VacationSelector

Washington DC or West Palm Beach?

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

Your match

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

West Palm Beach
42
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.

Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Beaches & swimming. West Palm Beach leads by 70 points.70
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score1888
Swim season months312
Beaches 10 km110
Coast distance34 km0 km
Water distance34 km0 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 40 points.40
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score7737
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,666262
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3614
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 38 points.38
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score5517
Museums within 10 km835
Museums within 2 km of centre553
Share of museums within 2 km %6660
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 41 points.41
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score6120
Drinking venues within 4 km1,029132
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre59390
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5868
Nightclubs within 4 km5410
Nature & day trips. West Palm Beach leads by 27 points.27
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score4269
Protected land share 50 km %1015
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %9445
Park area within 2 km96 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score3821
Tourist attractions within 2 km73
Park area within 2 km96 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 64 points.64
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score7612
Notable places within 2 km3058
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Washington DC and West Palm Beach are level on 43.
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. West Palm Beach leads by 13 points.13
Washington DCWest Palm Beach
Score6275
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.7 °C24 °C to 32.5 °C
Monthly rainfall65 mm to 108 mm67 mm to 217 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
West Palm Beach
24
25
26
28
30
32
32
33
31
30
27
25
Sea temperature, °C
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
West Palm Beach
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Rainfall, mm
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
West Palm Beach
86
67
84
92
126
214
145
217
199
147
88
78
Daylight, hours per day
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
West Palm Beach
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre). West Palm Beach: 1991-2020 normals, Palm Beach International (5.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromWashington DCWest Palm Beach
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
CharlotteCLT
1 h 15 m
€187-219
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
San JuanSJU, SIG
3 h 40 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
2 h 40 m
€124-126
1 stop
FLL · 72 km
MadridMAD
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 105 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 105 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureWashington DCWest Palm Beach
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)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
Elevation72 m6 m
Main airportRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinationsPresident Donald J. Trump International Airport (DJT)6 km from centre37 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureWashington DCWest Palm Beach
City population689,545117,415
People per km²3,896786
Museums within 10 km994
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre8218
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Washington DC or West Palm Beach 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.