Can boson stars supplant black holes?

The time-like geodesics of spherically symmetric boson stars (BS) are compared to those of the Schwarzschild black hole (BH). It is shown that the compactness of the BS is the quantity that determines how similar time-like geodesics are to those of a BH with the same mass. It is also found that the self-interaction of the scalarfield the BS is made of, determines how compact a stable BS can be. The combination of these two results indicates that BSs could supplant BHs better when they are stable, have strong self-interaction and high central density. If boson stars will be considered as serious toy models for astrophysical BH candidates it will be important to choose correctly the free parameters of the scalarfield; here the basic guidelines are pointed out for the case of spherical symmetry