VacationSelector

Melbourne or New York?

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

Your match

Melbourne
60
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration 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.

MelbourneNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 9 points.9
MelbourneNew York
Score5564
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km1917
Coast distance4 km1 km
Water distance4 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 20 points.20
MelbourneNew York
Score7595
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,8886,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2938
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 11 points.11
MelbourneNew York
Score4960
Museums within 10 km42119
Museums within 2 km of centre2431
Share of museums within 2 km %5726
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. New York leads by 15 points.15
MelbourneNew York
Score7489
Drinking venues within 4 km1,9214,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,2002,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6248
Nightclubs within 4 km124192
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 4 points.4
MelbourneNew York
Score4339
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8169
Park area within 2 km166 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 12 points.12
MelbourneNew York
Score6072
Tourist attractions within 2 km2637
Park area within 2 km166 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km17
Sights concentration. New York leads by 17 points.17
MelbourneNew York
Score5774
Notable places within 2 km103268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Melbourne leads by 7 points.7
MelbourneNew York
Score5043
Price level global90.2100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 18 points.18
MelbourneNew York
Score7658
Monthly daytime high13.6 °C to 26.8 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 69 mm74 mm to 112 mm
Dry months00
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
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9
New York
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMelbourneNew York
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
15 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
7 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
18 h 45 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
SydneySYD, WSI
1 h 30 m
€119-126
MEL · 19 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 15 m
€809-850
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
17 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
3 h 20 m
€201-385
LGA · 13 km
Hong KongHKG
9 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
15 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
AucklandAKL
3 h 45 m
€515
MEL · 19 km
17 h 25 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
DohaDOH
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
SantiagoSCL
13 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
JFK · 21 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureMelbourneNew York
Official languageEnglish–
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number000911
Elevation31 m25 m
Main airportMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMelbourneNew York
City population5,350,7058,804,190
People per km²5357,256
Museums within 10 km42157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre86132
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 Melbourne or New York 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.