VacationSelector

Miami or New York?

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

Your match

Miami
56
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

The verdict

Choose Miami if the point of the trip is water and open ground: sea warm enough to swim in every month of the year, 1km from the centre, and much more protected land within day-trip reach.

Choose New York if you want museums, restaurants and late nights close together on foot, and more organised things to do with children.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

MiamiNew York
Beaches & swimming. Miami leads by 31 points.31
MiamiNew York
Score9564
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km2017
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 30 points.30
MiamiNew York
Score6595
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8986,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2938
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 37 points.37
MiamiNew York
Score2360
Museums within 10 km28119
Museums within 2 km of centre631
Share of museums within 2 km %2126
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. New York leads by 39 points.39
MiamiNew York
Score5089
Drinking venues within 4 km5384,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2872,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5348
Nightclubs within 4 km63192
Nature & day trips. Miami leads by 33 points.33
MiamiNew York
Score7239
Protected land share 50 km %164
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4869
Park area within 2 km50 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 28 points.28
MiamiNew York
Score4472
Tourist attractions within 2 km1437
Park area within 2 km50 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. New York leads by 32 points.32
MiamiNew York
Score4274
Notable places within 2 km45268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Miami and New York are level on 43.
MiamiNew York
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Miami leads by 16 points.16
MiamiNew York
Score7458
Monthly daytime high24.7 °C to 32.7 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 267 mm74 mm to 112 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Miami's advantage is outdoors. 16% of the land around it is protected against 4% around New York, and the sea stays at 21°C or more all 12 months of the year against New York's 3.

New York has many times as many museums, plus 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Miami has none. It also has many times as many places to drink and about three times as many nightclubs, and many more notable places within walking distance of the centre.

Where they are alike

Both peak in July, Miami at 33°C and New York at 30°C, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so rain is possible whenever you go.

Beaches and family outings are where else they meet. The sea is 1km from both centres and each has a similar number of beaches within reach, and both have theme parks and park space near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming is the reason for the trip, Miami. The sea is 1km from the centre and stays at 21°C or more in all 12 months, and there are beaches enough to spread out along.

If you are going for museums, eating and late nights, New York: many times as many restaurants and bars near the centre, a somewhat wider range of kitchens, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Travelling with children, New York again: about three times as many attractions and park space near the centre, and 7 theme parks within reach against Miami's 2.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible between these two. There is no daily budget figure for either city, and the value rating is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it carries no information about which trip works out dearer. Read nothing into it in either direction.

Sunshine hours are not recorded near either city, so that side of the weather comparison is simply unmeasured, and the monthly ratings rest on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Miami's warmest sea, 30°C in August, also falls in its wettest stretch, at 242mm, so the best swimming month is not the driest.

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
Miami
25
26
27
29
31
32
33
33
32
30
28
26
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Miami
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Miami
47
55
63
85
157
267
186
242
259
193
90
62
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Miami
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Miami: 1991-2020 normals, Miami International Airport (10 km from centre). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Miami is the better pick from November to March: highs of 25-28°C, sea at 25-27°C and the year's driest run at 47-63mm from December to March. From June to September the heat reaches 33°C and rain climbs to 186-267mm.

New York works from May to September, with highs of 22-30°C and rain spread evenly at 91-112mm rather than concentrated, and the sea reaching 23°C in August. January is the month to avoid, with highs of 5°C.

Getting there

Flying fromMiamiNew York
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€143-193
MIA · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 25 m
€127-180
MIA · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 0 m
€156-181
MIA · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€201-279
1 stop
LGA · 13 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€97-175
MIA · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€165-236
EWR · 14 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€202-362
MIA · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€144-205
MIA · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€201-385
LGA · 13 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 30 m
€103-188
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€254-372
1 stop
LGA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 5 m
€278-290
MIA · 7 km
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
13 h 10 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
11 h 25 m
€622-836
1 stop
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 2026-09 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

MeasureMiamiNew York
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation2 m25 m
Main airportMiami International Airport (MIA)7 km from centre199 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMiamiNew York
City population442,2418,804,190
People per km²3,0467,256
Museums within 10 km17157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre39132
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 Miami 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.