VacationSelector

Sydney or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

SydneyWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 42 points.42
SydneyWashington DC
Score6018
Swim season months63
Beaches 10 km1601
Coast distance7 km34 km
Water distance7 km34 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 1 points.1
SydneyWashington DC
Score7877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,2051,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3136
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 4 points.4
SydneyWashington DC
Score5155
Museums within 10 km4483
Museums within 2 km of centre2055
Share of museums within 2 km %4566
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 14 points.14
SydneyWashington DC
Score7561
Drinking venues within 4 km2,0501,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,405593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6958
Nightclubs within 4 km12054
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 16 points.16
SydneyWashington DC
Score5842
Protected land share 50 km %1010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5294
Park area within 2 km115 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 26 points.26
SydneyWashington DC
Score6438
Tourist attractions within 2 km377
Park area within 2 km115 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
SydneyWashington DC
Score6076
Notable places within 2 km123305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
SydneyWashington DC
Score5043
Price level global90.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 19 points.19
SydneyWashington DC
Score8162
Monthly daytime high17.7 °C to 27.7 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSydneyWashington DC
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
San FranciscoSFO
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
19 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
DohaDOH
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 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 2026-08 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

MeasureSydneyWashington DC
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number000911
Elevation6 m72 m
Main airportSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSydneyWashington DC
City population5,450,496689,545
People per km²4493,896
Museums within 10 km3899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre7982
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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