VacationSelector

Oslo or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Oslo
✓ Best match
56
match

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

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on year-round weather and places to eat 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.

OsloWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Oslo leads by 42 points.42
OsloWashington DC
Score6018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km1631
Coast distance1 km34 km
Water distance1 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
OsloWashington DC
Score6777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8531,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3436
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
OsloWashington DC
Score4855
Museums within 10 km7083
Museums within 2 km of centre3755
Share of museums within 2 km %5366
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
OsloWashington DC
Score5361
Drinking venues within 4 km6951,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre562593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8158
Nightclubs within 4 km4154
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 19 points.19
OsloWashington DC
Score6142
Protected land share 50 km %2210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %11
Land share of disc %9494
Park area within 2 km88 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Oslo leads by 10 points.10
OsloWashington DC
Score4838
Tourist attractions within 2 km137
Park area within 2 km88 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
OsloWashington DC
Score6976
Notable places within 2 km207305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Oslo leads by 11 points.11
OsloWashington DC
Score5443
Price level global85.1100
Daily budget€203
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 14 points.14
OsloWashington DC
Score4862
Monthly daytime high0.1 °C to 22.7 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 104 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
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsloWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 40 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€162-207
OSL · 37 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 15 m
€145-204
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
€163-249
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 15 m
€187-227
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 30 m
€213-241
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DohaDOH
6 h 30 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ReykjavikKEF, RKV
2 h 45 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
5 h 55 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

MeasureOsloWashington DC
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyNorwegian Krone (NOK)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 113, fire 110911
Elevation23 m72 m
Main airportOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsloWashington DC
City population717,710689,545
People per km²3,896
Museums within 10 km6099
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7582
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Oslo 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). 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.