VacationSelector

Melbourne or Washington DC?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

MelbourneWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Melbourne leads by 37 points.37
MelbourneWashington DC
Score5518
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km191
Coast distance4 km34 km
Water distance4 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 2 points.2
MelbourneWashington DC
Score7577
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,8881,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2936
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
MelbourneWashington DC
Score4955
Museums within 10 km4283
Museums within 2 km of centre2455
Share of museums within 2 km %5766
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 13 points.13
MelbourneWashington DC
Score7461
Drinking venues within 4 km1,9211,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,200593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6258
Nightclubs within 4 km12454
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 1 points.1
MelbourneWashington DC
Score4342
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8194
Park area within 2 km166 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Melbourne leads by 22 points.22
MelbourneWashington DC
Score6038
Tourist attractions within 2 km267
Park area within 2 km166 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
MelbourneWashington DC
Score5776
Notable places within 2 km103305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Melbourne leads by 7 points.7
MelbourneWashington DC
Score5043
Price level global90.2100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 14 points.14
MelbourneWashington DC
Score7662
Monthly daytime high13.6 °C to 26.8 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 69 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9
Washington DC
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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMelbourneWashington DC
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
15 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
17 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DohaDOH
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 15 m
€809-850
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
San FranciscoSFO
15 h 35 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Abu DhabiAUH
14 h 20 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
€856-961
2 stops
MEL · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureMelbourneWashington DC
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 m72 m
Main airportMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMelbourneWashington DC
City population5,350,705689,545
People per km²5353,896
Museums within 10 km4299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre8682
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 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.