VacationSelector

New York or Las Vegas?

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

Your match

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Las Vegas
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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 Las Vegas if you want warmth and dry air, with open country close by: half the land around the city is protected, and no month brings more than 40mm of rain.

Choose New York if the trip is about eating, museums and going out after dark, with 17 beaches nearby and swimmable sea in high summer.

Scoreboard

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

New YorkLas Vegas
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 64 points.64
New YorkLas Vegas
Score640
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km170
Coast distance1 km372 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. New York leads by 33 points.33
New YorkLas Vegas
Score9562
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,032915
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3824
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 41 points.41
New YorkLas Vegas
Score6019
Museums within 10 km11924
Museums within 2 km of centre314
Share of museums within 2 km %2617
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. New York leads by 31 points.31
New YorkLas Vegas
Score8958
Drinking venues within 4 km4,159793
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,015485
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4861
Nightclubs within 4 km19290
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 24 points.24
New YorkLas Vegas
Score3963
Protected land share 50 km %450
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %69100
Park area within 2 km134 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 38 points.38
New YorkLas Vegas
Score7234
Tourist attractions within 2 km3719
Park area within 2 km134 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km74
Sights concentration. New York leads by 23 points.23
New YorkLas Vegas
Score7451
Notable places within 2 km26875
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New York and Las Vegas are level on 43.
New YorkLas Vegas
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Las Vegas leads by 14 points.14
New YorkLas Vegas
Score5872
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C13.9 °C to 40.3 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 mm1 mm to 21 mm
Dry months012
0255075100

Where they differ

New York has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many museums, plus 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. It also has 17 beaches nearby, with the sea at 21°C or more for three months of the year.

Las Vegas faces outward instead: half the land around it is protected, against a small fraction around New York, and it runs warmer and drier, with highs of 14-40°C across the year against 5-30°C and no month above 40mm.

Where they are alike

Both are built around a dense centre, where the notable places sit within walking distance of one another; New York's core simply holds about three times as many of them.

They also share a habit of late evenings and a broad choice of places to eat. Las Vegas keeps almost all its bars and clubs near the centre, while in New York about half sit further out, so in either case a central base puts an evening within reach on foot.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for food and culture should pick New York: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a far wider range of kitchens, many times as many museums, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Travellers who want a city as a base for open country should pick Las Vegas, where half the surrounding land is protected, days run warm and dry, and rain rarely interrupts a planned drive.

Families are better served in New York, with about twice as many attractions near the centre, far more park space, 7 theme parks within reach against Las Vegas's 4, and beaches through the summer.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries no daily budget for either city, and the value figure they share is a national price level, identical by construction, so it tells you nothing about which trip costs more. Check prices yourself.

The sunshine series is missing for both, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured and the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. New York's beach strength is seasonal, with the sea at 21°C or more in only three months, and Las Vegas's dry warmth reaches 40°C in July, heat to plan around rather than enjoy.

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 York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Las Vegas
15
17
22
26
32
38
40
39
35
27
20
14
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Las Vegas suits spring and autumn. April and October bring highs of 26-27°C with rain under 10mm, and the shoulder months either side stay dry too. July, at 40°C, is the one to avoid.

New York is at its best from June to September, with highs of 27-30°C and the sea reaching 23°C in August. Rain is steady all year at around 100mm a month, so showers can arrive in any of them; winter days near 5°C make it a short-break city then.

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkLas Vegas
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
3 h 30 m
€171-225
LAS · 4 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
4 h 35 m
€230-263
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 20 m
€201-385
LGA · 13 km
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
RaleighRDU
1 h 30 m
€201-279
1 stop
LGA · 13 km
4 h 30 m
€217-294
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
2 h 5 m
€165-236
EWR · 14 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
4 h 20 m
€261-438
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 45 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 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 YorkLas Vegas
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation25 m610 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkLas Vegas
City population8,804,190641,903
People per km²7,2561,843
Museums within 10 km15721
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre13249
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New York or Las Vegas 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.