Boston vs Berlin: Which Is Harder to Get Into?

Published August 23, 2026 · Estimates, updated each registration cycle

Both races turn away far more runners than they accept, but they turn them away for opposite reasons. Boston is a speed filter: run fast enough under your age and gender standard and you are in, with no luck involved. Berlin is mostly a ballot, so for the great majority of entrants a place is a draw and your marathon time has nothing to do with it. Which one is harder depends entirely on whether you would rather train for a number or wait for an email.

How Boston decides

Boston has two gates. First the qualifying standard for your age group, then the cutoff. The cutoff exists because more qualifiers apply than there are qualifier places, so the Boston Athletic Association ranks everyone by buffer, meaning how far under their own standard they ran, and fills the field from the largest buffer down. The last accepted buffer becomes the published cutoff. Recent cycles have required 5:29, 6:51 and 4:34 under the standard. Our central estimate for the next cycle is about 5:15, give or take roughly 1:45, and that is an estimate rather than a BAA figure. If the mechanism is new to you, start with why a qualifying time does not guarantee entry.

The practical effect is that Boston is knowable in advance. You can look at your finish time today and form a reasonable view of your chances. You cannot do that with a lottery.

How Berlin decides

The main route into Berlin is the ballot. Recent editions have drawn well over one hundred thousand applications for a field in the mid fifty thousands, and a large share of those places is already committed to tour operators, charity teams, club entries and elite fields before the draw even opens. The result is a general ballot success rate that is commonly reported in the low tens of percent. Nothing you do in training changes that number.

Berlin does keep a fast time route to a guaranteed place, and this is where the comparison gets interesting. In recent years that route has asked for something in the region of 2:45 for men under 45 and 3:00 for women under 45, with slightly softer figures for older brackets. The organisers adjust these from time to time, so treat them as a guide and confirm the current table on the official entry page before you plan a season around it.

The direct comparison

Line the two up for the same runner and the picture is clear. A 32 year old man needs 2:55 to meet the Boston standard, and with a cutoff near 5:15 he realistically needs about 2:49 to be comfortable. Berlin's fast time route would ask him for roughly 2:45. For that runner the two sit in the same neighbourhood, with Berlin a shade tougher.

Now take a 52 year old man. Boston asks 3:20, so roughly 3:14 once the cutoff is applied. Berlin's fast time bracket for his age has recently sat near 2:55, which is a completely different race. Because Boston scales its standards steeply with age while Berlin's fast time brackets are broad, the gap widens quickly for masters runners. For most people over 40, Boston is by a distance the more achievable earned entry, and Berlin becomes a ballot proposition.

There is also a difference in how the two feel to plan for. A Boston campaign has a target you can hit, miss by a little, and attack again next season with a better idea of the number. A Berlin ballot campaign is a repeated coin flip, which is why so many runners end up entering the draw every year in the background while chasing Boston in the foreground. That is a perfectly sensible strategy, and it is roughly what the London entry picture looks like too, covered in Boston vs London.

Which should you chase

If you are within striking distance of a Boston buffer, chase Boston, because it is the only major where effort converts directly into entry. Enter the Berlin ballot as a free option on the side. If your marathon times are a long way off any standard, the ballot majors are the realistic path, and the ranking of how hard each one is to enter is set out in which major is hardest to get into.

Either way, the first step is knowing your own number. Run your finish time through the cutoff predictor and it will show your buffer, an estimated chance for the next cycle, and how that buffer would have fared against thirteen years of real Boston cutoffs. Berlin as a race is also a strong place to earn that buffer, which is the subject of is Berlin a good BQ course.