VacationSelector

Vienna or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Vienna
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
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.

ViennaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
ViennaWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance10,000 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Vienna and Washington DC are level on 77.
ViennaWashington DC
Score7777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6171,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3736
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 26 points.26
ViennaWashington DC
Score8155
Museums within 10 km19283
Museums within 2 km of centre11055
Share of museums within 2 km %5766
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 13 points.13
ViennaWashington DC
Score7461
Drinking venues within 4 km1,9481,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,089593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5658
Nightclubs within 4 km10854
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
ViennaWashington DC
Score3242
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km93 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Vienna leads by 31 points.31
ViennaWashington DC
Score6938
Tourist attractions within 2 km467
Park area within 2 km93 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
ViennaWashington DC
Score7576
Notable places within 2 km287305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vienna leads by 16 points.16
ViennaWashington DC
Score5943
Price level global76.9100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
ViennaWashington DC
Score6162
Monthly daytime high3.3 °C to 26.8 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 80 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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Vienna
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Vienna
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
Sunshine, hours per day
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromViennaWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€112-162
VIE · 18 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€180-245
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 25 m
€170-237
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 40 m
€292-307
VIE · 18 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 20 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CancunCUN
11 h 30 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
3 h 15 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

MeasureViennaWashington DC
Official languageGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation151 m72 m
Main airportVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureViennaWashington DC
City population2,028,289689,545
People per km²4,8903,896
Museums within 10 km15299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre11382
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 Vienna 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.