VacationSelector

Sao Paulo or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Sao Paulo
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and 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.

Sao PauloWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance51 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 4 points.4
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score7377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7351,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2736
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score4355
Museums within 10 km8283
Museums within 2 km of centre2655
Share of museums within 2 km %3266
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score7261
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7471,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre896593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5158
Nightclubs within 4 km11854
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 9 points.9
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score5142
Protected land share 50 km %2610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %151
Land share of disc %9594
Park area within 2 km52 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Sao Paulo leads by 17 points.17
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score5538
Tourist attractions within 2 km387
Park area within 2 km52 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 26 points.26
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score5076
Notable places within 2 km68305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 38 points.38
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score8143
Price level global46.1100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 21 points.21
Sao PauloWashington DC
Score8362
Monthly daytime high22.8 °C to 29.2 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall26 mm to 297 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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSao PauloWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 30 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
12 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 5 m
€189-295
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
10 h 35 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 km
13 h 45 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 2026-09 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

MeasureSao PauloWashington DC
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCN60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-3UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193911
Elevation760 m72 m
Main airportSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSao PauloWashington DC
City population11,451,999689,545
People per km²7,5193,896
Museums within 10 km9099
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5982
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 Sao Paulo 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). 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.