Two of the fastest marathon courses on earth, two very different races. Here's every stat, side by side, to help you pick.
Indicative — based on GPX data. Both courses normalised to start at 0m.
✓ marks the better number on that stat.
Boston and New York are both point-to-point East Coast Majors with real hills, but they differ sharply in how you get a start line spot. Boston requires a qualifying time; New York is ballot-entry, drawing one of the largest fields in the sport at close to 60,000 finishers, nearly double Boston's roughly 28,500.
Terrain-wise they're closer than most pairings — Boston's 265m of gain against New York's 275m — so neither is an easy course, though Boston's net 135m drop gives it a faster average finish than New York's more evenly rolling five-borough route. Choose Boston if you want to earn your way in with a qualifying time and run the oldest continuous marathon in the world; choose New York for the scale, the five boroughs, and an open entry via ballot.