VacationSelector

Washington DC or Zagreb?

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 places to eat and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Zagreb
47
match

Wins on value for money 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 DCZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
Washington DCZagreb
Score180
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km18
Coast distance34 km117 km
Water distance34 km—
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 25 points.25
Washington DCZagreb
Score7752
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,666374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3627
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
Washington DCZagreb
Score5545
Museums within 10 km8341
Museums within 2 km of centre5540
Share of museums within 2 km %6698
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC and Zagreb are level on 61.
Washington DCZagreb
Score6161
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0291,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre593571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5857
Nightclubs within 4 km5463
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
Washington DCZagreb
Score4234
Protected land share 50 km %109
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %94100
Park area within 2 km96 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
Washington DCZagreb
Score3828
Tourist attractions within 2 km77
Park area within 2 km96 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
Washington DCZagreb
Score7660
Notable places within 2 km305122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zagreb leads by 37 points.37
Washington DCZagreb
Score4380
Price level global10048.5
Daily budget—€138
Year-round weather. Washington DC and Zagreb are level on 62.
Washington DCZagreb
Score6262
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.7 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall65 mm to 108 mm47 mm to 104 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
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Zagreb
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Zagreb
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Washington DC
No sunshine record
Zagreb
2
4
5
6
8
9
9
9
6
4
2
2

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). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromWashington DCZagreb
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
DohaDOH
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 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

MeasureWashington DCZagreb
Official language–Croatian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation72 m127 m
Main airportRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureWashington DCZagreb
City population689,545767,131
People per km²3,896–
Museums within 10 km9927
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre8242
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 Washington DC or Zagreb 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.