VacationSelector

Ottawa or Vancouver?

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

Your match

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on sights concentration with your weighting.

Vancouver
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

OttawaVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Vancouver leads by 60 points.60
OttawaVancouver
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km9109
Coast distance423 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Vancouver leads by 10 points.10
OttawaVancouver
Score6474
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6841,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3435
Museums & heritage. Vancouver leads by 2 points.2
OttawaVancouver
Score3234
Museums within 10 km1527
Museums within 2 km of centre815
Share of museums within 2 km %5356
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Vancouver leads by 13 points.13
OttawaVancouver
Score4457
Drinking venues within 4 km432848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7071
Nightclubs within 4 km3544
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 36 points.36
OttawaVancouver
Score4177
Protected land share 50 km %819
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10060
Park area within 2 km122 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Vancouver leads by 7 points.7
OttawaVancouver
Score4653
Tourist attractions within 2 km1115
Park area within 2 km122 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 2 points.2
OttawaVancouver
Score5048
Notable places within 2 km7163
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa and Vancouver are level on 54.
OttawaVancouver
Score5454
Price level global8484
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Ottawa and Vancouver are level on 53.
OttawaVancouver
Score5353
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 mm42 mm to 245 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Ottawa
No sunshine record
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOttawaVancouver
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
4 h 35 m
€210-223
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 0 m
€219-262
2 stops
YVR · 9 km
CancunCUN
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
CalgaryYYC
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€73-86
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
KelownaYLW
4 h 30 m
€380-488
1 stop
YOW · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
EdmontonYEG
4 h 0 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 35 m
€117-152
YVR · 9 km
Puerto VallartaPVR
5 h 10 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
4 h 50 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
WinnipegYWG
2 h 40 m
€174-220
1 stop
YOW · 12 km
2 h 50 m
€154-245
YVR · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureOttawaVancouver
Official languageFrench, EnglishFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation70 m2 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaVancouver
City population1,017,449662,248
People per km²3665,759
Museums within 10 km2026
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6285
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ottawa or Vancouver 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.