VacationSelector

Paris or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

ParisWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
ParisWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance149 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 13 points.13
ParisWashington DC
Score9077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,7321,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3336
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 21 points.21
ParisWashington DC
Score7655
Museums within 10 km18583
Museums within 2 km of centre6555
Share of museums within 2 km %3566
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Paris leads by 27 points.27
ParisWashington DC
Score8861
Drinking venues within 4 km3,7961,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,694593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4558
Nightclubs within 4 km20154
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 6 points.6
ParisWashington DC
Score4842
Protected land share 50 km %2810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %261
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km82 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 37 points.37
ParisWashington DC
Score7538
Tourist attractions within 2 km897
Park area within 2 km82 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 18 points.18
ParisWashington DC
Score9476
Notable places within 2 km865305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paris leads by 19 points.19
ParisWashington DC
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 4 points.4
ParisWashington DC
Score6662
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 26 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 75 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months10
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Paris
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
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. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromParisWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
€555-767
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 25 m
€687-789
CDG · 22 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€445-510
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
NiceNCE
1 h 30 m
€86-132
ORY · 14 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 55 m
€107-141
ORY · 14 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€138-242
ORY · 14 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 10 m
€509-719
1 stop
CDG · 22 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 2026-08 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

MeasureParisWashington 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
Elevation27 m72 m
Main airportCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureParisWashington DC
City population2,103,778689,545
People per km²19,9603,896
Museums within 10 km25199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre16982
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 Paris 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.