VacationSelector

Miami or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Miami
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

MiamiWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Miami leads by 77 points.77
MiamiWashington DC
Score9518
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km201
Coast distance1 km34 km
Water distance1 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
MiamiWashington DC
Score6577
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8981,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2936
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 32 points.32
MiamiWashington DC
Score2355
Museums within 10 km2883
Museums within 2 km of centre655
Share of museums within 2 km %2166
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 11 points.11
MiamiWashington DC
Score5061
Drinking venues within 4 km5381,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre287593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5358
Nightclubs within 4 km6354
Nature & day trips. Miami leads by 30 points.30
MiamiWashington DC
Score7242
Protected land share 50 km %1610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %4894
Park area within 2 km50 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Miami leads by 6 points.6
MiamiWashington DC
Score4438
Tourist attractions within 2 km147
Park area within 2 km50 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 34 points.34
MiamiWashington DC
Score4276
Notable places within 2 km45305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Miami and Washington DC are level on 43.
MiamiWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Miami leads by 12 points.12
MiamiWashington DC
Score7462
Monthly daytime high24.7 °C to 32.7 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 267 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
Miami
25
26
27
29
31
32
33
33
32
30
28
26
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Miami
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Miami
47
55
63
85
157
267
186
242
259
193
90
62
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Miami
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Miami: 1991-2020 normals, Miami International Airport (10 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMiamiWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 45 m
€205-247
MIA · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€97-175
MIA · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€143-193
MIA · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€202-362
MIA · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 30 m
€103-188
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€144-205
MIA · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 0 m
€156-181
MIA · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€230
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
San SalvadorSAL, ILS
2 h 35 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
4 h 15 m
€548-564
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 7 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 2026-08 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

MeasureMiamiWashington DC
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 m72 m
Main airportMiami International Airport (MIA)7 km from centre199 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMiamiWashington DC
City population442,241689,545
People per km²3,0463,896
Museums within 10 km1799
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3982
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 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.