VacationSelector

New Orleans or Washington DC?

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

Your match

New Orleans
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

New OrleansWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. New Orleans leads by 21 points.21
New OrleansWashington DC
Score3918
Swim season months73
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance21 km34 km
Water distance17 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
New OrleansWashington DC
Score6177
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8031,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2536
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
New OrleansWashington DC
Score4555
Museums within 10 km4283
Museums within 2 km of centre3055
Share of museums within 2 km %7166
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
New OrleansWashington DC
Score5461
Drinking venues within 4 km7041,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre495593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7058
Nightclubs within 4 km4154
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
New OrleansWashington DC
Score2542
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8994
Park area within 2 km43 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. New Orleans leads by 8 points.8
New OrleansWashington DC
Score4638
Tourist attractions within 2 km227
Park area within 2 km43 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 36 points.36
New OrleansWashington DC
Score4076
Notable places within 2 km40305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New Orleans and Washington DC are level on 43.
New OrleansWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. New Orleans leads by 6 points.6
New OrleansWashington DC
Score6862
Monthly daytime high17.1 °C to 33 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall94 mm to 194 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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
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. New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew OrleansWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 15 m
€208-268
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 30 m
€106-150
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
1 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
3 h 50 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
1 h 45 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 5 m
€189-295
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
1 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 40 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
CancunCUN
1 h 55 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
3 h 15 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

MeasureNew OrleansWashington DC
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation-2 m72 m
Main airportLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew OrleansWashington DC
City population383,997689,545
People per km²4233,896
Museums within 10 km1699
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3982
Swim season, months above 21 °C7 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New Orleans 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.