VacationSelector

Melbourne or Ottawa?

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

Your match

Melbourne
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on value for money 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.

MelbourneOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Melbourne leads by 55 points.55
MelbourneOttawa
Score550
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km199
Coast distance4 km423 km
Water distance4 km—
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 11 points.11
MelbourneOttawa
Score7564
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,888684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2934
Museums & heritage. Melbourne leads by 17 points.17
MelbourneOttawa
Score4932
Museums within 10 km4215
Museums within 2 km of centre248
Share of museums within 2 km %5753
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 30 points.30
MelbourneOttawa
Score7444
Drinking venues within 4 km1,921432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,200303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6270
Nightclubs within 4 km12435
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 2 points.2
MelbourneOttawa
Score4341
Protected land share 50 km %68
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %81100
Park area within 2 km166 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Melbourne leads by 14 points.14
MelbourneOttawa
Score6046
Tourist attractions within 2 km2611
Park area within 2 km166 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Melbourne leads by 7 points.7
MelbourneOttawa
Score5750
Notable places within 2 km10371
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 4 points.4
MelbourneOttawa
Score5054
Price level global90.284
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 23 points.23
MelbourneOttawa
Score7653
Monthly daytime high13.6 °C to 26.8 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 69 mm53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9
Ottawa
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). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Before you go

MeasureMelbourneOttawa
Official languageEnglishFrench, English
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number000911
Elevation31 m70 m
Main airportMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMelbourneOttawa
City population5,350,7051,017,449
People per km²535366
Museums within 10 km4220
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8662
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Melbourne or Ottawa 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.