne leads by 36 points.
Food & drink. Melbourne 75, New Orleans 84: New Orleans leads by 9 points.
Culture & sights. Melbourne 57, New Orleans 67: New Orleans leads by 10 points.
Nightlife. Melbourne 75, New Orleans 85: New Orleans leads by 10 points.
Nature & outdoors. Melbourne 70, New Orleans 42: Melbourne leads by 28 points.
Day trips. Melbourne 62, New Orleans 52: Melbourne leads by 10 points.
Good for families. Melbourne 73, New Orleans 55: Melbourne leads by 18 points.
Getting around. Melbourne 76, New Orleans 55: Melbourne leads by 21 points.
Shopping & style. Melbourne 70, New Orleans 54: Melbourne leads by 16 points.
Affordability. Melbourne 31, New Orleans 40: New Orleans leads by 9 points.
Live music & performing arts. Melbourne 72, New Orleans 80: New Orleans leads by 8 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Melbourne 54, New Orleans 25: Melbourne leads by 29 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Melbourne and New Orleans.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Melbourne
Best match
64match

Wins on beaches and wellness with your weighting.

New Orleans
54match

Wins on culture and sights and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Melbourne in July

14 °Cdaytime high
6 °Cnight-time low
46 mmrain in the month
4 hsunshine a day
12 °Csea
10 hdaylight a day

New Orleans in July

33 °Cdaytime high
24 °Cnight-time low
169 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
30 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200JFMAMJJASOND
MelbourneNew Orleans

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre). New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureMelbourneNew Orleans
Official languageEnglish-
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number000911
Elevation31 m-2 m
Main airportMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre69 non-stop destinationsLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre51 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMelbourneNew Orleans
City population5,350,705383,997
People per km²535423
Museums within 10 km4316
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone7 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Melbourne or New Orleans somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.