VacationSelector

Toronto or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Toronto
54
match

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

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

TorontoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Toronto leads by 25 points.25
TorontoWashington DC
Score4318
Swim season months13
Beaches 10 km581
Coast distance533 km34 km
Water distance5 km34 km
Places to eat. Toronto leads by 5 points.5
TorontoWashington DC
Score8277
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1331,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3936
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
TorontoWashington DC
Score4355
Museums within 10 km3583
Museums within 2 km of centre2555
Share of museums within 2 km %7166
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Toronto leads by 8 points.8
TorontoWashington DC
Score6961
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5001,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre966593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6458
Nightclubs within 4 km10354
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
TorontoWashington DC
Score2642
Protected land share 50 km %210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km68 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Toronto leads by 19 points.19
TorontoWashington DC
Score5738
Tourist attractions within 2 km237
Park area within 2 km68 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
TorontoWashington DC
Score6176
Notable places within 2 km128305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Toronto leads by 11 points.11
TorontoWashington DC
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
TorontoWashington DC
Score5562
Monthly daytime high-0.2 °C to 27.4 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 85 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
Toronto
0
0
5
12
19
24
27
26
22
15
8
2
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Toronto
4
3
3
4
7
15
20
21
19
13
8
5
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Toronto
62
58
51
74
58
85
83
69
62
75
65
66
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Toronto
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
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. Toronto: 1991-2020 normals, Toronto City (1.1 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromTorontoWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
€244-359
YYZ · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
2 h 40 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€189-295
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 30 m
€185-501
YYZ · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
Fort LauderdaleFLL, FXE
3 h 0 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€178-223
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 30 m
€294-299
YYZ · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 55 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 25 m
€443-479
1 stop
YYZ · 20 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
San SalvadorSAL, ILS
4 h 45 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
4 h 15 m
€548-564
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 5 m
€1,024-1087
2 stops
YYZ · 20 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 40 m
€717-891
YYZ · 20 km
14 h 0 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

MeasureTorontoWashington DC
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation76 m72 m
Main airportToronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ)20 km from centre189 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureTorontoWashington DC
City population2,794,356689,545
People per km²4,4343,896
Museums within 10 km3299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre10282
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month3 months

Where else could you go?

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