VacationSelector

Montpellier or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
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.

MontpellierWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 14 points.14
MontpellierWashington DC
Score3218
Swim season months23
Beaches 10 km81
Coast distance9 km34 km
Water distance9 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
MontpellierWashington DC
Score6577
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7371,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3436
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 29 points.29
MontpellierWashington DC
Score2655
Museums within 10 km1483
Museums within 2 km of centre355
Share of museums within 2 km %2166
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 23 points.23
MontpellierWashington DC
Score3861
Drinking venues within 4 km3181,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8358
Nightclubs within 4 km2554
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 1 points.1
MontpellierWashington DC
Score4342
Protected land share 50 km %1510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %101
Land share of disc %7094
Park area within 2 km55 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 6 points.6
MontpellierWashington DC
Score4438
Tourist attractions within 2 km87
Park area within 2 km55 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km71
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 38 points.38
MontpellierWashington DC
Score3876
Notable places within 2 km35305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier leads by 19 points.19
MontpellierWashington DC
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 12 points.12
MontpellierWashington DC
Score7462
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months50
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierWashington DC
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CasablancaCMN
2 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
13 h 50 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureMontpellierWashington DC
Official languageFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation7 m72 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierWashington DC
City population310,240689,545
People per km²5,4523,896
Museums within 10 km1499
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre6582
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Montpellier 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.